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WONDERS OF NATURE
Gulfstream. Nature miracle
A century and a half ago, a serious institution with a dry official name "Depot of Maps and Instruments" published in the USA a book with a no less dry and scientific title "Physical Geography of the Sea". Having opened this seemingly rigorous scientific work, the reader from the first page unexpectedly discovered that it will deal with unusually interesting things, and the narrator himself is a person very different from a scientist cracker - a statistician-hydrographer. However, read the first two paragraphs of his book (I quote the Russian translation of 1861) and see for yourself: “There is a river in the ocean that does not grow shallow in any drought, does not overflow its banks in any flood. Its banks and bottom consist of cold water, while its own jets are warm. Its source is in the Gulf of Mexico, and its mouth It is the Gulf Stream, and there is no other stream of water in the world that can compete with it in splendor and immensity: it flows faster than the Mississippi and the Amazon and is a thousand times larger than them in its volume. Its waters from the bay to the shores of the Carolinas are indigo. Their limits are marked so clearly that it is easy for the eye to trace the line of their connection with the ordinary waters of the sea; it even happens to see how a ship sails with one side on the blue water of the Gulf Stream, and with the other side along the ordinary dark green waves of the ocean; the dividing line is so sharply defined, the affinity between the two water masses is so insignificant, and they stubbornly oppose mutual mixing. These lines of the American oceanographer Matthew Maury have become classic among geographers. Since then, scientists and writers of the world have devoted many fascinating pages to the "river in the ocean". Here sailed the Julvernian captain Nemo and the "sea wolf" Mine Reed, the heroes of Conrad and Conan Doyle, Jack London and Sabatini, Stanyukovich and Captain Marryat. And the Gulf Stream has become, probably, the most famous current in the oceans to the general public. It begins in the southern part of the Florida Strait, which leads from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic, and ends at the Great Newfoundland Bank, a vast shoal off the coast of Canada. The current generated by the bay was named after its progenitor (Gulf Stream in translation - "current from the bay"). However, the Gulf Stream, of course, does not disappear near the island of Newfoundland. It simply breaks here into several branches, the most powerful of which deviates to the east and goes to the shores of Europe under the name of the North Atlantic Current.
For the first time, Europeans learned about the Gulf Stream from Christopher Columbus, who encountered it on his first voyage to the islands of the New World in 1492. And twenty years later, the Spanish conquistador Ponce de Leon, who was trying to pass into the Gulf of Mexico past the southern tip of the Florida peninsula, found that his ship, with a fair wind and under full sail, was moving ... in the opposite direction! A similar strange phenomenon has been noted more than once off the Florida coast, but many decades passed before the sailors realized that the powerful current in this area helped them return to Europe faster, while the sailing route to America should be laid south, in the zone of trade winds. The first scientific study of the Gulf Stream was carried out in 1770 by the American scientist Benjamin Franklin, who made an approximate map of it and gave the current its now known name. The impetus for the study of the Gulf Stream was for Franklin, then serving in the post office, the inexplicable fact that high-speed postal packet boats traveled from England to the States for seven weeks, while heavily loaded ships going from the USA to British shores spent only a little over a month. The reason for the emergence of this powerful warm current is the large surge of water into the Gulf of Mexico by the trade winds. The southern branches of the Northern Trade Wind and the northern branches of the South Trade Wind, entering the Gulf of Mexico, create a significant difference in water levels in the Gulf and the adjacent part of the Atlantic. Excess water rushes into the ocean through the Strait of Florida, giving rise to the Gulf Stream. The width of the current at the outlet of the strait is 75 kilometers, the depth is 700 meters, and the average speed is about 150 kilometers per day, that is, more than six kilometers per hour. (For comparison, the speed of the Neva is 5,8 kilometers per hour.) When released into the ocean, the volume of water carried by the Gulf Stream is 20 times the flow of all the rivers of the Earth, reaching 25 million cubic meters per second! The temperature of the surface waters of the Gulf Stream is about 30 degrees, and the salinity also exceeds the average ocean by almost 5 percent. (This, by the way, also explains the bluer color of the Gulf Stream water: it has been proven that fresher seas have a greenish tint of waves, and the most salty waters are cast in blue and blue colors.) Having entered the ocean, the Gulf Stream connects with the Antilles Current, after which its width almost doubles, and the volume of water triples. The speed of the ocean river sometimes reaches ten kilometers per hour! No wonder Ponce de Leon's caravels could not fight such a powerful current. True, there are faster currents in the World Ocean. So, in Sol-fjord off the coast of Norway, the speed of the current is 30 kilometers per hour. (Moscow motorists during peak hours might envy such a speed!) As you move north, towards the island of Newfoundland, the Gulf Stream deviates more and more to the east, towards Europe. And along the American coast, the cold Labrador Current flows from the Baffin Sea towards it. It is this, by the way, that brings huge icebergs here from Greenland, which pose a serious threat to navigation. (Let's recall the Titanic catastrophe, which occurred just in these waters.) But the Gulf Stream also added many sad pages to the tragic annals of meetings between ships and icy mountains, without which many shipwrecks simply would not have happened. The fact is that fogs often form in the zone of collision of warm and cold waters. No wonder the Newfoundland bank is called the "pole of fogs" of the Atlantic. In winter, a foggy veil envelops ships here every third day, and in summer - every second day. Today, the movement of icebergs off the American coast is monitored by special "ice patrols" from specially equipped ships and aircraft. And yet, shipping in the northwestern sector of the Atlantic Ocean is still a risky business. Add to this that it is over the Gulf Stream zone that most tropical hurricanes that originate near the Antilles make their way. Over the past 40 years, 250 of them have been recorded here - six hurricanes a year! Calm weather - calm, in the language of the sea - a rarity in the waters of the Gulf Stream. No wonder the English poet Kipling, who loved the sea, describing the experiences of a boy who got into a storm on a ship, places him in this area: If there is green darkness in the glass of the cabin,And the spray soars up to the pipes, And every minute they get up, then the nose, then the stern, And the servant who pours the soup Suddenly falls into a cube, ... And my mother's head is cracking from pain, And no one laughs, drinks or eats, - Then you understand what the words mean: forty nords, Sixty news! Look at the map: the point with coordinates 40 degrees north latitude and 60 degrees east longitude is just south of the island of Newfoundland. If there is no fog, the meeting points of warm and cold currents can be easily identified by the color of the water: the Gulf Stream is dark blue, and the water of the Labrador Current has a light blue, sometimes even greenish tint. Of course, the temperatures of their waters also differ sharply, and sometimes this difference manifests itself extremely sharply. There was a case when an American research vessel, sailing from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the east, recorded at the same time the water temperature at the stern of 19 degrees, and at the bow - 31 degrees! The northeastern continuation of the Gulf Stream - the North Atlantic Current - brings a giant mass of warm water to the shores of Northern Europe, which seriously affects the climate of coastal countries. It is estimated that Norway, for example, receives as much heat from this current as burning one hundred thousand tons of oil per minute would give! It is no coincidence that the North Atlantic Current is called the "stove of Northern Europe". The Gulf Stream and its continuations - the Canary and North Atlantic currents have been serving as postmen for the "bottle mail" known to all sailors for many centuries. Most often, messages from ships in distress are found in England and Ireland, located on the path of the main transatlantic currents. In Britain, from the 52th century, the court position of "royal ocean bottle opener" was even established. All vessels with notes found at sea were supposed to be handed over to the Admiralty unopened, in order to avoid divulging secrets that could be in messages. It is known that in the first year the "lord opener" opened XNUMX bottles. Of course, "Neptune's mail" is not a very reliable form of communication. Sometimes bottles and other vessels travel at sea for years, or even centuries. So, in 1856, near Gibraltar, a barrel with a coconut drenched in resin was found on the shore. In the nut was a parchment with Columbus's report to the king and queen of Spain about the shipwreck of the Santa Maria caravel. The message of the great navigator wandered in the ocean waters for more than 350 years. And another note revealed the mystery of the disappearance of the large American steamship Pacific. Back in 1856, he broke the speed record by walking from New York to Liverpool in nine days and twenty hours. After that, "Pacific" became very popular, and there was no end to those who wanted to get on it. And in the autumn of the same year, having taken on board more than 200 passengers, the liner set off on its way back to New York. After that, there was no more information about him. The Pacific did not arrive at the port of destination. And no one would ever know what happened to the ship if it wasn't for the bottle mail. A few years later, the sea washed up on the Irish coast with a bottle with a note. It contained only a few words: "Pacifica. Ship is sinking. Panic on deck. Surrounded by ice on all sides. I know I will not escape. I am writing so my friends know everything. W. M. Graham." And almost a hundred years later, in 1954, in the dunes on the shores of the Gulf of Maine, they found a bottle containing the will of one of the Pacifica passengers. Having bequeathed the entire fortune of her daughter in a letter, she mentions that the ship is sinking near Cape Flettery after colliding with an iceberg. Thus one of the many tragic mysteries of the North Atlantic was revealed. Another mystery of the reason for the disappearance of the ship without a trace was helped by the Neptune Post in 1880. The Atlanta, a training frigate of the British Royal Navy, after sailing with a crew of cadet graduates off the coast of Canada and in the Caribbean, entered the Bahamas in January this year to replenish supplies, and then set off for her native shores. But the sailing ship did not return to England. The Admiralty announced a reward of 300 guineas for information shedding light on the fate of the frigate. And in June, the captain of a fishing schooner off the coast of Newfoundland fished out a bottle with a message with a net. It had only three lines: "April 17, 1880. Training ship Atlanta. Sinking at a point with coordinates 27 degrees North and 32 degrees West. Let the finder send this note to the newspaper. John Hutchings." Many times over the centuries, boys on the sand or fishermen unpacking their nets have discovered vessels with messages. And half-washed lines of a note from a mud-covered bottle or cocoa can told people about some now forgotten tragedy of the sea, such as the following, caught by a fisherman in Morecabe Bay: "Steamboat Himalaya is wrecked off the coast of Newfoundland. the wind tore the sails to shreds. We cannot repair the hole in the bottom, and it is already impossible to escape. If the Lord does not work a miracle, we will perish." Sometimes, however, the Gulf Stream performs a not so gloomy mission, providing its jets to help lovers. So, in the US state of Nebraska, a young immigrant sent a letter to his girlfriend in his native Ireland in a sealed bottle, which he threw into the Mississippi River. The river carried the bottle to the Gulf of Mexico, and the Gulf Stream did the rest. A year later, the message was found on the shore of one of the Irish bays and delivered to the girl. And at the end of 1970, an American Hoffman from the state of New York, who was considering whether to marry him or not, decided to resort to the “sea lot.” He sent a marriage proposal to his bride in England in a sealed bottle with an address, which he threw into the ocean. Eleven months later, Hoffman's letter was found on the English coast and delivered to the girl. The answer came to the American by telegraph. He said: "I agree. But still, dear, it's so unexpected!" The Gulf Stream continues its postal service to this day. But now the document bottles contain mostly "scientific mail". With its help, oceanologists study the speed and direction of the currents of the North Atlantic and their seasonal changes. And passengers of numerous ships crossing the ocean from east to west, if they are lucky and the weather is clear on the way to America, can see with their own eyes how a wide strip of blue water appears on their way, bordered along the edge by a chain of whirlpools. This means that the liner crosses the mighty "river in the ocean" flowing from the South Seas, the most famous ocean current in the world with the poetic and warm name of the Gulf Stream. Author: B.Wagner
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