Year: 1873

Nautical meteorology, though comparatively
most accurate and advanced Of modern
sciences. The latest and most valuable addi-
ton which it has received is from an able
and exhaustive discussion of the winds and
storms of the North Atlantic, together with
the ice-bearing currents which threaten the
mariners track between New York and the
English Channel This work emanates from
the laborious pen of the eminent German
scientist, Won Freeden, and is based upon the
protracted observations of the North German
Lloyds' steamships. Its facts are so explicitly
brought out by the testimony of the log-book
that they need little elucidation and afford
the seaman anxious to make the most
rapid time across the Atlantic the data
whence he may deduce the courses of
fastest sailing and learn where his ship is
most likely to find streaks of good luck
1t has always been found that vessels crossing
the Atlantic are greatly exposed to the violent
storms which rage along the line of conflict
between the opposing ice current and Gulf
Stream and the similarly situated boreal and
equatorial air currents of the North Atlantic.
The great and resistless ice stream, or cold
water current, emerges during the whole year
from Baffin's Bay and flows southwards
through the channel between Greenland and
Iceland over the Banks of Newfoundland
into the region of the Gulf Stream, and there
partially sinks beneath the blue, tepid waters
OF this ''river in the ocean," In certain
months and years, rs when ice foes and Ice
bergs have been alarmingly numerous, our
shipmasters take roundabout courses to avoid
the perils of the ice passage, and often make
long detours by indirect courses free of ice,
not knowing how wide berth it is necessary
to give these frozen monsters 1t now appears,
by these beautiful and benign labors of the
German geographer and scientist that the ice
bearing current is concentrated between forty
six degrees and dfty-one degrees west longi-
tude, and ice is more rarely observed to the
westward than to the eastward of this belt.


But the significance of this ice region to the
mariner lies in the great physical fact that
''the storm is the child of the ocean," and the
cold water torrent which flows over the New
foundland banks brings with it q mass of air
which falls into the track of the sailor as far
as thirty-fve degrees west longitude and be-
tween forty-fve degrees and forty degrees north
latitude. The Polar air-stream seeks out the
warm southwest equatorial air-current which
accompanies the warm Gulf Stream and i'm
pinges on it at right angles, bringing the
wind vane quickly around and the conflict is
soon followed by the gale and tempest The
barometer rapidly oscillates along the line of
the aerial battle while these invasions of the
northwest wind into the region of the
southwest current, ever on-fowing, con-
tinue; and it is found by the silent but
unerring tale which the mercury tells that
on the passage from England to New York the
ship is running from one field of combat to
another and passing through successive storm
eddies which chase each other over the Gulf
Stream track. For the passage from New
York to Liverpool, it appears, on the contrary,
that the uniform range Of the barometer indi-
Gates that the ship nearly keeps pace with the
storm.


One of the invaluable features of Won Free
dcn's work ID its exhibit of the distribution of
winds, currents, cyclones and storms accord
ing to latitude and longitude for each season
of the year. the phenomena which are pecu-
liar to every mile Of the track across the stormy
North Atlantic AS general result Of this ex-
hibit it is seen that, on On average, homeward
bound vessels should keep to the southwark of
fifty degrees north Latitude where they en-