RIDDLES OF THE SEA

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1779, 6 July 1926, Page 7

RIDDLES OF THE SEA

The zone of silence which is now believed to’ be responsible for the many wrecks which have earned for Race Rocks (off the south east end of Vancouver Island) the gruesome name of the .“Graveyard of the Pacific” is not the only sea riddle to solve (states a Wireless Expert in the Daily Mail). Among the most puzzling are the "Blind spots” wherein no kind of wireless will work. For s6me reason as yet unknown no aerial signals can be passed in these areas. It 'matters not what kind of apparatus is used or whether high power or low power is employed, the result is the same—absolute failure to transmit or receive. One of the best known of these “blind,! spots” lies in the Indian Ocean. When it was discovered the Admiralty sent a specially equipped vessel and some of the best radio experts in the navy to try to find the answer to the puzzle. But the puzzle remains. , It is the most perplexing of all, though not the only one of the nature. There are, in fact, so many of them that the Admiralty has fitted up the cruiser Yarmouth for the use of * their experimental staff, and she roams the seas gathering data for the information of the naval scientists who are investigating the mysterious vagaries of wireless at sea. Much useful knowledge relative to effect has thus been garnered, though the cause may be obscure. For example, wireless is less reliable within an hour of sunset and an hour of sunrise than at any other time of the day—nobody knows why. Ships are advised not to use their direction finding apparatus at these times because of the risk of error.

Similarly ships can obtain wireless bearings more accurately by day than by night, and high land such as cliffs between transmitter and receiver also causes inaccuracy. The invention of wireless, in short, has revealed that the sea holds many more mysteries than are comprised! in the tale of missing ships.