At 97 square miles, it was more than four times the size of all of Manhattan.Īnd believe it or not, the Petermann iceberg was a mere piker compared with the largest iceberg ever reliably measured by satellite, which calved from Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. John’s, the provincial capital, to the Avalon Peninsula (the southeast section of the island of Newfoundland) and up to Twillingate, a charming coastal island in north central Newfoundland that proclaims itself the “Iceberg Capital of the World.”īut then there was the chunk of ice that broke off the Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland in 2010 and drifted south past Newfoundland, the biggest recorded iceberg in the last 60 years. I saw dozens of these mesmerizing icebergs while riding on boats, standing on shore and staring out the window of a descending airplane during a meandering trip in May that took me from St. Over the years, plenty of others have done lesser damage to ships, oil rigs and even the occasional unlucky - or foolhardy - kayaker.īut the vast majority of these icebergs, melting as they move south into warmer water, don’t hit anything at all before they disappear into the sea.Īs they do, it makes for a truly spectacular show: an eerily opalescent display of colossal icebergs - some looming like high mesas, others spindly and rising like the Matterhorn - destined for decay. In 1912, one such iceberg struck the starboard side of the Titanic on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic.
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