Dive down into the freezing depths of Patricia Lake, in Alberta’s Jasper National Park, and you will find the wreck of the Habbakuk—a sixty-foot model aircraft refueling depot originally constructed of wood and ice.
This “berg ship” was the brainchild of the eccentric wartime genius Geoffrey Pyke. In 1943, the Allies were being hard pressed by German U-boats, and British and American leaders was desperate to gain the upper hand in the War of the Atlantic. Pyke’s idea was to construct a fleet of the huge ships, each 1,970 feet long and made from a mixture of ice and wood pulp called Pykrete. He claimed the ships were bulletproof and unsinkable. The project was approved by Winston Churchill himself, and Project Habbakuk was born.
Go to thirdpodfromthesun.com or your favorite podcasting app to listen to the first episode of Third Pod’s “Ice” miniseries: The ice ships of Project Habbakuk.
