THE SPEED AND SIZE OF ATLANTIC WAVES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3640, 13 March 1883, Page 4

THE SPEED AND SIZE OF ATLANTIC WAVES.

The London Nautical Magazine for this month contains an article by Captain Kiddle, the Atlantic steamship commander, on the height and velocity of Atlantic waves, a subject which, as he says, is to seamen one of Ike most important of the day. It has been asserted that the average velocity of great Atlantic waves is about nine miles an hour. But Captain Kiddle states that he has frequently measured the speed in Atlantic gales and found it "twenty-five miles per hour, plus the rate at which the ship was steaming through the, water when nearly or quite head to wind (say four knots and hour)." This estimate is no doubt much nearer the truth than the former. Dr. Scoresby gave the rate of travel for waves of the largest size at. about thirty-two miles an hour, and Lieutenant Maury gave it as rarely exceeding thirty miles, while other observers mention still higher figures as occasionally attained by waves of excessive length. It is known that some of the great Atlantic gales which assail the British coasts move progressively, as the English meteorologist Ley recently recorded at a rate of more than sixty miles an hour, and it is, therefore, highly probable that in the severest hurricanes the ocean wave may be driven with greater force than even the most observant navigators suppose. Admiral Fitzroy mentions that Scoresby was sceptical as to the reports of seamen who recorded waves thirty feet high until his last voyage, when hemade measurements of some exceeding this height. According to Captain Kiddle the height from the trough to crest occasionally exceeds forty feet. The question is one of great interest to safe navigation in the heavy Atlantic winter gales, and the able officers of Atlantic steamships would do well to make careful observations on the height, length and velocity of the " mountainous seas' , they encounter.