Lieutenant Maury, in his Physical Geography of the Sea, has boldly likened the causes at work to produce the celebrated Gulf-stream to the mechanical arrangements by which apartments are heated. The furnace is the torrid zone, the Mexican Gulf and the Caribbean Sea are the caldrons, and the Gulf-stream is the conducting-pipe by which the warm water and the air above it, are dispersed to the banks of Newfoundland and to the north-western shores of the old world.[28] By this beneficent process the cold of our northern latitudes is greatly ameliorated. The waters sent north and north-east are edged by return currents, the one finding its way close to the banks of Newfoundland and along the seaboard of the States, and the other returning by the North Sea, the Bay of Biscay, and the west coast of Africa, until about the latitude of the Cape de Verdes it crosses westward again to fill up the void caused by the waters issuing from the Gulf of Florida. Thus the grand circuit is for ever maintained, not always, however, exactly in the same form, but varying according to the season. In the winter, the cold current coming S.S.W. along the Atlantic coast of North America is greatly augmented, and pushes the Gulf-stream further to the south-east. With the return of summer this stream, in its turn, thrusts aside the waters coming from the Polar Ocean. Between these two periods the trough of the Gulf-stream, to use Lieutenant Maury’s forcible expression, “wavers about in the ocean like a pennon in the breeze.” The temperature of the Gulf-stream, even in the winter, is at the summer level as it runs between two walls of nearly ice-cold water. Sir Philip Brooke found the air on either side of it at the freezing point, at the same time that that of the stream was at 80°. This difference in the temperature of air and water is probably the cause of those terrible hurricanes that occur in the Atlantic and among the West-Indian Islands, and which make it the most dangerous navigation, during the winter, in the world. The average of wrecks on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States during these rigorous months is not less than three a day. Sailors term the Gulf-stream “The weather-breeder;” and well they may, considering its frightful effect in producing commotion in sea and air. In Franklin’s time it was no uncommon thing for vessels bound in winter for the Capes of Delaware to be blown off land, and forced to go to the West Indies, and there wait for the return of spring before they could attempt to make for this point. The snow-storms and the furious gales which greet the ship as she leaves the warm waters of the Gulf and nears the shores of North America, are quite dramatic in their effect. One day she is sailing through tepid water, and enjoying a summer atmosphere, the next, perhaps, driving before a snow-storm, her rigging a mass of icicles, and her crew frozen by the piercing blast. The Gulf-stream is answerable for another phenomenon—the fogs which invariably shroud the Banks of Newfoundland, and which render the approach to the North-American coast in winter so particularly dangerous. The hot water of the Gulf-stream gives up its vapour to the cold air, and hangs about the coasts an impenetrable curtain, which baffles the navigator’s skill, renders useless his chronometer, and but too often sends his bark to destruction upon the hidden shore.
Another danger of the stormy Atlantic arises from the flow southward, in the spring and summer months, of icebergs. These stupendous masses have their breeding-place in Davis’s Strait, from which they issue in magnificent procession directly the current increases in a southerly direction. Polar navigators have been surprised to find these huge monsters moving against the wind, apparently by some inherent force, and crashing through vast fields of ice, as if impatient to escape from the silence and desolation of the Polar seas. The explanation of this singular occurrence is, that powerful under-currents are acting upon the submerged portions, which, in all cases, vastly preponderate over the glittering precipices of crystal that appear above the water-line. As the icebergs advance into the open waters of the Atlantic, they at last come to the edge of the Gulf-stream, where, in “the great bend,” about latitude 43°, they harbour in dangerous numbers, and without doubt send many a noble ship headlong to the bottom. In all probability the ill-fated President was thus destroyed, and some towering iceberg, that has long since bowed its glittering peaks to the solvent action of the warm water of the Gulf-stream, was, perhaps, the only witness of the calamity which placed the noble Pacific among the list of ships that have sailed forth into eternity.
If the northern latitudes of the Atlantic have their dangers of ice, the southern latitude, especially the Caribbean Sea, in common with all intertropical oceans, have their dangers of fire. The hurricanes of those latitudes are generally accompanied by visitations of fearful thunder-storms, in which many a good ship is enveloped and destroyed. In the midst of a summer sea a clipper ship may be suddenly assailed by one of those tremendous conflicts of the elements, of the approach of which the silver finger of the barometer, unless carefully watched, has scarcely had time to give warning. However prepared by good seamanship and an active crew, there she must lie on the vexed ocean, her tall masts so many suction-tubes to draw down upon her the destructive fire from heaven. In his Report to the Admiralty, laid before Parliament in 1854, entitled “Shipwrecks by Lightning,” Sir William Snow Harris—whose exertions to find a remedy for this evil are above all praise—states that in six years, between 1809 and 1815, forty sail of the line, twenty frigates, and ten sloops were so crippled by being struck as in many cases to be placed for a time hors de combat. In fifty years there were 280 instances of serious damage to ships in the British navy. Of these the Thisbey frigate, off Scilly, in January, 1786, affords a melancholy example. The log represents her “decks swept by lightning, people struck down in all directions, the sails and gear aloft in one great blaze, and the ship left a complete wreck.” In the merchant service the list of disasters is fearful. Since the year 1820 thirty-three ships, varying from 300 to 1,000 tons, have been totally destroyed by lightning, and forty-five greatly damaged.
“A great peculiarity,” says Sir William Snow Harris, “may be observed in cases of ships set on fire by lightning, viz. a rapid spreading of the fire in every part of the vessel, as if the electric agency had so permeated the mass as to render the extinction of the fire by artificial means impossible.” Take, for instance, the burning of the Sir Walter Scott in June, 1855. This fine passenger ship, of 650 tons, was struck in the Bay of Biscay: the lightning shivered the foremast, completely raked the vessel, and instantly set fire to the cargo. The passengers and crew had scarcely time to jump from their beds and put on their clothes, and leap into the boats, when the masts went over the sides, the flames shot up into the air, and the ship went down like a stone. Such extraordinary catastrophes as these seem to set forth in unmistakable terms the feebleness of man in the presence of the tremendous powers of nature. In reality, they are only forcible instances to call upon him to use the means for dominating the peril. Of all the dangers that beset the mariner at sea, danger by lightning is the only one that he can thoroughly guard against. To Sir William Snow Harris we owe the perfecting of the lightning-conductor for marine purposes, and the power of braving unscathed the direst electric storms. The permanent conductor adopted in the navy in 1842 is arranged so as to extend along the masts, from the truck to the keelson, and so out to sea. In the hull various branches ramify, and admit of a free dispersion of the electric fluid in all directions. Thus armed, the ship is impregnable to all the forked lightnings that may dart about her. Since the system of fitting men of war with this apparatus has been adopted, no vessel of the Royal Navy has been injured. The log of the frigate Shannon, commanded by the late gallant Sir W. Peel on his voyage out to China, affords a striking example of the manner in which the fury of such electric storms as are only to be met with in the Indian Ocean, was baffled by a contrivance which may truly be called, in the words of Dibdin—
“The sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,
And takes care of the life of poor Jack.”
“When the ship was about 90 miles south of Java she became enveloped in a terrific thunderstorm, and at 5 p.m. an immense ball of fire covered the maintopgallant-mast: at 5·15 the ship was struck a second time on the mainmast by apparently an immense mass of lightning; at half-past 5 another very heavy discharge fell upon the mainmast, and from this time until 6 p.m. the ship was completely enveloped in sharp forked lightning. On the next day her masts and rigging were carefully overhauled, but, thanks to Sir Snow Harris’s system of permanent lightning-conductors, no injury whatever to ship or rigging was discovered.”
If we compare this remarkable case with that of His Majesty’s frigate Lowestoffe, when near the island of Minorco in 1796, we perceive how great is the protection science affords to the seaman. The frigate was struck, it appears, at 12·25 P.M. by a heavy flash, which knocked three men out of the tops, one of whom was killed on the spot. Within five minutes the ship was again struck, and her topmast was shivered to atoms. In another minute a third shock shivered the foremast and mainmast, and set fire to the vessel in many places, raked the deck from end to end, killed one man, paralyzed and burnt others, and knocked several persons out of the tops. In two parallel cases, the addition of a rod of copper made all the difference between safety and havoc. The example of the Royal Navy is being followed by the merchant-service, but not so speedily as it should be. When it is remembered that the treasure-clippers trading between Australia and this country often bring home nearly a million sterling in addition to a large complement of passengers, it does seem remarkable that the lightning apparatus is not considered as essential to their equipment as the boats, especially as they have to traverse an ocean where thunder-storms are of common occurrence. The cost of the whole apparatus is not above £100, and if the cupidity of the merchant is not sufficient to induce him to supply it, we think that Government should compel him, in order to insure the safety of the stream of passengers who annually leave our shores.
In the whole catalogue of disasters at sea, those which present the most terrible features are water-logged timber ships. The timber trade between Great Britain and her American colonies employs a very considerable fleet of large vessels. As wood is a “floating cargo,” old worn-out West-Indiamen, which would not be used for any other purpose, are freely employed. A few years since, in addition to a full cargo, they carried heavy deck-loads, which so strained their shattered fabrics, that they often became water-logged, and were sometimes abandoned in the middle of the Atlantic. The sufferings of the crews on these occasions in their open boats were appalling. Beating about for weeks on the waste of waters without food or drink beyond the rain that fell from heaven, they were obliged to sustain existence by preying on the bodies of their dead companions, and not rarely they cast lots for the living. Since the passing of the Act prohibiting deck-loading, these disasters are far less frequent; but they have by no means ceased.[29] At the time we write there are several timber-ships drifting about the ocean, floating heaps of desolation, at the mercy of the Gulf-stream, which will ultimately cast them on some European shore, or drift them into the North Sea, to serve as fuel for the Esquimaux. In turning over the leaves of Lloyd’s List, we find indications of these dreary wrecks, which, clothed in seaweed, are driven over the face of the waters, and sighted by passing ships, of which they often cause the sudden destruction, whilst careering along in seeming security. When these waifs and strays of the deep drift into much-frequented ocean paths, they are doubtless the cause of many of those dreadful catastrophes witnessed only by the eye of God, and our only knowledge of which is a curt notice on the “Loss-book” at Lloyd’s, “Foundered at Sea, date unknown.” A recent instance, in which possibly no damage was done, will yet suffice to show the risk. The Virago, loaded with teak from Moulmein, in the Indian Ocean, to Queenstown, Ireland, became water-logged, and was abandoned on the 5th of March last, 155 miles south-west of Cape Clear. The next day she was passed by the American liner Eagle; on the 17th of the same month a steamer, on her way from Rotterdam to Gibraltar, reports having seen her; on the 5th of April she was passed by the Naiad on her passage from Palermo to Milford; and on the 15th the Samarang, on her way to Tenby, met with her; on the 18th she was seen 160 miles off the Lizard, “in a very dangerous position,” by the Champion of the Seas; again, on the 3rd of May, the Alhambra steamer, on her voyage to Southampton, met her in latitude 47°; about the same time and place she was seen by the Peru steamer, “and appeared as if run into;” and, finally, on the 20th of May, the telegraph sends word that she was stranded near Brest, and her cargo was being discharged. It is curious to note how, amid the tossing of the ocean, her name became gradually obliterated, till it was totally effaced, a type of the progressive decay and final destruction of the vessel herself. At first she is properly reported to Lloyd’s as the Virago; the next ship makes her out to be the Argo; still later her cognomen is cut down to the —go; and then the name disappears until the French find her upon their strand. Here we suppose her half-obliterated papers were found, and our neighbours, according to their usual wont, transmute the Virago into the Neroggogi. From these reports it is evident that a number of large vessels passed quite close to the wreck, and it is even probable that a collision may actually have occurred, and no one have been left to tell the tale. In some cases, where the circumstances of wind and current are favourable, water-logged ships are taken in tow by other vessels and become valuable prizes. When, however, these wrecks are in such a condition that it is clear they cannot be brought in, we think it would be well if they could be destroyed. A few pounds of powder, judiciously placed, or a beam or two sawn across by the ship’s carpenter, would break the bond that binds these logs together, and, once separated, they would not be likely to do much damage.
Many disastrous wrecks can be distinctly traced either to a defective compass, or to an ignorance of the effects upon it of the magnetism of the ship’s iron. There is a melancholy example in the loss of H.M.S. Apollo, of thirty-six guns, in 1803, with forty sail of merchant ships, out of a convoy of sixty-nine vessels, bound for the West Indies. The Apollo was leading the way, with her train of outward-bound sugar ships following in her wake, little suspecting the catastrophe which was to follow. At the very moment her defective compasses drove her ashore, she imagined she was some forty miles off the coast at Portugal, and so close was the merchant fleet upon her, that upwards of half of them took the ground and were dashed to pieces. More recently we have had the instances of the Reliance and Conqueror, wrecked near Ambleteuse, on the French coast, in sight of the cliffs of Albion, after voyaging from India. The former is known to have had an immense iron tank on board, the influence of which upon her compasses must have been very great. The Birkenhead, wrecked near the Cape of Good Hope, and the ship Tayleur, in the Irish Channel are additional instances of the destruction to which the trembling finger of the magnetic needle points the way, where ignorance or wilfulness have placed impediments to its truthful action.
Of the numerous errors that may be classed under the general term of compass defaults, we may mention defective compasses arising from imperfect workmanship, or from an ignorance of the principles of mechanical and magnetical science, compasses perfectly adjusted but placed injudiciously either with reference to the magnetism of the ship, or in immediate proximity to concealed and unsuspected portions of iron. Ignorance of the degree of compass error arising from the ship’s magnetism, and of its varying amount in changes of geographic position, and a consequent belief, that in all places and under all circumstances the needle is true to the north, are frequent causes of shipwreck.