By Julian Drake
[In April of last year the steamer Miosen, from Christiania, sailed from New Orleans. Owing to a damaged tail-shaft off Key West she practically drifted from the Straits of Florida to the Färöe Islands. From the captain's notes the following account of the Gulf Stream voyage is transcribed.]
What is the greatest river in the world? Naturally every Kindergarten pupil would instantly respond by naming the Mississippi, with the Amazon a good second. But that is because they are deceived by geographers jealous of the prerogative of the land. Hydrographers—as, for example, Sir John Murray, K.C.B.—would return a different answer, and it is clear that hydrographers ought to know something about water.
The greatest river in the world, then, begins in the vicinity of Key West, Florida. There is on the globe no such stupendous flow of waters. It defies the severest droughts; in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its current sweeps onward more rapidly than the Mississippi or the Amazon and its volume is a thousand times greater. Let us rid our mind of the idea of land. The banks and the bottom of this stupendous river are of cold, whilst its current is of warm, water. The name of it is the Gulf Stream. It might properly be called the Atlantic River. Doubtless many hundreds, even thousands, of craft have made the voyage down this river from its source to its mouth, and the trip of the Miosen, of Christiania, Norway, is only remarkable in this: that she virtually drifted the whole distance, four thousand two hundred and twelve miles. The Miosen is a Norwegian steamer of one thousand two hundred and eighty tons, and carried a cargo of molasses, rice, and tobacco from New Orleans to Christiania.
After leaving New Orleans early in April, 1903, she encountered roughish weather in the Gulf of Mexico. But it was not until they had passed the Tortugas group that Captain Westrup suspected that there was anything radically wrong with the machinery. The Miosen was fitted with old-fashioned Glasgow engines, and carried a sail in case of emergency. At Key West she put in for four days to see if the engineer could patch up the propeller sufficiently to enable the vessel to cross the Atlantic. "It was at Key West," said Captain Westrup, "I met an old fellow-mariner, a Swede.
"'Going down the river?' he asked.
"I laughed, not understanding the joke.
"'No; I'm crossing the Atlantic,' I replied.