Januaby 1, 1896.J 



KNOWLEDGE. 



7 



Atlantic. The narrow seas of the English Channel give 

 shorter, lower waves : often steep and breaking at the 

 crest, choppy, lumpy, sometimes dangerous and always 

 disagreeable, but lacking the majesty of the great ocean 

 waves. It is with the short, steep waves that most of our 



A Steamer sliding down the Slope of an Atlantic Wave. 



marine painters are famiUar, and it is rare to find a picture 

 or a photograph which shows the long waves of mid-ocean. 

 Our first illustration is from a water-colour drawing kindly 

 placed at our disposal by the artist, Mr. G. H. Andrews, 

 F.K.G.S. It shows a steamer of about two thousand tons 

 sUding down the long slope of a wave in mid- Atlantic. She 



die out at once with the falling of the wind, as is the case 

 with the wavelets raised by a passing breeze ; on the con- 

 trary, the long rollers follow one another in unbroken 

 succession for days after a storm, breaking at regular 

 intervals upon the leeward shore with a solemn booming 

 sound which is the more impressive 

 from the stillness of the air. The 

 smaller and shorter waves, raised 

 latest by the wind upon the flanks 

 and in the troughs of the greater 

 waves, are the first to die out after 

 the wind lulls, and the heaving sur- 

 face of the sea is no longer chequered 

 with the intricate interlacing undu- 

 lations of lesser waves, but 



" . . the broid bosom of the oeean 

 kee]>s 

 An equal motion, swelling a> it sleeps." 



These waves, which travel indepen- 

 dently of wind, are called free iiaren, 

 in contradistinction to the forcd 

 ii-dvcs of a rising sea driven forward 

 by the strength of the wind. 



Some of the best observations of 

 ocean waves are those made by Dr. 

 Scoresby during a homeward pas- 

 sage across the Atlantic in 1848. 

 On March 5th the ship Hiheinia 

 was in lat. 51- N. and long, (at 

 noon) 38^ 50' W., the wind being 

 W.S.W. and the ship's course true N. 52° E. By 

 sunset of the prenous day the wind was already blowing 

 a hard gale, which continued with heavy squaUs during 

 the night, so that all sail was taken in except a storm- 

 staysail forward. On the afternoon of the same day 

 Dr. Scoresby took up his post of observation on the 



AtknGt fiolltrs 



UnflV H.'L.OAV 



Fio. 2. — Atlantic Rollers. Kediued from an Original Drawing by Uenby Holiday. 



was sighted on a moonlight night when passing the ship 

 on which the artist was homeward bound. 



We have so far dealt with the raising of waves by 

 the wind ; let us now examine the course of events when 

 the wind drops after a storm. The storm waves do not 



saloon deck, which gave an elevation of the eye twenty- 

 three feet three inches above the water-line. He found, 

 however, that every approaching wave intercepted the 

 horizon, so that from this position he could decide little 

 except that the average height of the waves, reckoned from 



