DEADLY ICEBERGS. HOW THEY FLOAT INTO ROUTES OF TRAVEL.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 331, 5 January 1889, Page 4

DEADLY ICEBERGS. HOW THEY FLOAT INTO ROUTES OF TRAVEL.

Says a late number of the " San Francisco Chronicle :" — The lecenl sinking of the steamship City of Chester wiLhin the very portals of San Francisco Harbour, while adding another instance of the lamentable dereliction of duty among ship officers revives comment upon tho general lack of Vigilance on passenger steamers in croncial. As a case of most culpable negligence in this respect may be citerl the collision of tho (-iuion steamship Arizona with an iceberg off the Eastern American coa&t, Tho vessel, which had a large passenger list, narrowly escape- 1 sinking. In\ obligation olicited the fact that, as the weather was calm and everything runnini> smoothly, tho "lookouts" had 101 l their posts of duty. To the lack of watchfulness, also, is attributed the lo&s of tho sleamci Pacific — " the ship that never letui ned.' Beside the possibility of wreckage by iceff. and by collision with passing vessel-, there is that other and pos" sibly more to be dreaded danger, the iceberg, which besets vessels in their regular routes of tiavel. Some of tho most; frightful fatalities of tho sea have been caused by these beautiful but appallingly dansrerous mountains of the j deep The positions of sunken lorks and reefs have been pretty thoroughly located and chaitod; hut these floating j ramparts of ice have a " faculty '"—li sjne may be permitted the term— of ludcly colliding with voxels at a time and in places when and where least expected. Oil tho Atlantic coast fchev ha\c been met in the month of June by vessels as far south as latitude 30 deg. 30 mm. notth, so southerly com parathely a^ San JFYanei&co is on this coast. The}" have also been cncountcicd as near land as 300 miles, and this, too, in the month of July. They have been parsed bv steamers within 500 milos of Voi tland, Mo. Vessels in the southern Pacific ocean have similar dangers to contend with. It is a matter of marine history that in the jear 1859 the good ship Indian Queen, while on her way fiom Melbourne to Liverpool with a cargo of wool find gold, suilered a disaster of this kind. It \ wn* the first day of April. The Indian Queen was scudding along under full sail at a speed of eleven to twelve knots. Suddenly all hands weic aroused by a violent shock, followed by the cr.ush ot falling spars, and a trightful grinding along the vessel's side. The Queen was found to be lying broadside loan iceberg of immense proportions, and lo have riiflercd c erioun damage. Only the mi^en mast remained comparatively uninjured. The bowsprit v\a& lopped ofl' and hung useless at the side. The foremast, snapped o(l attiie deck, swung to and fio supported by the ligging. Nearly all the spars and sails above the lower masts were gone. A majoiity of the crew, who believed the >-hip "would not long continue to float, took to the boats and left the passengers to their fate. But !,he \e> e el did not sink. She vns still whole, and the c econd mate, assuming command, spread what sail he could. Amid the intense anxiety of all aboard the ship denied, the here and stood on her course No onebntthc passenger 5 ! oi that illfated vessel can know the pain, the agony, the doubt, which they cxpciienccd from that hour on — the watchful day? and sleepless nights — while the Queen laboured slowly on in her ciipplcd condition, contending with a ntie s s of wind and tide. She was headed for Valparaiso, South America, tho nearest port, which she reached^in safety after forty days of prayerful, agonising suspense. The reader familiar with seafaring will, no doubt, recall many instance*- ot accidents at sea, directly attributable to such cause as so nearly resulted fatally to the Indian Queen. It is not so long ago, but that the incident is still fresh in the memory of two continents at least, that the fine steamer Pacific, of. the". Collins line, was lost on her trip from Liverpool to New York. No trace of her was ever found. Those Avho had friends and relatives on the ill-fated ship ■were slow to abandon all hope, but they ■were at last forced to the conviction that the vessel, with its captain, crew and fortyfive passengers, had perished. A collision with one of these insidious ice foes is supposed to explain her los«. The year in which the Pacific was lost was a memorable one in marine annals. It was in that year that tho ship John TCutledge was lost, also by collision with an iceberg. She .struck the ice on a Februaiy morning, and her crew and pa&sengers, numbering 120 souN, took to the boats a.s the vessel wa« rapidly going to pieces. All perished save one man named Nye. ITc was picked up by Captain Wood of the Germania. The boat in which he was found was filled with litele&s bodies ; the other boats were never heard from. Nyo's story of their experience after abandoning the Rutledge, the exposures and hardships they endured till I relieved by death, tossed about in an open boat on an angry, tempestuous sea, amid fields and bergs of ico, was most; thrilling. An escape from imminent death which was a near approach to the miraculous was that of the 300 souls aboard of the steamship Arizona, which struck a huge iceberg when three days out from New York city. Tho Arizona was bound for Liverpool via what is known as the northern route, which skirts the Newfoundland coast on the south. It was November 7, 1879, and Friday — that ever unlucky day of the week. Suddenly she struck an iceberg with a crash, and it was thought the ship was sinking, but she was not much injured. She managed to reach St. John's (Nowi i'ouiidlnnd) that same night.

Mi- \Y. T. Firth is taking a large area of land on the Ohinemuri" River foi' the purpose ot putting in late potatoes, He proposes to irrigate by machinery. ThoDuneclin channel is now availablo for ships clrawi?ig twonfcy foeb. At the Heads, the works have cost iust one-half what Sir John Uoode ostimated,