OCEAN CURRENTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 45, 23 February 1911, Page 2

OCEAN CURRENTS.

EIGHTY-SEVEN WEEKS ADRIFT. A paper, in a sealed dry gin bottle, bearing unmistakable evidence of having bean out off from the steamer Pericles when approaching Gabo on 27th May, 1909, was discovered on the beach under (Jape Byron on 28th January by Mr. Edward Kivers, a resident of Byron Bay (reports the Sydney Morning Herald). The document is in a thorough state of preservation. The printing, which is in five different languages, is as follows: — "This paper was put overboard for the purpose of tracing ocean currents. The Under to please forward, stating when, end v, heie it was found, and reap a just reward." In pencil at the top of the paper was w ritten tho following : — "Approaching Gabo, T.S.S. Pericles, May 27th, '09, latitude 37.46 deg. S., longitude 149.^5 deg. £„ No. coastal, voyage 3. Ernest Legge, second officer." Shortly after tlie Pericles was lo6t on the Western Australian coast. The bottle had been eighty-seven weeks in tho water. It* discovery would be approximately 62G miles north of Gabo Inland. There is a variable current running south from Queensland averaging about 4 knots. It could not, therefore, have goi to Capo Byron in a direct way. Mr. M'Phorsoa suggests that it was cariiec] south and east possibly to New Zealand, and then taken up by the noithern '■ct of currents to the; lino islands, returning by the south Betting currents. Supposing the drift to havo averaged only two miles an hour, it had time to travel 29,000 miles