§ 384, 385. CURRENTS OF THE SEA. 183 



384. With regard to this outer and under current, we have ob- 

 The drift of the servatious telling of its existence as long ago as 

 Phoenbc. ;i^7i2. " In the year 1712," says Dr. Hudson, in a 

 paper communicated to the Philosophical Society in 1724, " Mon- 

 sieur du L' Aigle, that fortunate and generous commander of the 

 privateer called the Phoenix, of Marseilles, giving chase near 

 Ceuta Point to a Dutch ship bound to Holland, came up with her 

 in the middle of the Gut between Tariffa and Tangier, and there 

 gave her one broadside, which directly sunk her, all her men be- 

 ing saved by Monsieur du L' Aigle; and a few days after, the 

 Dutch ship, with her cargo of brandy and oil, arose on the shore 

 near Tangier, which is at least four leagues to the westward of 

 the place where she sunk, and directly against the strength of the 

 current, which has persuaded many men that there is a recurrency 

 in the deep water in the middle of the Gut that sets outward to 

 the grand ocean, which this accident very much demonstrates; 

 and, possibly, a great part of the water which runs into the Straits 

 returns that way, and along the two coasts before mentioned ; oth- 

 erwise this ship must, of course, have been driven toward Ceuta, 

 and so upward. The water in the Gut must be very deep ; sev' 

 eral of the commanders of our ships of war having attempted to 

 sound it with the longest lines they could contrive, but could nev- 

 er find any bottom." 



385. In 1828, Dr. Wollaston, in a paper before the Philosoph- 

 saitnessoftheMedi- ^^al Socicty, Stated that he found the specific gravi- 

 terranean. ^^ ^^ ^ spccimcn of sca watcr, from a depth of six 

 hundred and seventy fathoms, fifty miles within the Straits, to 



had been invented to solve these phenomena, such as subterraneous vents, cavities, 

 exhalation by the sun's beams, etc., and then offers his conjecture, which, in his own 

 words, is, "that there is an under current, by which as great a quantity of water is 

 carried out as comes flowing in. To confirm which, besides what I have said above 

 about the difference of tides in the offing and at the shore in the Downs, which nec- 

 essarily supposes an under current, I shall present you with an instance of the like 

 nature in the Baltic Sound, as I received it from an able seaman, who was at the 

 making of the trial. He told me that, being there in one of the king's frigates, they 

 went with their pinnace into the mid stream, and were earned violently by the cur- 

 rent ; that, soon after this, they sunk a bucket with a heavy cannon ball to a certain 

 depth of water, which gave a check to the boat's motion ; and, sinking it still lower 

 and lower, the boat was driven ahead to the windward against the upper current : 

 the current aloft, as he added, not being over four or five f\ithoms deep, and that the 

 lower ihj bucket was let fall, they found the under current the stronger." 



