X INTRODUCTION 



relates to the sea, the "truth is stranger than 

 fiction." 



It is to tell the real truths about the sea in 

 a simple, concise and entertaining way that 

 this book has been written. Although many 

 volumes have been published in regard to the 

 explorations, discoveries and investigations of 

 the ocean and its life and countless reports 

 have been issued filled with wonderful and in- 

 teresting facts relating to the sea, its bed and 

 its wonders, yet most of these books are so 

 technical in character, so dry and so filled with 

 statistics, figures and scientific terms that they 

 prove far from entertaining. 



In the present work I have endeavoured to 

 bring out all the most noteworthy and impor- 

 tant facts about the ocean and its life, its depths 

 and surface, its currents and tides, its bottom 

 and its waves without burying them beneath a 

 mass of formidable terms and figures. In ad- 

 dition much has been included in regard to 

 wrecks, derelicts and icebergs and other men- 

 aces of "those who go down to the sea in 

 ships," as well as to the various safeguards of 

 the sea which protect the mariner from the in- 



