April 15 Hydrographic Office received radio telegram from German steamer Amerika via Titanic and Cape Race, reporting two icebergs April 14 in latitude 41-degrees 27-minutes North, longitude 50-degrees 08-minutes West. This news, which was received early in the morning was at once telegraphed to the branch hydrographic office, New York.
April 16 it had become apparent from numerous reports gathered by the Hydrographic Office that the ice season was an extraordinary one and the office took up the question of shifting the steamer lane with its branch office in New York and with the Navy Department.
April 16, the steamship companies in New York announced that they had shifted their route to cross 47-degrees west, in latitude 41-degrees north, westbound, and to cross 47-degrees west, in latitude 40-degrees 10-minutes north, east bound.
April 18, having received the approval of the Secretary of the Navy, the office directed Lieut. Grady, in charge of the branch Hydrographic Office at New York, to confer quietly with the steamship companies and urge a still farther southward shifting of the steamship lane. Lieut. Grady found the companies entirely open to suggestion; they cabled to their European houses, and by common agreement, the tracks were laid to the southward, as follows:
April 19, westbound, great circle to latitude 30-degrees north, longitude 45-degrees west; then to latitude 39-degrees north, longitude 50-degrees west; then to Nantucket Shoals Lightship; then to Ambrose Lightship. Mediterranean steamers will follow the same track westward of longitude 45-degrees west.
Eastbound, Ambrose Lighthouse to latitude 40-degrees north, longitude 70-degrees west; then to latitude 38-degrees 20-minutes north, longitude 50-degrees west; then to latitude 38-degrees 20-minutes north; longitude 45-degrees west; then great circle to Bishops Rock. Mediterranean steamers will follow the same tracks to latitude 38-degrees 20-minutes north, longitude 45-degrees west; then the usual tracks to the strait.
May 9, Hydrographic Office received another radio telegram from German steamer Amerika, via Cape race, reporting large icebergs in latitude 39-degrees 02-minutes north, longitude 47-degrees west. The office immediately telegraphed this news to the branch Hydrographic Office at New York, which gave it the widest publicity, and resulted in the steamship companies again taking the matter up and agreeing to make still another change in the lanes as follows:
May 11, westbound, great circle to latitude 38-degrees north, longitude 45-degrees west; thence along the parallel 38-degrees north to longitude 50-degrees west. Eastbound, lane to latitude 37-degrees 40-minutes north, longitude 50-degrees west; thence along the parallel of latitude 37-degrees 40-minutes north to longitude 45-degrees west; thence by great circle to Europe.
The wisdom of this latest change is demonstrated by the receipt in the Hydrographic Office of reports from sea showing that numerous icebergs had reached the thirty­ninth parallel, and some and even passed south of that latitude. JOHN J. KNAPP
SENATOR SMITH: I also submit a letter received by the committee from the Director of the United States Geological Survey, bearing date May 16, 1912, having special reference to the composition of icebergs.
The letter referred to is here printed in the record as follows:
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY
Washington, May 16, 1912.
Hon. William Alden Smith, Chairman Subcommittee United States Senate, Washington, D.C.
My Dear Sir: Replying to a letter of May I requesting information concerning the possibility of the Titanic having had its hull torn open by a mass of rock embedded in the submerged portion of the iceberg with which it collided:
As Prof. E. H. Williams, Jr. suggests in his card which you inclose, such may possibly have been the case. It certainly appears that such an ice mass, armed with embedded rock fragments, would be much more effective in ripping open the plates of a ship's hull than a mass of clear ice. It is a well­known fact, as reported by numerous Arctic explorers, that some at least of the Greenland icebergs transport rock masses. In one of his addresses delivered in Washington last year, either that before the Geological Society of Washington or one before the National Academy of Sciences, Sir John Murray referred to the abundant bowlders found by the dredging of the Challenger expedition, scattered over parts of the bottom of the North Atlantic. He referred to these as being so numerous in places that were the sea bottom elevated and drained as to become land he thought geologists would be inclined to refer the deposit to a continental ice sheet, as has been done with the drift spread over the north half of the North American continent.
Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, in his volume on the "U.S. Grinned Expedition," 1854, p. 113, describes bergs covered with detritus or rock fragments, varying in size from mere pebbles to large blocks. He writes of one as follows:
The berg had evidently changed its equilibrium, and it seemed as if these rocks had been cemented in its former base and had there been subjected to attrition during its rotary oscillations against the bottom of the sea."
On page 455 he describes the overturning of bergs due to changes in their equilibrium, and referring to rock­studded ice, states (p. 456):
"In such cases the deeply embedded position of the larger fragments spoke of their having been there from the original structure of the berg."
Further, (p.457):
"Of nearly 5,000 bergs which I have seen there was perhaps not one that did not contain fragmentary rock."
in his Arctic Expeditions: The Second Grinned Expedition (vol. 2, 1856, pp. 156, 157), Dr. Kane describes the ice in Marshall Bay covered with millions of tons of rock debris. Concerning this he writes:
"I have found masses that had been detached in this way floating many miles out to sealong symmetrical tables, 200 feet long by 80 broad, covered with large angular rocks and bowlders, and seemingly impregnated throughout with detrital matter. These rafts in Marshall Bay were so numerous that could they have melted as I saw them the bottom of the sea would have presented a more curious study for the geologist than the bowlder­covered lines of our middle latitudes."
It should be noted, however, that these ice rafts probably do not transport their loads to such low latitudes as are reached by the more massive bergs.
Dr. I. I. Hayes, in his volume on The Open Polar Sea, a narrative of a voyage of discovery toward the North Pole (1867, pp. 403, 404), describes the rock debris dropped upon the ice from cliffs along the shore and thence drifted away. He writes:
The amount of rock thus transported to the ocean is immense, and yet it falls far short of that which is carried by the icebergs, the rock and sand embedded in which, as they lay in the parent glacier, being sometimes sufficient to bear them down under the weight until but the merest fragments rise above the surface. As the berg melts, the rock and sand fall to the bottom of the ocean; and, if the place of their deposit should one day rise above the sea level, some geological students of future ages may, perhaps, be as much puzzled to know how they came there as those of the present generation are to account for the bowlders of the Connecticut Valley."
The amount of rock in any one iceberg is, however, probably small, so that it is not generally noticeable in the bergs which reach the lower latitudes, at least in those parts of the bergs which extend above the water level. Helland (1877), as quoted by James D. Dana (Manual of Geology, Fourth Edition, 1895, p. 252) states that most of the Greenland icebergs are clean, but "now and then one is seen with bowlders upon it, and here and there small bergs that are quite covered with stones and gravel."
Lieut. A. W. Greeley, in his Three Years of Arctic Service, an Account of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881­84, (1886, p. 52) refers to the transportation of rock debris by icebergs in part as follows:
"Comment has been made as to the freedom of icebergs from earthly matter or stones, which, it is argued, must be found on them if they are from glaciers. In this connection it should be remembered that of all the many miles of glaciers front seen in Grinnell Land, in but two instances were earthly substances noted ­ one in Henrietta Nesmith Glacier, where perhaps a thousandth part of its front was faintly tinged as if with earthy matter. In the other case, at the head of Ella Bay, the glacier is advancing down a narrow valley hemmed in by side hills thousands of feet in height, which accounts for their exceptional presence.
"It is thus evident that there is scarcely more than one chance in a thousand for a floeberg bearing stones to be found and still less for traces of a moraine."
Following this he describes one berg 600 feet thick and 300 square on which he observed 50 rocks.
The Greenland glaciers, extending from the great ice cap down the valleys which notch the margin of the interior upland, as described by other observers, do not carry a great amount of rock debris, and most of this is embedded in the lower part of the ice. When these glaciers extend into water sufficiently deep for icebergs to break off, most of the debris would thus be in the basal part of the ice and, since but one­ninth of the mass of floating ice extends above the water level, most of the debris in a berg standing 50 to 100 feet above the surface of the sea would at first be far below the depth at which a ship's hull would encounter it. With the melting of the ice as it floats southward, the rock fragments are released and dropped to the sea bottom. The most distant of this glacio­natant deposition is said to take place about the banks of Newfoundland, or between meridians 44 and 52 and north of parallel 40-degrees 30-minutes. Some of the rock is probably carried still farther south, especially in such a year as 1912, when the icebergs are reported as having been seen much farther south than is customary. It is thus quite possible that rock masses may have been embedded in the berg which the Titanic encountered. While most of the debris is probably embedded in the basal part of such ice masses, melting of the part of the ice exposed above the water would case the basal part to be gradually raised toward the surface. Moreover, the tilting of icebergs from their original positions results from the change of the center of gravity, due to disruption and unequal melting of different parts of the mass. Such bergs are also known from rock debris, the rock­shod part might be brought up to a level where a ship's hull would encounter it.
Masses of rock 50 feet or more in circumference are known to have been transported by continental glaciers, and it is quite possible that large masses of rock may be carried by some of the icebergs, though probably most of the stones are comparatively small. However, one large rock firmly embedded in the ice at the point of contact would certainly be most effective in ripping open a ship's hull under the force of a glancing impact. Ice in such a great mass as the berg which was encountered is, however, probably quite competent to produce disastrous results experienced without calling for the presence of any included mass of rock.
Very respectfully. Geo. Otis Smith, Director.
At 5 o'clock p.m., the taking of testimony before Senator Smith was adjourned.
