DRIFTED SIX MONTHS ON AN ICE FLOE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 113, 28 September 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

DRIFTED SIX MONTHS ON AN ICE FLOE

"MOST AMAZING KSCAPK IX HISTORY." ■•There is widespread regret the hard Jisherfolk of -Newfoundland ' that there was nobody on board the Titanic to suggest the obviously simplest and most effective method of savin" the whole -25(10 on board. This eoulif have been done by simply utilising the ice floes in the vicinity as gigantic rafts, to which the passengers ami crew might have been transferred," writes the lion. P. T. McGrath, a member of the Legislative Council of Newfoundland, in the journal "Canada."

"It seems incredible," he proceeds, "that in all the immense multitudes of people aboard the liner nobody thought of this simple solution. It is not that would have immediately commended itself to a Newfoundlander,' and it is one that has already won historical recognition through the most amazing escape in the whole annals of authentic adventure.

"I refer to the famous ice floe journey of the survivors of the Arctic steamer Polaris, who, in April, 1873, were picked up by the Newfoundland sealing steamer Tigress on an ice floe on the Grand Banks, after having drifted some 1600 miles on this precarious foothold, their absolutely unique voyage having occupied 103 days. "The ship had been crushed in the ice in North Greenland waters the previous November, and, as is the invariable practice in these regions, they abandoned the ice-gored hull and took to the iloes in order to reach the land, but a storm coming up the fragment on which they had established themselves was driven southward, and for six months it was their floating home until rescue reached them on the Grand Banks.

WHOLE FAMILIES ON FLOES. "This, however, though the most remarkable case of its kind, is by no mean's the pnly case of shipwrecked people escaping death by taking refuge on an ice floe. Whenever a Newfoundland sealing steamer is crushed by the packas happens to one or other of the flotilla almost every spring—the crew at once betake themselves to the nearest floes with their clothing, provisions, boats and other impedimenta, and there remain until some others of the fleet come upon them and take them aboard. They are not dismayed by the prospect of a day's, or a week's, detention.

"Fishing crews making their way to Labrador in the early summer resort to the same expedient when their ships are crushed, and there are numerous cases on record where these people—men, women and children—have been adrift for several days before being picked up. Scores of such tales could be told, where cod-fishers, and seal-hunters have escaped from peril by this simple expedient. Those aboard the Titanic might just as easily have done the same.

"Any number of fragments were available to which the first boatloads could have been transferred while the boats made a second and a third trip to the ship and brought off the remainder of the people. . . . The women and children from Newfoundland vessels obliged to leave their beds in the darkness of _ night have survived experiences of this kind for from three to seven days, and therefore it is unlikely that any great number of those on the Titanic, however delicately nurtured, or however poorly equipped for this enforced imprisonment on an ice islet, would have suffered any ill-effects."