Titanic Legacies

The iceberg that sunk the Titanic in 1912 struck ice-cold fear into the populations that increasingly used the North Atlantic as a main highway between North America and Europe. Right after the unsinkable ship sank, several nations set up the International Ice Patrol, operated ever since by the US Coast Guard. Every year the Ice Patrol monitors and tracks North Atlantic icebergs from Greenland as they drift below 48 degrees North, into the main transatlantic shipping lanes where the Titanic sank. Twice a day during iceberg season (roughly February to July), the Ice Patrol issues bulletins that broadcast the location of known bergs below 48 N. The Ice Patrol has a stellar record: in more than 100 years of operation, there has been no loss of life for anyone who heeded their warnings and stayed out of their so-called Limits of All Known Ice.