The best known whirlpool, the Maelström, off Lofoden, in Norway, is the result of opposing currents. One of the most circumstantial accounts of it is that of a Norwegian, Jonas Ramus, who calls it the Moskoe-strom (channel or stream):—“Between Lofoden and Moskoe,” says he, “the depth of the water is between thirty-six and forty fathoms; but, on the other side, towards Ver (Vurrgh), this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient passage for a vessel without the risk of splitting on the rocks, which happens even in the calmest weather. When it is flood the stream runs up the country between Lofoden and Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity; but the roar of its impetuous ebb to the sea is scarcely equalled by the loudest and most dreadful cataracts, the noise being heard several leagues off; and the vortices or pits are of such an extent and depth that if a ship comes within its attraction it is inevitably absorbed and carried down to the bottom, and there beaten to pieces against the rocks; and when the water relaxes the fragments thereof are thrown up again. But these intervals of tranquillity are only at the turn of the ebb and flood and in calm weather, and last but a quarter [pg 93]of an hour, its violence gradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its fury heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a Norwegian mile of it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not guarding against it before they were within its reach. It likewise happens frequently that whales come too near the stream, and are overpowered by its violence, and then it is impossible to describe their howlings and bellowings, in their fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. A bear once attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be heard on shore. Large stocks of firs and pine-trees, after being absorbed by the current, rise again, broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grew upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to consist of craggy rocks, among which they are whirled to and fro. This stream is regulated by the flux and reflux of the sea, it being constantly high and low water every six hours. In the year 1645, early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday, it raged with such noise and impetuosity that the very stones of the houses on the coast fell to the ground.” Kuchu and others promulgated the idea that the maelström is a watery abyss penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very remote [pg 94]part. This is the view held by most of the Norwegian peasantry and fishermen to-day.
Who that has read the works of Edgar Allan Poe will ever forget his thrilling and detailed story of a descent into the maelström?[30] It bears the impress of close study, and is founded largely on recorded facts. Two brothers, the most daring fishermen of their coast, were accustomed to fish in closer proximity to the maelström than all the rest, because, although a desperate speculation, they would get more fish in a day than the others could at the distant fishing grounds in a week. The risk of life stood for labour, and courage for capital.
In a terrible hurricane they were driven through the surf into the inner circle of the whirlpool, where (as is likely to be the case in actual fact) the wind nearly ceased, the surface of the water being lower than that of the surrounding ocean. “If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by the wind and spray together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection.” Now the two fishermen brothers were in a measure respited, as death-condemned felons in prison are allowed petty indulgences forbidden them while their doom is yet uncertain. Round and round the belt the vessel flew rather than floated, getting nearer and nearer to the fatal inner vortex, and making wild lurches towards the abyss. “The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun round, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth as the rays of the full moon ... streamed in a flood of golden glory along the black walls, and far away down into the inmost recesses of the abyss.” Round and round they swept in dizzying swings and jerks. Above and below them were whirling fragments of vessels, timbers, boxes, barrels, and trunks of trees. And now a hope arose from the recollection of one circumstance: that of the great variety of buoyant matter thrown up by the moskoe-strom on the coast of Lofoden, some articles were not disfigured or damaged at all. Further, light and cylindrical articles were the least likely to be absorbed into any watery vortex: for the last statement there are good scientific reasons. “I,” says the survivor, “no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to the water-cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother’s attention by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything in my power to make him understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he comprehended my design, but whether this was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him; the emergency admitted of no delay; and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the lashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with it into the sea without another moment’s hesitation.” The smack soon after made a few gyrations in rapid succession, then sank to the bottom for ever, bearing with it the unfortunate brother. “The barrel to which I was attached had sunk very little farther than half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped overboard before a great change took place in the [pg 95]character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became momentarily less and less steep. The gyrations of the whirl grew gradually less and less violent.” By degrees the waters rose, and he found himself in full view of the shores of Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the moskoe-strom had been. He was picked up by a boat; those on board were old mates and daily companions, but they knew him no more than they would have known a traveller from the spirit-land. His hair, which had been raven black the day before, was now as white as snow.
Thus far Poe. It shows how the vivid imagination of a great poet, dealing with facts, can put those facts before the reader in artistically life-like and graphic form.
WHIRLPOOL OF CORRIEVRECKAN, OFF THE HEBRIDES.
Another remarkable whirlpool is that of Corrievreckan, off the Hebrides, in the south of Scotland, shown in an illustration on page 93.
A phenomenon of another character is exhibited on the south side of the Mauritius, at a point called “The Souffleur,” or “The Blower.” “A large mass of rock,” says Lieutenant Taylor, of the United States navy, “runs out into the sea from the mainland, to which it is joined by a neck of rock not two feet broad. The constant beating of the tremendous swell which rolls in has undermined it in every direction, till it has exactly the appearance of a Gothic building with a number of arches. In the centre of the rock, which is about thirty-five or forty feet above the sea, the water has forced two passages vertically upward, which are worn as smooth and cylindrical as if cut by a chisel. When a heavy sea rolls in, it of course fills in an instant the hollow caverns underneath; and finding no other egress, and being borne in with tremendous violence, rushes up these chimneys, and flies, roaring furiously, to a height of full sixty feet. The moment the wave recedes, the vacuum beneath causes the wind to rush into the two apertures with a loud humming noise, which is heard at a considerable distance.
“My companion and I arrived there before high water; and, having climbed across the neck of rock, we seated ourselves close to the chimneys, where I proposed making a sketch, and had just begun, when in came a thundering sea, which broke right over the rock itself, and drove us back much alarmed.
“Our negro guide now informed us that we must make haste to re-cross our narrow bridge, as the sea would get up as the tide rose. We lost no time, and got back dry enough; and I was obliged to make my sketches from the mainland.