What Waves Can Do.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 29, Issue 39, 22 May 1917, Page 2

What Waves Can Do.

SOME WONDERFUL EXAMPLES OF THE STRENGTH OF THE MIGHTY DEEP.

Unless you have been in a storm at eea—or, rather, out in the ocean—it is impossible to imagine the strength of the enormous rollers.

These green hills of water, crested with snowy foam, are sometimes 40 feet high, and the distance between one crest and the next as much as a quarter of a mile. Such waves travel at a speed of between thirty and forty miles an hour. These huge ocean waves, disporting themselves on top of water two or three miles deep, arc not dangerous unless a ship be driven into them. It is when they come crashing into shoal-water that they pile themselves up into real mountains and achieve such extraordinary feats of power.

Near the Bddystone Lighthouse the sea is 200 fathoms, or 1,200 feet, deep. Within a little distance this decreases in 30 fathoms. Here storm-; waves heap up in real mountains Of solid water frilly one hundred feet in height. In a westerly gale the Atlantic breaks with incredible force oh the huge, bare cliffs of the Irish coast. Here Lord bunraven has actually measured wave crests which struck the rocks one hundred and fifty fset above sea level.

Yet even this is child’s play compared with what happens in the Mariana Islands. Here is a giant pillar of rock known as Lot’s Wife. It stands three hundred and fifty feet clear above the surface of the ocean, yet in storms the spray drenches it to its topmost pinnacle.

The Bishop’s Rock lies between the Scillies and Land’s End, and is exposed to the full force of the winter gales. At the top of the massive tower tliera used to be a great bell, used for warning in - fogs. In one storm a wave washed this bell clean away and covered the upper gallery with sand. This gallery is just 100 feet above ordinary high-tide. The greatest Waves— apart from the true earthquake wave —are those caused by cyclones Or circular storms. In such a storm the barometer may be lower by three inches in the centre of the storm than at its edge.

The consequence of this tremendous reduction of pressure is that the sea in the vortex rises high above the usual level, and in this way are produced waves of appalling size and height.

It was a wave of this type which, in the dreadful cyclone of 1876, swept upon the mouth of the Ganges, and drove in over an area the size of Devonshire. By marks upon the trees it was ascertained that this great wall of salt water rolled in forty-five feet high. The damage done was appalling, and more than one hundred thousand unfortunate natives we re drowned.

One of the worst hurricanes of which we have any record was that which swept Karatonga, in the Pacific Ocean, in the year 1846. Believe it or not, a vessel' from Tahiti was lifted' by the great wave, carried over the tops of the palm-trees, and dropped far inland. The captain, who survived, deposed on oath that he felt the tree-tops grating against the schooner’s timbers as she was swept along on the crest of this monstrous roller !

The greatest of ordinary wind waves are seen in the so-called ‘‘Roaring Forties,” south of Cape Horn. They rise to forty-six feet. The Bay of Biscay deserves it bad name, for there waves thirty-six feet high have been measured. In the North Sea waves do not exceed fourteen feet, but they are steep and very dangerous, while in the Mediterranean fifteen feet seems to be the limit.

Vultures are said to fly at times S.t the rate of over 100 miles an hour.