28 EKMAN. ON DEAD-WATER. [norw. POL. EXP. 



No. 34. Admiral H. Koch, to whom I am indebted for account No. 28, 



also writes: 



"In the autumn of 1859 I was mate on a little merchant barque the "Emma Arvigne". 

 When we had got out a little way to sea, off the mouth of the Orinocco, sailing for St. 

 Thomas, we met with dead-water. The wind was easterly, weather fine. The ship drifted 

 almost crosswise to leeward with the dead-water to windward. She could not go about, 

 but we succeeded two or three times by help of manoeuvres with the sails, in tacking. 

 At last we were obliged to anchor. Some hours afterwards we weighed anchor again and 

 were prepared for the necessity of going west of Trinidad, although we had no chart of 

 this water; but we were now free, and so we sailed to the east of Trinidad." 



No. 35. Mr. H. Hansen, shipmaster, of Kristiania, mentions the Gulf of Mexico among 

 the waters in which he has been out in dead-water. 



No. 36. Mr. G. Pedersen, the narrator of Account No. 11, mentions the St. Lawrence 

 River as among the worst regions of dead-water which he has navigated. 



No. 37. Mr. P. M. Land, of Nanaimo (inside Vancouver Island, Bri- 

 tish Columbia) writes as follows: 



"My only experience of the phenomenon occured at the entrance of this harbour, in 

 the light draught twin screw steamer "Mermaid", of which I am master, and under the 

 following circumstances. 



"During the winter or rainy season, of 1900—01, while entering the harbour, my 

 steamer, which was drawing 2 m. aft and 1 m. forward, entered a belt of water in which 

 she became almost unmanageable, though she is capable of a speed of 8 knots, and is under 

 ordinary conditions, remarkably easily handled. The best description I can give of the effect 

 produced on the "Mermaid" is, that it was as if a long floating spar were lying fair across 

 her stem, causing her to lose her headway almost completely and making her answer her 

 helm with difficulty. 



"Owing to unusually heavy rains, the Nanaimo and Cliase Rivers were discharging a 

 great volume of muddy fresh water, which lay upon the sea water to a depth of half a 

 metre or more. The region of dead-water was about 200 m. across, and I was about 10 

 minutes in passing through it. The phenomenon is known here by the name you give it, 

 "dead-water". It is frequently met with in the Straits of Georgia, off the mouth of the 

 Fraser River, and I have heard accounts of it from at least two of the Nanaimo pilots, 

 who experienced delay and annoyance from it while bringing large steamers past that place." 



No. 38. Mr. A. Olsen Rod, late shipmaster, of Kristiania, has informed 



me of a case of dead-water to which he was exposed on the Mediterranean. 



From his letter the following is extracted: 



"Late in the autumn of 1857 I arrived in the Gibraltar Straits with the brig "Elise" 

 (29 m. long and drawing 3 m.) and sailed eastward for the Black Sea. After having had 

 much rain of late 1 , we arrived in the neighbourhood of Cape Matapan with fine weather 

 for several days. 



1 According to a statement in "Beitr&ge zur Physicalishen Geographie von Griechenland" 

 von J. F. Julius Schmidt, Band I, Athen 1861, it rained during Nov. 1857, 62 French 

 lines (= 140 mm.). For Dec. 1857 no data are given. 



Mr. Olsen Rod writes in a second letter: One or two weeks before Christmas we 

 got rainy weather, very welcome because our store of fresh water was quite rotten. 

 It rained almost every day for about a fortnight, sometimes very hard, and we col- 

 lected 3 large barrels of rain-water. 



