( 645 ) 



10.— BETWEEN EUEOPE AND NEW YOEK, ETC. 



There seems to be little hope that much can be added to our knowledge 

 of this well-beaten track, and that the passages can be shortened, to any 

 appreciable extent, by adopting any fresh route. Soon after Captain 

 Maury's Pilot Charts appeared, an analysis was made of them in order to 

 find out the best route by computation for each month in the year, of a 

 track between New York and Europe. 



It is only in quite recent years that any attempts have been made to 

 reduce the Winds of the Northern portion of the North Atlantic to any 

 system, and at the present time the increased knowledge is not suflBcient 

 to justify the alteration of those tracks across the Atlantic, which ex- 

 perience has proved to be most advantageous. In the future, when the 

 reason of the superiority of one route over another, and the progressive 

 seasonal changes of Wind, Current, &c., are more fully understood, we 

 may expect the passage to be shortened. One feature helping in this 

 direction we may mention, and that is the discovery of the mode of pro- 

 gress of the air across the British Isles in an Easterly and North-Easterly 

 direction, as described in (128) pages 198 — 199. 



Of the occasional progress of storms (or areas of low barometric pressure 

 around and into which the wind blows) across the whole breadth of the 

 Atlantic, we have good evidence, see (125) to (127), pages 189 — 198; and, 

 in a recent publication of the Meteorological Office,* Captain Toynbee 

 remarks, in speaking of khe synchronous charts which illustrate that 

 work : — " The advantage of such charts to navigators is that they give a 

 picture of what was going on over the whole Atlantic at the same moment 

 of time. By comparing successive charts they also show any changes 

 which had taken place during 24 hours. For instance, the wave-like 

 shapes of some of the isobars in high latitudes (being undulations of 

 pressure which are followed by the wind-arrows) illustrate for the 

 navigator the changes of barometer and wind which he so frequently 

 experiences in these latitudes. The chart of the first shows the ridge of 

 a wave near Iceland, whilst on the second its ridge was North of the 

 British Islands, having passed to the Eastward at a rate of more than 

 20 miles an hour, and carried with it wind changes from N.W. to South. 



"In a ' Eeport to the Committee on the Meteorology of the North 

 Atlantic,' published by this Office, it is shown that steamers bound to 

 America pass through a large number of these undulations, whilst those 

 from America experience comparatively few of them (see pages 181 — 182). 

 Hence a steamer bound to the Westward will have much quicker changes 

 of barometer and wind than one steaming to the Eastward, because the 

 latter is to a certain extent moving with the undulations. So that, in 

 these latitudes, a fast-falling barometer, in a ship steaming to the West- 

 ward, is not so great a sign of bad weather as it is when steaming to the 



• Meteorology of the North Atlantic Ocean, during August, 1873, illu^'+rating tbt 

 Hurricane of that month. Pnblisberl in 1878. 



N. A. 0. 70 



