From “Physical Geography of the Sea.”
THE INHABITANTS of the ocean are as much the creatures of climate as are those of the dry land; for the same Almighty Hand which decked the lily and cares for the sparrow, fashioned also the pearl and feeds the great whale, and adapted each to the physical conditions by which his providence has surrounded it. Whether of the land or the sea, the inhabitants are all his creatures, subjects of his laws, and agents in his economy. The sea, therefore, we may safely infer, has its offices and duties to perform; so may we infer, has its currents, and so, too, its inhabitants; consequently, he who undertakes to study its phenomena must cease to regard it as a waste of waters. He must look upon it as a part of that exquisite machinery by which the harmonies of nature are preserved, and then he will begin to perceive the developments of order and the evidences of design; these make it a most beautiful and interesting subject for contemplation.
To one who has never studied the mechanism of a watch, its mainspring or the balance wheel is a mere piece of metal. He may have looked at the face of the watch, and, while he admires the motion of its hands, and the time it keeps, or the tune it plays, he may have wondered in idle amazement as to the character of its machinery which is concealed within. Take it to pieces, and show him each part separately; he will recognize neither design, nor adaptation, nor relation between them; but put them together, set them to work, point out the offices of each spring, wheel, and cog, explain their movements, and then show him the result; now he perceives that it is all one design,—that, notwithstanding the number of parts, their diverse forms and various offices, and the agents concerned, the whole piece is of one thought, the expression of one idea. He now rightly concludes that when the mainspring was fashioned and tempered, its relation to all the other parts must have been considered,—that the cogs on this wheel are cut and regulated—adapted—to the ratchets on that, etc.; and his final conclusion will be, that such a piece of mechanism could not have been produced by chance; for the adaptation of the parts is such as to show it to be according to design, and obedience to the will of one intelligence. So, too, when one looks out upon the face of this beautiful world, he may admire its lovely scenery, but his admiration can never grow into adoration unless he will take the trouble to look behind and study, in some of its details at least, the exquisite system of machinery by which such beautiful results are brought about. To him who does this, the sea, with its physical geography, becomes as the mainspring of a watch; its waters, and its currents, and its salts, and its inhabitants, with their adaptations, as balance wheels, cogs and pinions, and jewels. Thus he perceives that they, too, are according to design; that they are the expression of One Thought, a unity with harmonies which One Intelligence, and One Intelligence alone, could utter. And when he has arrived at this point, then he feels that the study of the sea, in its physical aspect, is truly sublime. It elevates the mind and ennobles the man. The Gulf Stream is now no longer, therefore, to be regarded by such a one merely as an immense current of warm water running across the ocean, but as a balance wheel—a part of that grand machinery by which air and water are adapted to each other, and by which this earth itself is adapted to the well-being of its inhabitants—of the flora which decks, and the fauna which enlivens its surface.
Let us now consider the influence of the Gulf Stream upon the meteorology of the ocean. To use a sailor expression, the Gulf Stream is the great “weather breeder” of the north Atlantic Ocean. The most furious gales of winds sweep along with it; and the fogs of Newfoundland, which so much endanger navigation in winter, doubtless owe their existence to the presence, in that cold sea, of immense volumes of warm water brought by the Gulf Stream. Sir Philip Brooke found the air on each side of it at the freezing point, while that of its waters was 80°. “The heavy, warm, damp air over the current produced great irregularities in his chronometers.” The excess of heat daily brought into such a region by the waters of the Gulf Stream would, if suddenly stricken from them, be sufficient to make the column of superincumbent atmosphere hotter than melted iron.
With such an element of atmospherical disturbance in its bosom, we might expect storms of the most violent kind to accompany it in its course. Accordingly, the most terrific that rage on the ocean have been known to spend their fury within or near its borders.
Our nautical works tell us of a storm which forced this stream back to its sources, and piled up the waters in the Gulf to the height of thirty feet. The “Ledbury Snow” attempted to ride it out. When it abated she found herself high up on the dry land, and discovered that she had let go her anchor among the tree tops on Elliott’s Key. The Florida Keys were inundated many feet, and it is said the scene presented in the Gulf Stream was never surpassed in awful sublimity on the ocean. The water thus dammed up is said to have rushed out with wonderful velocity against the fury of the gale, producing a sea that beggared description.
The “great hurricane” of 1780 commenced at Barbados. In it the bark was blown from the trees, and the fruits of the earth destroyed; the very bottom and depths of the sea were uprooted, and the waves rose to such a height that forts and castles were washed away, and their great guns carried about in the air like chaff; houses were razed, ships were wrecked, and the bodies of men and beasts lifted up in the air and dashed to pieces in the storm. At the different islands, not less than twenty thousand persons lost their lives on shore, while further to the north the “Sterling Castle” and the “Dover Castle,” men of war, went down at sea, and fifty sail were driven on shore at the Bermudas.
Several years ago the British admiralty set on foot inquiries as to the cause of the storms in certain parts of the Atlantic, which so often rage with disastrous effects to navigation. The result may be summed up in the conclusion to which the investigation led: that they are occasioned by the irregularity between the temperature of the Gulf Stream and the neighboring regions, both in the air and water.
