Iceberg, Dead Ahead

Today, over the deep, cold waters of the North Atlantic, three wreaths will fall from the sky.

Around midday, a lone U.S. Coast Guard plane will slow as it approaches latitude 41-46N, longitude 50-14W--the coordinates at which the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank into history 86 years ago. A brief prayer will be said, and the red-bowed wreaths of pine branches, and blue and white carnations will be cast out of the aircraft’s side door.

Two of the wreaths are from Titanic historical societies in America and Britain and are offered as memorials to the maritime disaster that claimed 1,517 lives in the darkness of early morning. The third is from the International Ice Patrol and is meant, too, as a remembrance, but also as a warning of what could still happen in that vast expanse of iceberg-rich sea.

“When you fly over it, it’s real eerie,” said Elisa Fusco, 32, who’s been tracking icebergs for the patrol for three years. “It looks like normal water, but you know all those people lost their lives around that spot. We just want to prevent something like that from ever occurring again.”

Despite significant technological advances, icebergs still loom as the single greatest hazard to shipping in the North Atlantic. The mammoth ice blocks command a fearsome respect among the hundreds of ship captains who must contend with the potentially lethal menace.

As big as a city block and weighing up to the equivalent of 14 Empire State Buildings, “bergs” are perilous natural marvels well beyond human control. In the extreme, if wind and water cooperate as they did the year the Titanic sank, icebergs can make it as far south as Chesapeake Bay, off Virginia, before succumbing to their only real enemy, warm temperatures.

Usually settling into one of seven main shapes, icebergs can resemble a jagged cathedral of ice, with one or more steeples reaching skyward. At other times, they can appear as flat and smooth as a giant bar of soap. And on a bright day, the reflection off the pure white surface can be near-blinding, but an iceberg can also generate hues of brilliant turquoise just below the surface.

“They are the sculptures of nature,” said Lt. Brandon Jones, 32, a patrol copilot and Alaska native. “They’re mountains of ice. They just make us seem so minuscule.”

Not a Single Ship Lost or Damaged

For 85 years, the International Ice Patrol has been the first and best line of defense against icebergs. Logging an astounding safety record, the public agency has more than lived up to its original purpose as established by international treaty shortly after the Titanic disaster. Not a single ship that has heeded the patrol’s warnings has ever been lost or damaged because of an iceberg.

The feat is even more noteworthy considering the Grand Banks, the shoal just off the eastern coast of Canada, is one of the most dangerous shipping areas in the world. Dense fog, severe storms and icebergs beset these heavily traveled shipping lanes between Europe and North America, and doomed hundreds of vessels long before Titanic’s tragic maiden voyage.

In spite of its success, and that of the cinematic juggernaut “Titanic,” the 16-member patrol continues to labor in cold obscurity. While the film has spurred record numbers of media inquiries, Web site hits and phone calls to its headquarters in Groton, Conn., the patrol still draws far more looks of bemusement than recognition.

“Most people have no idea who the International Ice Patrol is because nothing has happened,” said the patrol’s Lt. Tom Wojahn, 33. “But if, say, the Queen Elizabeth 2 hit an iceberg, we’d get very popular, very quickly.”

If the patrol’s name did somehow become better known, it could easily create a wrong impression. For starters, the patrol chases icebergs only in the North Atlantic, not around the globe.

Its crew is also about as international as the International House of Pancakes. The U.S. Coast Guard staffs the patrol and has done so since it was formed a year after the Titanic accident.

Seventeen nations are obligated to contribute to the patrol’s annual budget of $3.6 million, but the United States pays the bulk of it. Patrol officials generously characterize efforts to collect full payment from other member nations as a “challenge.”

And though it’s Coast Guard-run, the patrol works exclusively from the air, not the sea. They abandoned cutters in favor of radar-equipped aircraft decades ago.

But every ice season, the patrol faces losing its good if somewhat misleading name from the hundreds--even thousands--of icebergs that drift south from Greenland into its territory. From February to August, each mission casts an electronic net over 500,000 square miles of ocean, ever mindful that a mistake could send another ship to an early grave.

Scanning the Waters, Then Waiting

When the weather is poor, which it frequently is, pinpointing an iceberg can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack with a flighty metal detector. Armed with a radar that can mistake a fishing vessel for an iceberg, the patrol scans the waters from 8,000 feet searching for blips on a screen that mean there could be bergs as long as two football fields or as compact as a Honda.

The twice-monthly missions that can last up to 10 days begin at the Coast Guard Air Station in Elizabeth City, N.C., where about a dozen crewmen start a rotation with the Ice Patrol. The squad then flies north to pick up the four permanent Ice Patrol members in Groton. Or in patrol slang, the Airedales (pilots), the tweets (radar and electronic specialists) and the mechs (maintenance crew) load the ice picks (full-time ice experts) on the plane.

Once in Canada, reconnaissance flights originate from St. John’s, a picturesque ocean-front town where an annual parade of coastline-hugging icebergs attracts tourists by the thousands. For the patrol, Newfoundland’s main port serves a practical geographical purpose. It’s the most easterly point in North America and an ideal jumping-off spot for its seven-hour recon flights.

Before their HC-130 Hercules aircraft goes anywhere, though, the patrol’s officers confer with meteorologists at St. John’s Airport. With the region’s notoriously hostile weather, missions are frequently postponed or scuttled because of everything from high winds to freezing rain.

Flights are canceled, too, if turbulence is predicted over that day’s operation area, typically an airspace the size of Maine. Even moderate turbulence renders unreliable the patrol’s hypersensitive radar, which is classified and shielded by a curtain when visitors are on board.

“If we go up and it’s bad weather, it’s an expensive, wasted day,” said Wojahn, after canceling a flight last month because of snow and gusty winds.

For some crew members, bad weather isn’t all bad. After preparations are made for the next day’s mission, they joke that they usually have to console themselves at one of the town’s many pubs. And though unproven, the almost-all-male crew swears women outnumber men in local bars 7 to 1.

The odds, apparently, are pretty good. The past nine years have spawned as many marriages between Newfoundland natives and Coast Guard members on Ice Patrol detail. Another wedding is planned for this summer.

Aware of the patrol’s reputation, one local meteorologist joked after a morning weather briefing: “Have a good flight. And stay away from our women.”

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Once airborne, the patrol shifts into its own version of the military’s famed “hurry-up-and-wait” mode. The two pilots set the automatic pilot to ensure precise and systematic coverage of the seas below. Technicians monitor the FLAR (Forward Looking Airborne Radar) and SLAR (Side Looking Airborne Radar).

The maintenance crew prepares sophisticated ocean buoys for upcoming drops. And ice observers take lookout positions at large windows on either side of the aircraft, binoculars at the ready to confirm a radar blip as an actual iceberg--not one of the hundreds of fishing boats that troll the area.

Then, they wait.

And wait.

And wait.

If it’s early in ice season and the crew is flying over their southern territory, the patrol can easily go for hours and take little more action than adjusting the plane’s altitude to minimize turbulence.

The monotony is broken periodically by a radar image that can’t be confirmed as a berg or a boat, because some fishing vessels move with the current and can be similar to an iceberg in size and shape. The plane drops down to as low as 500 feet for a look. About half the time, it turns out to be a boat and the patrol resumes.

Other times, the day’s highlight may be throwing oceanographic buoys from the plane. The data from the equipment, which measures currents and water temperature, are vital for determining the drift and melting rates of icebergs.

“For the most part, our job isn’t very exciting,” said Wojahn, a Wisconsin native and the patrol mission commander. “That’s why it’s important to stay focused.”

But, in a sense, no news is good news. It means the waters are berg-free and that the fastest shipping routes can be safely navigated. If icebergs pop up in the shipping lanes, mariners lose precious time and money circumventing the area.

During a flight last month, the patrol reopened a 37,500-square-mile swath of ocean around the Grand Banks after no bergs were sighted. The area, about the size of Indiana, had been off-limits for two weeks and forced scores of vessels to reroute from their original course.

“It was an outstanding day,” said Lt. Jim Andrews, a science officer with the Ice Patrol, after the mission. “It means the mariner can use those waters again.”

Film Inspires a Vow: ‘Never Again’

It wasn’t until halfway through the fourth and final flight of that same mission that an iceberg was spotted, several hundred miles north of St. John’s. The berg first registers on radar, then the plane descends for a visual confirmation.

From 6,500 feet and 17 miles out, it looks like an aspirin floating on the water. As the plane closes to within a couple of miles and drops to 900 feet, the berg seems more like a massive apartment building. It towers some 150 feet out of the water and is about 400 feet wide. (It’s probably slightly larger than the iceberg that sank the Titanic, Ice Patrol officials say.)

But, truly, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Like all icebergs, 90% of its mass lies below the ocean surface. From 500 feet above, it resembles an enormous butterfly. Its so-called “dry dock” shape is caused by tidal action slowly eroding its midsection.

Such sights can inspire even a toughened crewman to wax poetic.

“There’s nothing like seeing a large dry dock,” said ice observer Joe Jenicek, 30. “It looks like a scene from the Bahamas. You get that light [from the iceberg’s underwater mass] shining through the water and it turns the water a turquoise color.”

But not everybody’s imagination was stirred.

“They’re just big chunks of ice to me,” cracks Kent Hammack, 28, a radar specialist, and veteran of eight patrol missions.

Before the flight ends, 46 icebergs and 29 growlers--a dangerous ice block that’s the size of a station wagon and difficult to detect--are found scattered over several hundred square miles of ocean. That far north, though, they pose little threat to shipping. But within a month, they could drift far enough south to rip apart a ship in the Grand Banks area.

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So why not just blow them out of the water? In the late 1950s, the patrol experimented with gunfire, mines, torpedoes, depth charges and bombing to obliterate the bergs. But, when considering safety and cost, nothing worked as well as letting them melt naturally.

The patrol’s data, along with icebergs reported by mariners, help constitute the “limits of all known ice”--safety boundaries that vessels are warned not to cross. These frequently shifting boundaries are updated daily and broadcast in the “Ice Bulletin” to ships over the radio and posted on the Internet.

Even so, not everyone abides by them. To many ship captains, especially those based in St. John’s, icebergs are a way of life. These experienced captains use radar, slower speeds and a human lookout when maneuvering through seas in which ice warnings have been issued.

But even these cautious captains ram their vessels into the occasional growler and sink every few years or so, Ice Patrol officials say. In 1993, three large ships, whose captains ignored the patrol’s ice limits, slammed into bergs and were badly damaged.

“The warnings are really meant for the transatlantic mariner who leaves Europe for New York with good weather,” said Don Murphy, an oceanographer who works at the Ice Patrol’s main facility in Groton. “He’s not particularly alarmed and might not realize an iceberg is in his path.”

Since the Titanic disaster, the only other major loss of life due to ice in the North Atlantic occurred in 1959. The SS Hanshedtoft rammed an iceberg and disappeared with 95 passengers and crew about 40 miles south of Cape Farewell, Greenland--well north of the Ice Patrol’s territory.

Short of such a calamity, it’s hard to imagine anything else reinforcing the patrol’s sense of purpose as much as the movie “Titanic.” The multi-Oscar-winning film has deeply resonated with the troops whose goal, after all, is to prevent a sequel.

Everyone serving in the March deployment had seen the movie at least once. Some as many as five times.

“I know it sounds selfish to say that it meant more to me than someone else, but it did,” said Andrews, 29, a graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn. “It’s the epic story of a maritime disaster.”

Patrol members praised the film’s authenticity, noticing it exhumed some of their own grisly experiences of rescue. The movie’s drowning sequences were especially poignant for Kenneth Clark, a Coast Guard rescue swimmer on the Ice Patrol’s maintenance crew.

While stationed in Washington several years ago, Clark was dispatched to save four men from waters off Puget Sound. The four were stowaways and had jumped ship with their life preservers to avoid arrest by immigration officials.

Three hours later, the men were found in 40-degree water dead from hypothermia, frozen in a near-fetal position.

“The victims were in the blue stage. They had the ashen color and their eyes were glazed over,” said Clark.

“So, when I saw that scene at the end of the movie, I was like, ‘Whoa, this is pretty realistic,’ ” he said. “When that woman was shown clutching her baby, that was really heart-wrenching.”

The film, too, moved patrol members to rededicate themselves to one of the Coast Guard’s least known but most important jobs.

“Especially after seeing the movie, you say to yourself ‘Never again,’ ” said Wojahn, who must endure long separations from his wife and three children while on patrol. “I don’t know if I could live with myself if there were another accident like that out there.”

Since “Titanic,” the Ice Patrol has been bombarded with questions. The most popular: Can it happen again?

The short answer is yes, but it’s unlikely. Patrol members blame human arrogance for pushing the “unsinkable” British luxury liner into its 2 1/2-mile-deep ocean tomb. The ship’s officers, then at the dawn of the 20th century, firmly believed nature could no longer destroy the works of man.

Ice Patrol members contend a similar shadow now hangs over the North Atlantic at the twilight of the century. It’s a different kind of arrogance, but the patrol fears mariners believe their sophisticated technology can save them from anything.

“There’s lots of vessels out there that say, ‘I’ve got this slick radar and I’ll truck through, and I’ll be able to see an iceberg,’ ” said Murphy, who has served with the Ice Patrol for 14 years. “Well, a large one, yes. But a smaller one, no.”

With no enforcement powers, the Ice Patrol can only warn ships of ice--just as the Titanic was warned. The jewel of the White Star line received more than a half-dozen ice warnings from other ships but still raced ahead at more than 20 knots into the black night.

“We can only tell them of the danger,” Murphy said. “Then, we have to hope for the best.”

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Path of an Iceberg

Glaciers form along Greenland’s western coast, where gravity and tidal action weaken and break off huge slabs of ice, a process called calving. These icebergs are then pulled along by the Labrador Current into the North Atlantic, some reaching below 48 degrees north latitude and into shipping lanes. About 1% of the 15,000 to 30,000 icebergs formed annually make it far south.

On Alert for Ice

As with weather reports, iceberg reports are essential to the safety of marine trafficin the northern Atlantic. International organizations, as well as passing ships, contribute to a network of information. Reports are based on observation according to accepted standards. The goal of the program is to establish the “limits of all known ice,” safety boundaries that vessels are warned not to cross.

* Measuring Up (and Down)

To aid in detection and reporting, icebergs are identified by their size, beginning with the comparatively tiny Growler, which is less than 3 feet tall and 15 feet wide, moving up through the five larger categories shown below. Dimensions include underwater mass. Only about one-eighth of their total area is above the waterline.

* Stopping Traffic

The number of icebergs that float south far enough to reach the North Atlantic’s commercial shipping lanes can vary greatly from year to year due to climate factors.

1990: 793

1991: 1,974

1992: 876

1993: 1,753

1994: 1,765

1995: 1,432

1996: 611

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Bergy Bit: Height: 3-16 ft.; Width: 15-49 ft.

Small: Height: 17-50 ft.; Width: 50-200 ft.

Medium: Height: 51-150 ft.; Width: 201-400 ft.

Large: Height: 151-240 ft.; Width: 401-670 ft.

Very Large: Height: Over 200 ft.; Width: Over 670 ft.

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* Types of Icebergs

Icebergs are also classified by shape--tabular and non-tabular. Tabular icebergs are flat-topped, with steep vertical sides. Non-tabular are more irregular and include five other distinct shapes.

Sources: Canadian Ice Service; International Ice Patrol