THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



voyages; a difference of lOO or 200 miles 

 in destination caused a difference in the 

 length of the passage of about 3,000 



miles. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PUBLISHED THE 

 FIRST CHART OF THE GULF STREAM 



The whalers of New England were the 

 first to gain a fairly accurate knowledge 

 of the limits of the stream between Eu- 

 rope and America by following the 

 haunts of the whales, which were found 

 north of one line and south of another, 

 but never between the two. 



Benjamin Franklin heard of their ex- 

 periences, and also how the coasting ves- 

 sels from Boston to Charleston, South 

 Carolina, would take sometimes three or 

 four weeks to make the voyage south, 

 while the return trip would often be 

 made in a week. Then his attention was 

 drawn to the fact that English packets 

 with American mails were two or three 

 weeks longer on the voyage to America 

 than American merchant ships. 



Franklin investigated the question and 

 published a chart in 1770 for the benefit 

 of the mail packets, but its information 

 was discredited by the English, and be- 

 fore it came to be generally known and 

 used, the war of the Revolution was on, 

 and Franklin, knowing the advantage of 

 the knowledge of the limits of the stream 

 would be to British naval officers, sup- 

 pressed it all he could until hostilities 

 ceased. 



The name of "Gulf Stream"' was first 

 suggested by Benjamin Franklin because 

 it issues from the Gulf of Mexico. 

 While it is only a part of the grand 

 scheme of ocean circulation, and the 

 Gulf of Mexico is in reality only a stop- 

 ping place, as it were, for its waters, this 

 name is generally applied to the current 

 now as it was given by Franklin — that is, 

 the current coming from the Gulf of 

 Mexico and spreading abroad over the 

 North Atlantic. 



In the large funnel-shaped opening be- 

 tween Cuba and the western extremity 

 of the Florida reefs the current is some- 

 what erratic, but by the time Havana is 

 reached it has become a regular and 

 steady flow. As it rounds the curve of 

 the Florida shore, the straits contract 



and the current then practically fills the 

 banks from shore to shore and reaches 

 almost to the bottom, which at this point 

 has a greatest depth of nearly 3,000 feet. 

 I say almost because in its variations in 

 velocity sometimes it does actually reach 

 the bottom, but at other times it does not. 



As it leaves the Straits of Florida its 

 direction is about north, but it gradually 

 changes and follows a course approxi- 

 mately parallel to the curve of 100 fath- 

 oms depth until it arrives off Cape Hat- 

 teras, and maintains about the same 

 width as when it issued from the Straits 

 of Florida. From this point it starts on 

 its course to Europe. It has lost some- 

 thing in velocity as well as in tempera- 

 ture, and as it journeys to the eastward 

 it gradually diminishes in both, until at 

 last it becomes a gentle flow. 



On this part of its course it passes not 

 far from the Grand Banks of Newfound- 

 land, where it is met almost at right 

 angles by the great Labrador current, 

 bringing down from the Arctic a stream 

 of cold water, pack ice and icebergs, and 

 which has recently been the cause of such 

 an appalling disaster in the loss of the 

 Titanic. This current, passing along the 

 eastern shores of Newfoundland, bearing- 

 its freight of ice, sends part of its cur- 

 rent southward and westward around 

 Cape Race ; part overflows the banks on. 

 a general southerly course and part 

 passes to the southward along the east- 

 ern side of the banks. 



When this cold current meets that of 

 the Gulf Stream of much higher tem- 

 perature, the former underruns the lat- 

 ter. I'he shallow-draft pack ice, being 

 no longer under the influence of the 

 polar current, is carried to the eastward 

 by the warm Gulf Stream current and 

 soon disappears, but the deep-draft bergs 

 are still under the influence of the lower 

 current running south, as well as of the 

 surface current running east, and so they 

 continue on until well into the Gulf 

 Stream, sometimes reaching the thirty- 

 ninth parallel, which is nearly 200 miles 

 south of the southernmost point of the 

 Grand Banks. 



This ice, together with the fog. Which 

 usually accompanies the meeting of cur- 

 rents of considerable differences in tem- 



