Daily globe., 1880-06-03
THE CRUISE OF A BOTTLE.
d Little Navigator Witch StOtos the Re0w
Iarity of Ocean Currents.

d Little Navigator Witch ShOtoS the Re0W-
larity of Ocean Currents.
New York Herald.
The bottle picked up on South Beach, near
Fort Morgan, at the entrance of Mobile bay,
tells an interesting story of the winds and
waves. This waif was thrown off the ship
Hesperia, bound to London from South Aus
tralia, as she was Just south of the Azores
(about latitude 81 degrees north and long
tude 20 degrees west), on May II, 1873, and
was reported from the Alabama coast on the
25d inst. 1t must, therefore, been drifting a
little over two years, which it has consumed
IN making the circuit of the equatorial At
lantic and the Mexican gulf.
The course pursued by this little "tally
put upon the Winds by Mr.. Wragge, sci
entifc voyager in the Hesperia, can be pretty
accurately determined. During the month
of May, 1878, when the bottle was commit
ted to the sea, the barometeric observations
in the Atlantic demonstrate the prevalence
of large area of high pressure 1920 inches)
in the regions south of the Azores, and
around its northern side strong band of
westerly and northwesterly winds drawing in
the anti-cyclonic direction. During the first
twenty days of its voyage the bottle was un-
der the pressure of these westerly and north
erly winds and the consequent ocean current
which they induce, so that its inevita-
BILE cOnrse was toward the island
of Madeira and the Canaries, and thence
south westwardly off the Cape Verde into the
north equatorial current. In 1843 Capt.
Beecher, of the royal navy, charted number
of probable tracks pursued by bottles thrown
out to test the rate of the equ torial current,
and the mean rate at which they travelled in
the marine area was 1913 miles per day. He
also found that bottles thrown off into the
north equatorial drift travelled much slower
than those started from points nearer the
equator and in the axis of the northeast trade
wind belt. Thus bottle thrown over from
the ship Racehorse in latitude IL degrees IL
minutes, longitude 65 degrees 80 minutes,
April II, 1886, was picked up April % at
Bonaire, having made one hundred and fifty
miles in five days. But bottle
thrown from the ship Dunmore in
1928, in latitude 81 degrees minutes
and longitude %, on the northeastern mar
gin of the Sargasso sea, reached Cuba, dis
tance OF three thousand two hundred miles,
in four hundred and thirty seven days, max
ing on an average less than nine miles a
day. The bottle from the Hesperia, Just
picked up on the Mexican gulf coast, was ap-
proximately under the same wind and wave
influences which bore the Dunmore's waif,
and hence the former, traversing the equa-
torial current, and passing through the Car
rlbbean sea into the Gulf of Mexico, making
total circuit of five thousand five hundred
miles, travelled at about the same mean rate
eight miles day. This bottle cruise, per-
formed annoticcd amid the trackless wastes
of the equatorial seas, though no living soul
can tell of its vicissitudes and variations
from day to day, declares the regularity of
oceanic circulation, and its history will be
highly priced by navigators and geograph-
ArS.