The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-04-10


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The terrible calamity off the Nova Scotia
coast forcibly suggests new and all-impor-
tant departure in the art Of navigation. 1t
clearly appears from the testimony Of the Cap
tain and surviving officers of the Atlantic
that their fatal blunder was in taking the set
Of the current as enthusiastically instead of
allowing for q change from its normal direc-
ton to the northwestward While this is by
no means the first time such fearful error
has been made, when taken with others we
may mention, the question forces itself upon
public attention how far the science of navi-
cation itself demands correction.
Naval history abounds with notices of dis
asters attesting the uncertainty and frequent
treachery to the mariner of the best known
and most powerful currents of the sea. In
1886, after few days of northwest wind, on
the Chilean coast, the British war-ship Chal-
lenger went to pieces on the rocks, having
made a mistake Of reckoning amounting to
forty miles, which Admiral Fitzroy, then on the
coast, proved to be due to a reversal of Hum
boldts current, the ship experiencing set to
the southeastward, just contrary to that of the
ill-starred Atlantic. In October, 17O7, after
hazy weather and fresh southwesterly gale,
the famous Sir Cloudesly Shovel, in the asso-
citation with several ships of his squadron,
confounding the tidal set with Kennels cur
rent, was lost among the Scilly Islands, when,
according to his reckoning, he was in the fair
way of the English Channel, nearly ninety
miles distant In the latter part Of the last
century, under similar circumstances French
ship of the line, the Bellequeux, was over
taken in the Bristol Channel on her way from
Quebec to Brest many miles from her course.
And, in more recent years, we have similar
astonishing mistakes made by the ablest navi-
gators, among which may be cited the striking
case Of the United States ship Preble, in 184S,
on her voyage from Hong Kong to the
Loochoo Islands. On this occasion, hav-
ing doubled the south end of the
Island of Formosa, the sailer encountered
a stiff northeast gale, compelling her skilful
master to heave to under storm sails for three
consecutive days, in which no observation
could be taken. When the storm abated it
was discovered that instead of being drifted,
as he expected, southwark by its fury towards
the Bashee Islands, lying more than hun
dred miles south Of Formosa, the Preble had
borne on the breast of the Kuro Siwo, or Japan
Stream, against the wind, to the northern end
of Formosa. The current of the Kuro Siwo
had thus defied the usual rules of navigation,
which make it the sport of the wind, and had
actually carried the little waif on its bosom
more than hundred and ninety miles out of
her masters most careful reckoning. Such
nautical facts (and they might be greatly
multiplieD have never, we believe, received
their proper attention in the great science
upon which the mariner depends to find his
safe pathway through the ocean.
In the great oceanic survey which led to
the discovery Of the hyperborean current off
the Peruvian coast which bears his name,
Humboldt first remarked that its velocity in
creases near the land and is there greater than
out at sea, and this is true with regard to the
Gulf Stream and most currents that run along
the shores Of continents. But this generali-
zation is shown by the progress of marine ex-
ploration to be open to important exceptions,
which, unnoticed, lead to fatal disasters. Ad-
miral Irminger of the Danish navy, has in
stanced voyage in which the equatorial cur
rent Of the Atlantic took him IA miles east
ward, when, by all the charts it should have
taken him in exactly the opposite direction;
and Commodore cambridge records his own
s,.x IL Al k..1o ,f
the Gulf Stream out of the Florida Pass,
usually rushing along eastwardly, with We
locity of hundred miles day, was reversed
and took his squadron westward into the Gulf.
1t is Notifying and shameful fact to our