The Many Failures and Few Successes of Zany Iceberg Towing Schemes

Every few years for the past couple centuries, even before the large-scale cultivation of marijuana, this idea occurs to someone: What if we towed an iceberg from the poles, where there are no people, to some dry, populous place and then melted it into freshwater?

In some cases, that person has ginned up a company to try to make it happen. In others, they've written reports for the RAND Corporation or turned the idea into the basis for a thriller mass market paperback. 

Long-distance iceberg towing is one of those ideas that will not die but never really springs to life either. It exists in a kind of technological purgatory, dressed up in whatever technology is fashionable during an epoch and resold to a happily gullible media. 

This happened again this week when Georges Mougin told the world that newfangled computer models just happened to confirm what he'd long thought: that icebergs could be transported economically to Africa. Here, we look back at the many failures and successes (there are some!) of towing icebergs from the early 19th century to today.

1825: Tucked in among various environmental schemes including one plan for "conveying by means of pipes and air-pumps, the sea breeze to London," we find this early 19th century author deriding "the old project of towing icebergs into the southern ocean, for the purpose of equalising the temperature of the earth." Now, that's some ambition. Where's that spirit gone in modern times?

1835: It's not just ships that tow icebergs, but the opposite can happen, too. A British expedition in the Arctic got stuck on an iceberg, which proceeded to get blown around the ocean.

It was perhaps the first time that an iceberg had the honor conferred upon it of towing a British ship, although we know that the direct contrary was once in contemplation, of towing the icebergs by British ships to the tropics, for the purpose of diffusing their refrigerating power on the countries situated between them.

Mid 1800s: According to the Encyclopedia of Antartica, small icebergs were towed from southern Chile up to Valparaiso as part of the brewery supply chain. A Chilean researcher said, "The icebergs were towed by ships of the conventional type. Sometimes the icebergs were supplied with sails to utilize the prevailing winds. The ice was used for refrigerating purposes in the breweries and was generally substituted for artificial ice." Apparently, the business continued until about the turn of the century.

August 22, 1863: Scientific American informs us of not one, but two, different schemes in one short article. "A genius in New Bedford is fitting up a steamer for the purpose of towing icebergs to India, where they sell for six cents a pound," the magazine wrote. "Another proposes to do still better--to fit a screw in the iceberg itself, and thus avoid the expense of ship-building. Cute chaps, both of 'em."

June 8, 1898: Printers Ink, an advertising rag, contains an announcement of an iceberg towing related hoax out of Colorado. The magazine reports:

The Mining and Industrial Reporter (Denver) has a little joke. In its February issue it printed the announcement of a concern called the Klondike and Cuba Ice Towing and Anti-Yellow Fever Company, supposed to be engaged in towing icebergs and collecting the gold dust believed to be in them as they melted. It was a hoax, intended as a caricature of Klondike advertisements; but the Reporter announces with glee that it received a largo number of inquiries and applications.

March 9, 1914: A short notice in The Washington Times describes a new iceberg towing operation being advertised in area papers. "The Northern Berg Ice Company is planning to tow icebergs into Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, exhibit them excursion steamers, and then dynamite the bergs into small pieces for market. No names of interested capitalists have as yet been made public, and the advertisements came as a surprise to ice dealers, who say the scheme is not practical."

Early 1940s: The British try to build a massive ship out of wood pulp and ice. They call it Project Habakkuk and it never really succeeds. 

1949: John Isaacs (above) is the godfather of the modern iceberg towing movement. In his first seminar at Scripps Oceanographic Institute in 1949, he suggested the enterprise and expanded on his original speculations for years afterwards. I particularly like his 1956 version in which he suggested "capturing an eight-billion ton iceberg, 20 miles long, 3000 feet wide, and 1000 feet deep in the Antarctic and towing it up to San Clemente Island off San Diego in a matter of 200 days." The way Isaacs saw it, the energy required to guide the berg up two continents was a mere fraction of the energy required to desalinate it, which was itself a popular idea for the third quarter of the 20th century.  

Isaacs was considered a force of nature, at least by his biographer. He spun out many, many ideas in oceanography, although he was best known for his speculative forays into icebergology. You can read all about the man in John Isaacs and His Oceans.

1960s: Oil companies developed a successful iceberg towing technology to keep the ice away from their oil rigs in the Labrador Sea between Canada and Greenland. "It was found that a floating bridle around the berg, attached to several tugs, was feasible and safe." Smithsonian profiled one of these "iceberg wranglers" in 2003 with an appropriate sense of drama, awe, and homespunism.

To round up an iceberg, Baker uses lengths of polypropylene towropes up to 1,200 feet long. "When the rope goes out, it's eight inches thick. It's only an inch thick in places when it comes back," he says. "The rope looks like a camel's been chewing on it."

May 1973: The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists asks the logical question of iceberg towing -- "Manna or Madness?" -- in a long article that looked at the "quantitative appeal" of the process, particularly from Antarctica to the Atacama Desert. The result? Icebergs are manna. "The possibility of irrigating large areas of arid land in the Southern Hemisphere is certainly desirable." And one "super tug" capable of pulling the bergs around would be able to "irrigate a square field 126 kilometers on a side." Not bad.

October 1973: The RAND Corporation dives 96 pages deep on "Antarctic Icebergs as a Global Fresh Water Source" for the National Science Foundation. By far the most comprehensive scheme to date, J.L. Hult and N.C. Ostrander went far beyond previous speculations to create an actual paper model of how an "iceberg train" could work. This is classic RAND work with lots of math and appendices. It made them a national media story. "Bringing icebergs to where the water is needed was suggested by John Isaacs of Scripps Institute of Oceanography in the 1950s," Hult told the AP. "It is our job to show how practical it is." Their scheme was inspired more by theoretical least-cost equations more than common sense. For example, they suggested sending a floating nuclear power plant to provide power for the operation.

October 17, 1977: TIME Magazine reports on a conference of like-minded iceberg lovers. The most promising scheme was proposed by Prince Mohammed al Faisal, a nephew of Saudi Arabia's king.

Sponsored by Prince Mohammed al Faisal, a nephew of Saudi Arabia's King Khalid, the conference demonstrated that there is no shortage of ideas for using icebergs to slake the world's growing thirst. Prince Faisal's own company, Iceberg Transport International, is considering a plan to find a 100 million-ton iceberg off Antarctica,* wrap it in sailcloth and plastic to slow its melting, and then use powerful tugboats to tow it to the Arabian peninsula, where it would supply enormous quantities of drinking water. The journey would take about eight months and the project would cost around $100 million, according to estimates.

Iowa State University maintains the archive for the series of conferences, which continued into the early 1980s. The list of speeches demonstrate that the late 70s were probably the high point for modern iceberg towing mania. 

John Hult on "A pilot program for exporting Antarctic icebergs"

Matthew Clark and Earl Mathney on "A survey of legal issues relating to iceberg utilization"

Jerry Rosenberg on "An overview of the organizational, management, economic, and socio-political aspects of transporting icebergs from Antarctica to the United States"

Charles Goldman on "Ecological aspects of iceberg transports from Antarctic waters"

Prince Mohamed Al-Faisal and Dr. Shawkat Abdel-Kader Ismail on "Feasibility of using paddle-wheels for the propulsion of icebergs"

J.B. Job on "High efficiency iceberg propulsion systems"

G.R. Peters on "Iceberg towing for oil rig avoidance"

Wm. W. Bishop on "International law problems of acquisition and transportation of Antarctic icebergs"

Boris Sukhov on "Measurement of iceberg draft"

Edward A. O'Lenic on "U. S. Navy global ice analysis and forecasting"

R. Clifford Humphry on "Use of plastic pods for water transport"

April 1, 1978: The California legislature endorsed the idea of towing two icebergs to southern California, an idea long promoted by one Terry Spragg roughly forever. 

December 1, 1979: Don't think NASA would sleep on iceberg towing. As part of a far-reaching Ice and Climate study program, the agency noted that spacecraft would be an important component of any iceberg utilization program. And icebergs will be utilized, the reports informs us, because nuclear desalinization programs hadn't really worked out and water is really expensive in Saudi Arabia.

The towing of icebergs as a water resource, an idea which a decade ago was met with almost universal derision, is now under serious consideration as a means of alleviating water shortages ... The identification, tracking and studies of ablation of icebergs can most conveniently be conducted from spacecraft.

Alexis Madrigal is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the host of KQED’s Forum.

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