OTHER GREAT MARINE DISASTERS

DEADLY DANGER OF ICEBERGS--DOZENS OF SHIPS PERISH IN COLLISION--OTHER
DISASTERS

THE danger of collision with icebergs has always been one of the most
deadly that confront the mariner. Indeed, so well recognized is this
peril of the Newfoundland Banks, where the Labrador current in the early
spring and summer months floats southward its ghostly argosy of
icy pinnacles detached from the polar ice caps, that the government
hydrographic offices and the maritime exchanges spare no pains to
collate and disseminate the latest bulletins on the subject.

THE ARIZONA

A most remarkable case of an iceberg collision is that of the Guion
Liner, Arizona, in 1879. She was then the greyhound of the Atlantic, and
the largest ship afloat--5750 tons except the Great Eastern. Leaving New
York in November for Liverpool, with 509 souls aboard, she was coursing
across the Banks, with fair weather but dark, when, near midnight, about
250 miles east of St. John's, she rammed a monster ice island at full
speed eighteen knots. Terrific was the impact.

The welcome word was passed along that the ship, though sorely stricken,
would still float until she could make harbor. The vast white terror had
lain across her course,

{illust. caption = THE SHAPE OF AN ICEBERG

Showing the bulk and formation under water and the consequent danger
to vessels even without actual contact with the visible part of the
iceberg.}

stretching so far each way that, when described, it was too late to
alter the helm. Its giant shape filled the foreground, towering high
above the masts, grim and gaunt and ghastly, immovable as the adamantine
buttresses of a frowning seaboard, while the liner lurched and staggered
like a wounded thing in agony as her engines slowly drew her back from
the rampart against which she had flung herself.

She was headed for St. John's at slow speed, so as not to strain the
bulkhead too much, and arrived there thirty-six hours later. That little
port--the crippled ship's hospital--has seen many a strange sight come
in from the sea, but never a more astounding spectacle than that which
the Arizona presented the Sunday forenoon she entered there.

"Begob, captain!" said the pilot, as he swung himself over the rail.
"I've heard of carrying coals to Newcastle, but this is the first time
I've seen a steamer bringing a load of ice into St. John's."

They are a grim race, these sailors, and, the danger ove