Ships stuck in the icefield

P

Paul Lee

Member
Hi all,
I saw this interesting little post in the "Weather and Navigation" section in an April 1912 edition of Lloyd's List:

April 15th, 8.00am:
"French liner Niagara was holed twice below waterline and had some of her plates buckled. At least one full rigged ship and one fishing smack are imprisoned in the floes".

Hmm. Two things jump to mind: does this mean that the Niagara was somewhere near the sinking Titanic? And also, does anyone know the identities of the two ships stuck in the ice field? I couldn't find any mention in the remainder of Lloyd's list for April, May and June 1912 (though I may have missed it!)

Thanks

Paul

 
did anyone get, from reading the ice reports, that there were floes or fields, beyong individual ice? reported wires said 'bergs', but what about floes?
my understanding is that any fields or floes were quite, quite a ways north, and only bergs or individual ice near Titanic, so that any ships stuck in floes would be quite north and not near Titanic. Anyone have more on this?
Were there any correlatings, or compendium data done on ice off Newfoundland that day? or did anyone subsequently make a map reflecting such data?
it would make interesting reading and I've just never seen such...
but I think such ships would be not anywhere near Titanic... just individual bergs.
Shed light?
happy.gif
 
The Niagara incident took place on 11 April and is described as taking place on the Grand Banks, well north of Titanic's course. A schooner called Corona was abandoned in the ice, but that was late in March.

There's plenty of evidence that a big area of field ice lay only a few miles west of the Titanic wreck site. It stretched for many miles in a roughly NE-SW direction. There are charts of it, notably those prepared for the US inquiry and the US civil claims. They are somewhat confused by the erroneous CQD position given by Titanic. There is a great deal of other data from US and Canadian sources that amy or may not be still online. It adds up to 1912 being a bad year for ice of all kinds.
 
Hi Dave,
I may go back to Lloyd's and see the records for late March. Believe me, there are hundreds of ice reports, mainly centred in the location of the ice field that was in Titanic's path. One ship took 4 hours to circumnavigate the ice field!

I'll post some more stuff tomorrow if anyone's interested.

Best wishes, mate

Paul

 
>>I'll post some more stuff tomorrow if anyone's interested.<<

Count me in! I think you'll find the ice reportscover a wider area then you think. As Dave said, it was a bad year for ice problems.
 
Digging into my treasury of trivia (about the only treasury I have!), I find that the business of the sailing ship and the schooner comes from the captain of Carmania. It's in The New York Times of 15 April 1912, along with the Niagara story.

BTW, was Carmania named after a magazine for revheads?
 
Hi Michael,
Will do - I didn't make many notes about the ice field(s), just the ships in the area on the 14th and 15th April, plus some debris reports.

Other than Titanic debris (there aren't many sightings listed), its frightening how many derelicts, buoys, spars (from underwater wrecks) there were in those days!

Best wishes

Paul

 
>>Other than Titanic debris (there aren't many sightings listed), its frightening how many derelicts, buoys, spars (from underwater wrecks) there were in those days!<<

Hazards of the game I'm afraid, especially in the North Atlantic shipping lanes. IIRC, there was a small tanker that was adrift in the general area because she had run out of coal. Hell, sometimes the hazards weren't even abandoned. The Grand Banks has some of the richest fisheries in the world, and the big boys running some of the so-called Cod Bankers down was a common occurance.
 
I agree - there was one instance of a small ship (schooner? smack? I can't recall!) that was sighted, that had been cut clean it two, and the two halves were floating around. ISTR the comment made was "This is a serious hazard to navigation" (!)

Cheers

Paul

 
I find it interesting that the S.S. Niagara hit an iceberg around the same place as Titanic. I wonder if it was the same berg?

[Moderator's Note: This message, originally posted in an unrelated thread under the "Passenger Research" topic, has been moved to this pre-existing thread addressing the same subject. MAB]
 
I followed up on another site about shipwrecks caused by icebergs, that i got from a friend, and another ship named S.S.Niagara hit two icebergs 10 miles away from where Titanic sunk.It is not known if anyone was killed, it says they the iceberg cut below the waterline twice, but the pumps kept the ship afloat. The S.S. Niagara hit the bergs on the 11th of april.
 
"Apr 11- French liner SS "Niagara" from Le Havre to New York collided with berg less than 10m from "Titanic's" eventual fate, and holed. Cunard liner SS "Carmania" responded to call for help. It passed 25 bergs of monstrous size, one estimated at 500' high. Speed reduced till engines barely turning."

[Moderator's Note: This message and the one immediately above it, originally posted as a separate thread under the "Passenger Research" topic, have been moved to this pre-existing thread addressing the same subject. MAB]
 
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