304. DANGERS OF THE ROUTE. 



practicable* route, this facility of communication 

 alone would be an immense advantage to that great 

 and increasing commerce. 



However complete and accurate may be the sur- 

 veys of Torres Strait and the Coral Sea (that lying 

 off the north-east coast of Australia), it must always 

 remain a dangerous navigation. Slight accidents, 

 such as hazy weather, mistakes in the reckoning, 

 unknown errors in the chronometer or sextant, or 

 want of completeness or soundness in the rigging 

 or finding of the vessel (to say nothing of careless- 

 ness and incapacity in the navigator), will always 

 cause a pretty high average of wrecks in the vessels 

 passing through Torres Strait. In the greatest 



* To persons unacquainted with this region of the world, it 

 may not seem obvious why almost the only route from the South 

 Pacific to the Indian Ocean is through Torres Strait. The 

 reason is simply this, that the S.E. trade- wind blows directly 

 for the Strait almost all the year round, within the tropics, and 

 during the summer, or from November to March, S.E. is the 

 prevailing wind over a large part of the extra-tropical sea. Along 

 the south coast of Australia the winds are almost as constantly 

 from the westward, most frequently S.W. In order to pass then 

 from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean by that route, contrary winds 

 will have to be contended against, and hardly one passage would 

 be effected without a heavy S.W. gale before Cape Leewin was 

 fairly weathered. If, again, the voyager determined to go round 

 north of New Guinea he would have to take a circuitous route, 

 little known, where charts and sailing directions would alike fail 

 him, and have to thread his way through a multitude of dangers 

 equally great, if not more so, as being less known, with those 

 which will obstruct him in Torres Strait. 



