THE POWER OF THE SEA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3352, 20 December 1926, Page 2

THE POWER OF THE SEA.

The only absolute power on earth is the sea. The bosom of the deep brought forth land itself, whose insular fragments only here and there break the continuity of the all-embracing ocean. The sea alone constitutes a whole between the atmospheric envelope and the mineral crust of the earth, and essentially the earth is still a planet surrounded by the ocean.. Again organic life in its mysterious origins must be explained as a pregnant result produced by the sea and its movements, at period when there was no land, and a single unbroken ocean enclosed the terrestial sphere as a shell, similar to the atmospheric envelope, in turn enclosing the sea. However, in the aeons, land animals adapted themselves to conditions outside the 1 Ocean, and so a vast chasm gradually arose between creatures of the land rivers and . lakes. By their nature elements of the land related to the ocean do, indeed, in exceptional instances, blur the sharp boundaries confining the fauna world of tlio sea. Some fish like the eel and salmon, live in. cither salt or fresh water, and some sea fish gradually accustom themselves to the water at the mouths of rivers, which is less salt than that of the opeau sea, and, finally, their descendants, swimming upstream, remain in fresh water perman-

ontly. Seals bear on land; sea birds with great po.wer of flight, like the frigate bird and albatross, ply their mighty wings over the sea thousands of miles away from

tho, coast for days at n time. Nevertheless

iii the dispersion of living creatures the coast remains the sharpest dividing lino, and it is obvious that man, whose entire organisation points to the fact that his ancestors in the Tertiary age were fruiteating inmates of the woods, from the beginning lived exclusively on land. ' The coast line of the Eastern Continent may

bo considered the uttermost limit of th.e original home of primitive man. Man could only have been affrighted by the sea when it first confronted him in all its inhospitality, with its sudden dangers threatening his fostering mother earth through high tossing breakers, Hooding tides’, and fearful storms. The most decisive action of prehistoric man, of far-reaching effects, was when conquering his terror of the unknown, he

boldly trusted himself to the hostile ole meut, find fared over the surging limit

less waters on a fragile raft, or in a rude dug-out, or in a boat of rough-jointed planks. This progressive art contained the germ of man’s dominion over the earth, may have been independently executed on more than one occasion when

the various Nordes, strangers to one another, into which our race had long been split by extended wanderings, arrived at the shores of the ocean. Where streams

empty into the ocean, the attempt to reach the high seas might be made in boats. Elsewhere the impulse to move upon the sea for a longer timc.than swimming permits led directly to the art of building; and guiding ships, the art which, in its wonderful state of development, on-

aides man,- alone among all creatures, to overstep the limits of the coast line on all sides and reach the most distant points. But what could possibly have impelled man to this venture on the ocean?

Hunger, that stern omnipotent educator of

Dicinkiud, was probably a frequent motive, as may be surmised from the custom of dwellers near the coast to hunt fish in the ebb lido. Again, in flight before a superior hostile tribe, fear may often, have made man inventive, and led him to prefer the deceptive sea as a temporary refuge to the sure fate at the hands of the

enemy. If a tribe took up its permanent abode at the sea coast, two causes may have operated to educate man t u gradual confidence in the once dreaded element : First, the value of animals abounding in the waters along the coast; second, the allurements of an opposite shore. These causes may have operated separately or together. The lock of, foodstuffs in the polar lands would never have tempted the Eskimos to push beyond the eightieth degree of latitude. This was effected by the promise of food held out by the teem-

mg life of the Arctic Sea; in fact, it was the capture of seals that led these stout-hearted inhabitants of the polar

lands to cross the icy American straits, and penetrate to the most northern point ever inhabited by man, making of them such unexcelled masters in the handling of kyaks that a skilful, hardy Eskimo, can paddle his boat from Rugen to Copenhagen in one day. The colonisation (if the Hellenes progressed from the Aegean Sea. along the shores of . the Black Sea to-

wards the course taken by the tunny in

its wanderings, jlist as tlie colonisation of their nautical masters, the Phoenicians, extended to various places on the Mediterranean, influenced by the presence of the shellfish from which they got their purple dye. In districts where the interior is forbidding through the bareness of sheer rock, the bleakness of moorlands- and overgrown forests, and where, the sea, on the other hand, with its fish, molluscs and crabs, presents an inviting bill of fare, we find people who, like sea birds, live almost exclusively on sea food and use the land only as their dwelling place. Such arc the Terra del Fuegans who live in the extreme southern end of the inhabited earth. Similarly, in Europe, the Danes have developed into an essentially coast inhabiting, seafaring people, since a portion of them, under the appropriate name of Vikings (people of the fiords), established settlements between a sea teeming with fish and the. bare fields ul (lie in land. The history of the Normans unfolds an impressive picture, showing how readily the txild seaman turns sea robber.

Tlu> Normans, their venturesome spirits lured by the -wide freedom of the sen. soon transfrred their predatory expedition from the home soil to'foreign lands. I hey •sailed up the streams of eastern England, up the Seine and the It. I be: they harried Cologne of the Rhine, and (hey entered Sicily as conquerors. Of the sea (he same may be said as of the desert, that rich booty entices the foolhardy to brigandage, especially when an acquaintance' with the he of the land and a sure hiding place promises successful mpe. The Dalmatian coast, with its concealed coves and narrow inlets piesonts a number of stilly ports and loopholes to’ escape along one whole side of the Adriatic ship routes. For this reason it was a constant seat of piracy even in ancient times. Doubt has been expressed, rather hypereritieally. of the value of sinuses and islands as a nautical impulse to the inhabitants ot coast lands. Ileyom.b the even coast line of the Australian and African mainland; mifringed with islands, (he inhabitants have lived from (he earliest days devoid oi all connections with the sea. Along those coasts ol Sonlb America that are almost entirely bored of islands and peninsulas Hie European discoverers encountered nothing mote advanced than rafts, with the exception ot the liark canoes of the Terra del Fuegans. On the other hand, near the month of the Orinoco, at a. point where the West Indies start out from the mainland, the Carihs were using seaworthy vessels, steered with a helm and catching the wind with cotton sails. They were dreaded pirates and hud begun the conquest cl the Antilles. Again the coast assumes a fiord-like character at the strait of .loan do Fuea, precisely the point at vWiieh the Indian tribes ignorant oi seat rail meet with those possessing a high degree ol marine attainments. In Asia and Enrcjie alike the acme ot nautical development displays ilselt "ii the most indented edges of the continents. Among the Asiatic seafaring peoples from Arabia- to Japan superiority was achieved early by those inhabiting the vastest of tropical* archipelagos, which occupies the middle position in this chain of countries. Here, among the Malays, the origin of an excellent art of shipbuilding must hft

sought, as well as the starting point of an enormous dispersion of the Malay race over the crowded islands of the'" South Seas. Long before the Christian era, the migrations of the Malays, slowly consummated, had carried to all parts of the largest of the oceans, one and the same type of rowboat—slender, sharp-keeled, often provided with bowspirts as a safeguard against capsizing, and its speed increased by matting sails —a type which throughout the whole region has crowded out the awkward, barrel-formed dug-out. In such surroundings developed the Polynesian variety of the brown race, of all branches of the human kind the one most intimately and most variously connected with the ocean in material and in spiritual life, cveh as pictured in poetry and myth. These people upon their tiny coral islands, always breathing the balmy sea air, lead an amphibious life, almost as m>on ships riding at anchor on the high seas. They learn to swim earlier than to walk; as infants they are carried upon the arms of their mothers through the frothy breakers.

Examining the south-western part of Asia, the Indian and Arabian peninsulas, wo realise that the never-ceasing alternation of the monsoons has been the generous promoter of traffic on the Indian Ocean. During the winter season of the Northern Hemisphere the monsoon steadily drove the vessels to the east coast of Africa, and in the summer the same force carried them easily homewards to the Indian or Arabian ports. Thus it came about that the Indian bride was adorned with bracelets of African ivory, and the Indian art of rice growing was transported by slave dealers as fa r as the Congo. What brilliant series of nautical achievements in the course of ages is summoned before our mind’s eye when we recall Greece, Italy the Iberian Peninsula, and the Atlantic coast land of Europe. Nagivation on the -Mediterranean was of earlier date but navigation on the Atlantic attained to a higher stage of development in antiquity, because it was infinitely more dangerous to wrestle with the ocean than with the sea. Greek or Roman merchant vessels could not presume to enter the lists with the stout vessels of the Veneti, a. Celtic, tribe occupying.what is now Biittiiny. They were built of solid oak plunks their anchor chains were of iron, and their sails wore of leather. The journeys between Norway and Greenland, accomplished for centuries in their great rowboats, their black tarred "sea horses," were more valiant achievements than the passage ol the Columbus caravels across the quieter southern ocean, with a compass us a guide.' The latter, to he sure, was fraught, historically considered, with more important results. Rut it was reserved for modern times and for the four countries of central location, France, the Nether lands, England and Germany, to derive the greatest benefits in the direction of world commerce and establishments of colonies from their favourable position on the shores of the most frequented of (ho oceans. To bring about this unprecedented rise of seamanship, it was necessary that America should first be revealed to the eyes of Europe as a stimulating goal. In the New World, again, the greatest attainments in naval architecture and sea traffic were reached in those parts in which endless forests supplied shipbuilders with valuable wood, and especially iu (hose parts in which the indented coast line offered hays, inlets and sheltering ports at the mouths of rivers and streams navigable many miles inward for moderate sized vessels; that is to say, in Canada, and the north-eastern part of the United Elates —another evidence that a casual relation exists between the natural opportunities granted by coast lands and the nautical activities of their inhabitants. To invest this relation with the compelling force of natural law were inane, pseudo geographic fanaticism. Man is not an automation without a will of his own. The suggestions thrown out by the nature of his birthplace sometimes find him a docile, sometimes an indifferent pupil. What is now the world harbour of New York once served the Indians as nothing but a hunting ground for edible monllnscs On the same rock-bound coast that educated the Norwegians into intrepid sailors the Lapps are at present eking out a paltry existence as fishermen. The Anglo-Saxons .on their arrival in Britain, were so absorbed by combats with the native Celts, and later by agriculture and cattle raising, that they completely abandoned all vocations connected with the sea. Allred the Groat had to have his vessels built in German dockyards. Since the Dutch have become affluent, the nautical activities energetically prosecutor 1 by .their ancestors in more straitened circumstances, have fallen into neglect, and in the Belgian provinces of Flanders and Brabant, the Netherlander, more easily winning a subsistence on Ids fruitful soil by agriculture, industries, and domestic trade, has always been apt to resign to foreigners tiie very considerable sea traffic of his conntrv.

If. however, man ventures to pit his strength against the elemental power oi the sea; if he goes further and elects as his vocation the sailor's struggle with storm and seething' breaker, then the poet's word in its full significance may be applied to him : “Man s shitnre grows with every higher aim." Observe the weatherbeaten countenance of our tars under their son’-westers. Now it has become almost a habit with them to dart sea rein ing looks into the distance. In those countries in which, as in (treat licit;lln and Norway, the sea attiaets votaries from extended circles of the population, and the. seafarer's calling enjoys respect as a pillar of the commonwealtii closemiss to (lie sea has powerfully promoted science and technical skill if only by urging both the construction of necessary vessels and steady improvement in the art-ol building them. How multifarious have been the applications of scientific principles and the demands made .upon technical .ingenuity since the nineteenth century created the steamboat, which enables man to cross the ore.n in the face of wind and tide. The effort to make navigation as secure as possible, has indirectly had a furthering iiiHuence upon a large number of the sciences l>ut its supreme gilt, to man lies in ihe fact that trie ocean alone afforded him a possibility ot becoming acquainted with the globe as a whole: it unveiled the lace ot the earth for him. Knowledge of evoiy prut has been followed by trade with every part, uniting the economies of single nations .and sets of nations into a world economy. Finally, hv means of universal com a,ciree. 'such’ as only the all embracing ocean earl create, the olden separateness of (he human races according to their native continents was wiped out. and the filst steps were laken towards a spiritual alliance eompiehendin.g the whole ot mankind. So enormous is the profit fieri ved from world commerce by sea tint ii. yields enough to furnish (he vast sums swallowed by the construction of vessels and needed to reward the hard labour ol the gallant crews, who far away from home, are exposed to constant peril, bidding defiance even to the dread typhoon. Vet what a wealth of treasure it showers upon man from out ot its never exhausted land, and num* still by carrying to his feet the products of tin' whole, earth with (he smallest conceivable injury to their marketable value.