CURRENTS OF THE SEA. 155 



With regard to this outer and under current, we have observa- 

 tions telKng of its existence as long ago as 1712. 



424. "In the year 1712," says Dr. Hudson, in a paper com- 

 municated to the Philosophical Society in 1724, "Monsieur du 

 L'Aigle, tliat fortunate and generous commander of the privateer 

 called the Phoenix, of Marseilles, giving chase near Ceuta Point 

 to a Dutch ship hound to Holland, came up with her in the mid- 

 dle of the Gut between Tariifa and Tangier, and there gave her 

 one broadside, which directly sunk her, all her men being 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, possi- 

 bly, a great part of the water which runs into the Straits returns 

 that way, and along the two coasts before mentioned ; otherwise, 

 this ship must, of course, have been driven toward Ceuta, and so 

 upward. The water in the Gut must be very deep ; several of 

 the commanders of our ships of war having attempted to sound it 

 w^ith the longest lines they could contrive, but could never find 

 any bottom." 



(lid in 1683 {vide Philosophical Transactions). This continual indraught into the 

 Mediterranean appears to have been a vexed question among the navigators and phi- 

 losophers even of those times. Dr. Smith alludes to several hypotheses vi'hich had 

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

 lation 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, thev 

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

 rent ; that, soon after this, they sunk a bucket with ^ 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 fathoms deep, and that the 

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



