448 : The Atlantic 



relationship to man — in the ways it has aflected his history and devel- 

 opment, the uses he has made of it in the past and the uses he may 

 make o£ it in the future. 



This, of course, has been the main subject of our book. The time 

 has come now to look back over the course we have been sailing and 

 to abstract from our log some of the entries that illustrate the ways 

 the Adantic has served us in the past and what opportunities it holds 

 open today. As to the future, it should become clear to us that the 

 health, wealth and sanity of the Western World depends upon the 

 judicious use and development of the Atlantic Ocean. Atlantic power 

 resides partly in the position of this ocean. It is the central valley of 

 the land hemisphere; its margins are the great land masses of the 

 world; it is the only ocean that reaches five major continents. 



Atlantic power resides partly in its service as a drainage basin. It 

 not only touches the continents, it penetrates them. It happens that 

 the continents that lie to the east of the Atlantic have continental 

 divides that lie to the east far removed from the Atlantic shores and, 

 correspondingly, continents that lie to the west of the Adantic have 

 their rocky spines on their western borders. So the Atlantic serves 

 as the drainage basin for the continents and receives most of the great 

 navigable rivers of the world. 



Practically all of the great temperate zone agricultural areas of the 

 world lie along rivers that drain into the Atlantic. Another group of 

 rivers such as the Amazon, the Congo, the Orinoco drain the great 

 tropical rain forests; a third group penetrates the cold forests of the 

 Northern Hemisphere. 



Atlantic power lies partly in the structure of the ocean itself. 

 The fact that the Atlantic is not as large as the Pacific contributes to 

 its beauty and its utility. It is a compact, well-organized ocean with 

 clearly defined systems of winds and of currents. The Atlantic Ocean 

 holds a large proportion of the world's northern shallow seas. These 

 are of value because they constitute the world's major fishing areas 

 such as the English Channel, North Sea, Icelandic fisheries, the Grand 

 Banks of Newfoundland, etc. For the most part, however, the Atlan- 

 tic is marked by clean-cut and well-defined shores with a wealth of 

 subsidiary seas, sounds and estuaries. Therefore, it is rich both in 

 navigable waters and in suitable harbors. 



The value of the Atlantic rests not only in itself as an ocean but in 

 its relationship to the land where man resides. How the land juts into 

 the sea and how the sea reaches into the land determines the value of 

 the ocean to man. This close relationship between the Atlantic and 



