482 



APPENDIX 



mander Campbell Hep worth's estimate for the first route, as quoted 

 below, is at least thirty months. But Sabine's record would seem 

 to suggest a period of only about a year, which involves an average 

 drifting rate of from twenty-seven to thirty miles a day for the whole 

 distance. Much depends, however, on the exact dates. If the 

 interval between his visit to West Africa in 1822 and his sojourn 

 at Hammerfest in 1823 covered the period between the early part 

 of one year and the latter part of the other year, the objection against 

 the excessive drifting rate would be to some degree removed. There 

 remains, however, the question of the identity of the casks. 



In this difficulty I applied to Commander Campbell Hepworth, 

 Marine Superintendent of the Meteorological Office, one of our 

 leading authorities in matters connected with the Gulf Stream, and 

 he very kindly gave me the following reply : " It is possible that 

 casks of oil could be preserved long enough to drift to the north of 

 Norway, but they would be so covered with barnacles, etc., that 

 they would be unrecognisable. By a somewhat careful calculation 

 I find that the drift would occupy at least 900 days, say, two and a 

 half years." Then he proceeded to point out that the track would 

 follow the course in the Equatorial Current via the Gulf of Mexico 

 to the Strait of Florida, and subsequently northward and eastward 

 to the Grand Banks, then through the Iceland-Faroe Channel to 

 the north coast of Norway. I may add here that the possibility 

 of this drift is increased by the behaviour of a bottle mentioned in 

 the following note, which thrown into the sea close to the island of 

 Ascension was recovered afloat off the coasts of Guernsey; but here 

 a difficulty also arises, though it is concerned not with the identity 

 of the drifting object, but with a possible confusion of dates, the 

 genuineness of the actual drift being viewed as outside dispute. 



Note 26 (p. 76). 



A bottle- drift from Ascension to Guernsey. 



Major Rennell in his work on the Currents of the Atlantic, and 

 Commander Becher in the Nautical Magazine for 1852 and 1854, 

 refer to a bottle which on October 15, 1820, was thrown overboard 

 about two and a half leagues north-east of Ascension from the Ameri- 

 can vessel Lady Montague. It was picked up afloat off the western 

 coasts of Guernsey on August 6, 1821, after an interval of 295. days. 

 On these points both authors agree, and Rennell adds that notice 

 was sent to the Admiralty. He rightly terms it "a remarkable 

 instance," and assigns to it the route via the Caribbean Sea and by the 

 Gulf Stream. But here we meet the same difficulty that was pre- 

 sented by Sabine's casks of palm oil referred to in the previous 

 note. To accomplish this passage of some 9000 miles between these 

 dates a drifting rate of about thirty miles a day is needed. In this 

 connection it is possible that there has been some confusion in the 

 •dates. Rennell refers incidentally to a record of the Pique, as though 

 there was another similar record; and whilst the starting-point 

 given by him is in 7° 55' S. and 14° 23' W., the position assigned 



