16 FEBRUARY 1895, Page 12

ICE ON THE "LONDON RIVER."

ALL pilots and seamen speak of the Thames, so far as the tideway extends, as the "London River." The appearance of ice on the London River is a natural portent which will be discussed in every harbour from " Gothland to Cape Finisterre ; " while Londoners, who during the past week have lined the parapets of the bridges and embankments in thousands, watching the rush of the ice, and the flocks of seagulls, which have made the shifting floes their temporary home, are very properly interested in the study of the unusual and beautiful phenomenon of ice in motion. Its perpetual movement is that which distinguishes tidal ice from all other forms of frozen water. As the freezing of the waters next the shore narrows the channel day by day, the rush of the tide grows faster at every change from ebb to flow. Even when it extends from bank to bank it is always restless and vociferous. In the narrow channels through which the tide flows, the river is frozen from side to side. Yet the ice-crust alters its level daily. The manner in which a continuous and cohesive covering of ice blocks and bergs frozen together into a mass of from a few inches to five feet thick, is converted into a flexible elastic coat which bends without breaking, is not very clear. But in the streams, such as that which runs between the Middlesex shore and Chiswick Eyot, the lowest of all the islands in the Thames, the fact has been apparent for several days. There the channel is deep, and is the common course taken by the Thames barges making for the old landing-place inside the island. At high-water it is now covered from side to side by a level coat of rigid ice, At the ebb the tide recedes, till the channel is almost dry. If the sides were vertical, the ice-crust would simply lie flat on the mud. But the bottom is narrower than the top, one side being formed by the natural slope of the alluvial eyot. Yet such is the elasticity of the ice, that for the whole length of the channel it sinks at low-water in a deep troughlike curve, and so lies until the rising tide once more lifts it and straightens it out until it floats level with the high-water mark on either side. That the ice-sheet bends, without breaking or cracking, in the interval of the ebb, seems clear from the fact that, though after a single day's thaw, when the rottener ice and snow by which the solid hummocks are connected is partly melted, it breaks up and is carried away by the next ebb, during the past week, the whole mass has remained undisturbed. The " dip " of the ice fills the air with musical sound. The frost which paralyses the surface-movement of the lakes and ponds, and covers the face of the Thames "above locks" with a mask of silence, cannot still the beating pulse of the tidal waters. At night- fall, the whole course of the London tide-way rings with the unfamiliar sounds of ice-music. Daring the time of still- water between high-tide and the beginning of the ebb, the surface next the shore freezes in broad, flat sheets like window glass. This is perforated and intersected by thousands of willow-stems, piles and posts, boat-rafts and moorings, buoys and chains, and every other solid object which fringes the shore. Round these the surface-ice forms at every tide. From them, as the main body of solid ice sinks with the ebb, the fresh ice-sheets hang, till little by little, as the sup- port below is withdrawn, they break from their fastenings and crash down upon the thick ice below. From moment to moment, as far as sound can carry in the frosty air, are heard the slip and shiver of these ice-slides, the straining and com- plaining of the unbroken sheets, the clear ring of the thick ice when fractured by the pressure of the dip, and the tinkling fall of innumerable fragments of icicles and frost-spears dis- placed by the movement of the larger fragments. Out in the main channel, where the rush of the floating floes jostles the rim of fixed ice along the banks and wharves, there rises a hissing, seething sound, like that of water poured on hot metal, or the slaking of quicklime. It is the grinding and shaving of the snow-edges and frost-rims of the floes against the more solid blocks, against which they are thrust by the increase of the mass of floating ice as the river falls.

Early in the week the tide was at full-flood just before sun- set, and from the bridges the whole process of the stoppage, turning, and starting of the ice on its downward course could be seen in perfection. From before noon the onward and upward rush of the ice had continued without a break. By sunset the river was full from bank to bank, the volume of the tide being swelled by the east wind. The greater area of water enabled the ice-floes to separate in the central stream, just so much space being left between each as reflected the copper glow of the winter sunset, and lapped each frozen mass in a semblance of liquid fire. During the period of slack-water, which lasted mach longer than usual, the spaces between the floes froze rapidly, and the masses themselves drew together by some attracting force, and, rubbing their sides, united. On either shore, a deep fringe of motionless masses of most fantastic forms, the greater part aground and fixed, faced the floating floes, and seemed to wait and watch for their downward procession to begin. The first signal of the retreat of the invading ice was the gradual "screwing" of the floes on either side of the river, where the ebb usually runs first, even though the central stream is advancing. The spinning motion is very slow and gradual—from left to right on the right hand, from right to left on the left—so that the surface of the river on either side resolves itself into innumerable circles in motion, spinning in opposing curves. In a few minutes the whole surface of ice is in downward motion, and slides forward towards the bridge. The larger floes are mostly circular, with edges raised high by crushing and collisions, and centres de- pressed. Some are crested with ridges and sheets of clear ice set up on edge, others are merely sodden masses of wet and frozen snow, rolling over and over in the black water. As the pace of the tide increases, and the floes become fixed and jammed together, the surface slides so wholly together as to produce the illusion that the ice is stationary, and that it is the bridge which is moving up the stream. The ebb of the ice-floes on Saturday last was accompanied by incidents far more exciting than had marked their advance from below bridges. The tide was unusually high, and as it rose lifted from their moorings the barges and lighters, beneath whose keels the tide had thrust from day to day an ever-increasing wedge of ice-hummocks, and carried both the vessels and the ice in which they were embedded down the stream. Some sixty vessels in all were loose between Battersea and the Pool, and as the helpless craft came drifting down towards the piers of the bridges, it seemed that some must strike and founder. But none of the boats had cargo on board, and many were still set in a crinoline of ice, which protected them from direct contact with the piers. Others struck, and swung round till they drifted through. " Salvage " of the derelicts, though dangerous work, is so remunerative as to induce many watermen to make the attempt. Some failed altogether to push their boats through the ice. One beat was jammed, and sank just as the crew reached the barge. But the most exciting rescues were effected by "fishing" from the bridges with grapnels, and towing the *easels when caught to the Surrey side of the river. The last barges seen in movement on the upper reaches were towed by a pair of tugs on Monday last. They were laden with sacks of wheat for the relief of a frozen-out corn-mill at Isleworth, and their appearance caused as much excite- ment among the watermen as the approach of a relieving squadron might occasion in a beleagued city. The two tugs, one in front of the other, puffed steadily on in the gathering gloom through what looked like a level plain of snow- covered earth. The ice rose nearly even with their bows, and water showed nowhere. To complete the illusion, the gulls, which were scattered over the floating ice, on which they now sleep at night, kept rising and flying with calls and screams, like plovers before a plough team. The few swans on the tidal waters suffer more than any other river creatures during this abnormal frost. All the creeks, in which they usually shelter in rough weather, are frozen hard. The banks are fringed with ice-cliffs which they cannot scale. They can get no food, for the shallow parts are covered with grounded ice, and in the stream they are crushed and their limbs broken by the jostling ice. Unless the Conservancy issue orders to rescue and feed those which are left, the chances are that none will survive to ornament the river between Richmond and Westminster Bridge.