The Wireless Operator—With the U. S. Coast Guard/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
Among the Icebergs
AFTER the discovery of the opium, Captain Hardwick took his sailors back to the Iroquois, along with the confiscated drug, leaving the custom inspectors aboard the Orient, to search the sealed cargo holds at the pier. Off Staten Island the Iroquois dropped behind the freighter and was soon swinging once more at her anchor.
For some time she lay there undisturbed. The seas were calm and no emergency calls came to the little cutter. Henry was delighted at that, for Willie had returned, and the two boys and Roy now were able to see each other frequently. At any of his four-hour periods off duty Henry was free to slip over to Manhattan, and so cordial was the feeling now existing among the wireless men on the Iroquois, that either Jimmy Belford or the chief electrician was willing enough to work overtime on occasion to give Henry a bit more freedom. They knew well enough that he would gladly reciprocate when need arose. Many a night now saw the three boys from Central City happy together in the snug wireless cabin of the Lycoming. It was, indeed, a great joy to them to be so near one another.
Winter came, and with it winter cruising. For periods of a week or ten days the Iroquois and her sister cutters cruised on the open sea, some patrolling along the shores to prevent the landing of alcoholic drink, some standing off dangerous coasts, to be on hand should vessels become endangered. No unusual storms arose that winter, but all the time it was boisterous out on the ocean, for the winds never ceased, and the sea was in perpetual turmoil.
Christmas found Henry thus at sea. For him it was a memorable Christmas, too, because it was the first one he had ever spent away from home. He felt a bit blue about it, but fought down the touch of homesickness that came to him. Perhaps the sea helped him to do that. On this particular day the ocean was tremendously rough. The cutter had worked far to the north-ward, and all day long had pitched about as Henry had never seen her pitch before. The cooks had prepared a goodly Christmas dinner, but it could not be served at the table. Instead it was passed out in chunks, to be eaten from one hand, while with the other hand each man clung to anything that offered support. The sea was so rough one could hardly stand without a prop.
It was a foretaste of what was to come in the following spring, when the Iroquois went to the Grand Banks, on ice patrol. When the great ice fields of the frozen north disintegrate, and huge icebergs float south, passing through the steamer lanes, and so endangering steamship traffic, it was part of the work of the Coast Guard to protect shipping from these menacing mountains of ice. One Titanic disaster was enough for the world.
When it came time for the Iroquois to relieve the Oneida in the ice fields, the ship was made ready and the long voyage begun. At Halifax the cutter touched to refill her water tanks and renew her stores. Then she headed northeast into the region of fog and storm and tremendous moving mountains of ice.
As long as he lives, Henry will never forget that journey through the tossing, fog-shrouded sea. For days on end the sun had not shone. No stars were visible at night. The dull gray sea and the dull gray clouds, with the thick shrouded mists, lent a leaden tone to life which was like nothing Henry had ever known. Onward, league after league, day after day, the little cutter rolled and pitched, tossed by a sea the like of which Henry had never imagined.
Only by dead reckoning could the commander tell where he was. He had so recently left Halifax that he could not be so very far astray in his calculations. But the Oneida had not been able to take a sight for three weeks, so 1t was not surprising, therefore, that when she gave her position to the Iroquois by wireless, and the Iroquois proceeded to the given spot, no cutter was to be seen. When Captain Hardwick found that the Oneida was not at the given position, he wired: “Iroquois is at the meeting point named. Will await you.” And at once the Oneida flashed back the reply: “There is some mistake. We are at the position named. Will await you.”
What a puzzle this situation would have been in the days before the radio compass was invented, and what a game of blind man’s buff those two little cutters would have played among the fogs and mists and icebergs of the Grand Banks. But now Captain Hardwick simply telegraphed the Oneida to remain at anchor and give him a compass bearing. Soon Mr. Sharp came out of the compass shack and told the commander which way to go. That was all there was to it. A few hours later the two ships lay side by side. The Oneida, unable to see the sun for so long, was a great distance from the position she thought she occupied.
As Henry was to learn, there was great reason why a ship should float far and wide in this region of moving mountains of ice. The Grand Banks, formed by the deposit of sediment carried north by the Gulf Stream, are enormous eminences in the bottom of the sea, like huge mountain plateaus rising in a vast valley. These banks rise upward to within two hundred feet of the ocean’s surface, while the bed of the sea around them is thousands of feet deep. Naturally these great banks of sand deflect the sea currents. The Gulf Stream itself bends farther to the east. There are currents and cross currents, and wind and sea are often terrible beyond description.
Icebergs float with seven-eighths of their bulk submerged, so no large bergs can ever cross the Grand Banks; they are too deep for the shallow waters there. But in the deeper parts of the sea they stream southward from the polar ice fields in droves, scattering in every direction with wind and current. Some go with the Labrador current. Coming. south, some swing up again and go northeast. Others continue straight on down to the shipping lanes. Some get into the Gulf Stream and are further deflected from their courses. And all these companies of icebergs, scattered over vast areas, one little cutter is supposed to watch and guard. Of course she cannot herd them together and drive them away from the shipping lanes, but she can and does drive ships away from the icebergs. She does this by wireless.
Day after day the Iroquois cruised among the bergs, charting the position of each, noting the currents in which each floated, trying to plot the probable course of each moving mountain of ice. And every four hours the man at the wireless key sent flashing abroad a detailed warning to ships, telling where each menacing berg was located and what course it would probably take. And at night the Iroquois lay at rest, floating upon the bosom of the deep. It was dangerous enough to run through the ice fields in the daytime, when concealing mists made vision well-nigh impossible. To steam through them at night would be almost suicidal.
Anxious days were these for the commander of the Iroquois. At any moment his little cutter was likely to be disabled merely by the violence of the sea. At any moment the ship might crash into some fog-shrouded berg. Ceaseless vigilance was necessary to insure safety.
Almost greater vigilance was required to keep track of the huge bergs. Some of them towered two hundred feet in air, which meant that they were many hundred feet deep. Continually they were “calving,” or throwing off great shoulders of ice, called growlers. Every time a berg calved, its centre of gravity was disturbed and its contour altered. It rode at a new angle. Thus the berg that to-day resembled a cathedral might to-morrow look like a storage warehouse. Yet it was necessary, for the purpose of scientific observation, that each southward-floating berg be definitely identified. Oceanographers were now aboard the Iroquois, to study this matter of iceberg drift, that shipping might be better protected in future years. It was necessary that they should know each berg they met, no matter where they encountered it. But to recognize a berg that was continually altering its own appearance was an accomplishment that not even the learned oceanographers possessed. As yet, no way to identify bergs had ever been devised.
But Captain Hardwick was a resourceful man, and one day he declared that he had solved the problem. “I’m going to paint them,” he declared. His hearers laughed incredulously. But the captain cared little for their amusement. He ordered some shells brought from the magazine and some paints from the storeroom. Then, under the captain’s personal supervision, the gunner loaded shell after shell with paint. Bright reds and greens and blues and other startling colors were used. When all was ready, the captain smiled with satisfaction. “I’m going to try it out on the very next berg we see,” he laughed.
An hour later the lookout announced that a berg was visible. It took the cutter more than an hour to reach it, however, for it was sixteen miles away. It was two hundred and fifty feet high, and Henry was so astonished at this enormous mass of glittering white ice that he could find no words to describe it, or his astonishment either. The Iroquois worked up close to the berg, a spot was selected by the captain to aim at, high up on the broad side of the monster, the gunner elevated and sighted one of the guns, and a charge of paint went shooting out of a cannon’s mouth. A second later the shell crashed against the lofty berg, and a huge crimson stain began to spread over its side. Then the Iroquois steamed around to the other side of the berg and repeated the dose. “If that doesn’t do the trick,” laughed the commander, “my name isn’t Hardwick.”
They were still calling the commander by that name a week later, however, for when the Iroquois had cruised the length of her beat and was returning, she again came upon the crimson-sided ice mass. A cross current had brought it back close to where it had been painted. Other bergs were tinted with other colors, and there was something new under the sun. The wireless broadcasts now warned vessels to look out for the berg with the green, or the red, or the blue sides. A way had been found to brand these monsters of the deep.
But of all his experiences in the ice fields, nothing so much interested Henry as the destruction of a huge berg that came wallowing down from the frozen north and went ploughing straight along toward the tropics. Apparently neither wind nor sea nor any other agency could turn this menacing mountain of ice aside from its path. Down to the northern steamship lane it went, and the Iroquois went with it, warning all shipping of its presence. It was enormous. It towered more than two hundred feet in air, and was hundreds of feet long and huge in width. It did not break up into growlers when it reached the warmer parts of the sea, as most of the bergs did, but kept on, implacable, menacing, terrible.
Through the northern steamer lane and on to the southern lane, the huge block of ice steadily made its way. Thus it endangered ships going both to and from European ports. But the Iroquois stayed by the giant berg and warned all ships of the danger. When it reached a point farther south than the Iroquois’ own port, and still did not disintegrate, the commander of the cutter took steps to break it up by artificial means.
A small boat was lowered, and two mines, each containing fifty-two pounds of TNT, were loaded aboard, with firing batteries and other necessary equipment. Then Lieutenant Hill, with a picked crew of oarsmen, manned the boat, towing behind it a float with a sail attached. The party made its way to windward of the berg, where the mines were suspended from the float, so that they hung about eight feet below the surface of the water. ‘The sail on the float was spread, and while the wind drove it toward the berg, the sailors pulled in the opposite direction. But the matter was not so simple as it seemed. The backlash of the sea kept the raft from reaching the great mass of ice, and, instead of hitting it, it floated to one side and on toward the open sea.
Lieutenant Hill caught the raft, and now an attempt was made to tow it across the face of the berg with a buoyed line, the tow rope being kept up at intervals with life preservers. But all about the base of the berg, like detritus at the bottom of a precipice, were great quantities of slush ice, little growlers, and the like, so that the mine could not be dragged against the main berg.
Then an effort was made to drive spikes into the side of the ice, so that the mines could be hung to them. It was dangerous business, standing up in a tossing little boat, with a possibility of being pitched out and crushed between it and the berg, but the sailors made the attempt without mishap—and without success. All efforts to drive anything into the ice were futile. It broke under the hammer blows, and no nail could be forced into it.
Next a grapnel was tried. The small boat was forced through the slush ice at the foot of the berg until a place was found where a little ledge in the shoulder seemed to offer a chance for ahold. The grapnel was thrown, but it slid off into the water. Again and again the effort was repeated. Each time it failed. The hooks of the grapnel would not catch in the slippery ice.
The backlash of the sea constantly showered the small boat with spray. All hands were soaked. The firing batteries became wet and useless, and the lieutenant put back to the Iroquois for fresh ones.
“I’m going to try the Brawiet a again,” he called up to the commander, after making known his need for dry batteries.
“Captain Hardwick,” said Henry, “why not shoot a line over that berg? Then one could hang a mine on the other end of it on the far side of the berg.”
The captain leaned over the rail of the cutter and called down to the lieutenant: “Never mind about the grapnel. Our able third-class radio man says to shoot a line over the berg, so bend your energies to that. I’ll get you a shoulder gun. It’s worth trying.” He sent a man for both the battery and the gun, and the two were passed into the rowboat.
Back to the berg went the little craft. When it was close beside the middle of the berg, the lieutenant put the gun to his shoulder, while a sailor made sure that the line would run free. At a favorable moment the lieutenant fired high over the mass of ice. The projectile flew true, whisking the line after it. The small boat was brought close to the base of the berg, a weight was attached to the end of the shot-line, and then the boat rowed round the berg and picked up the other end of the line.
The lieutenant now had something to which to attach his mines. Together they weighed more than one hundred pounds. Carefully these were bent to the shot-line and lowered until they rested against the base of the ice, thirty feet below the surface of the sea. The small boat pulled far away, and the shot was fired. The report was a muffled roar. Immense quantities of ice came crashing down from the titantic shoulders of the berg, with thunderous reverberations. The sound was startling. ‘The mountain of ice itself began to rise, the huge bulk lifting straight up out of the water, as though a giant hand were pushing it from beneath. Ten feet it rose, then twenty, and yet it continued to lift. At thirty feet there was a sharp crack, and the huge mass broke fairly in halves. Then it fell back into the sea, throwing out an enormous wave. Each half was a third as large as the original berg had been. The remaining third was the broken ice that had come rattling down from the giant’s shoulders.
For the first time in history an iceberg had been destroyed by artificial means, for within twenty-four hours the two huge chunks of this monster had completely disintegrated. Nothing but small growlers and slush ice encumbered the sea. TNT had been more than a match for the ice king.