PERILS MET WITH IN STRANGE PLACES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3715, 10 November 1927, Page 4

PERILS MET WITH IN STRANGE PLACES.

SEA MYSTERIES. There are many perils of the sea with which every captain of a ship is prepared to cope when necessary, but there are some which men of science cannot explain, writes W. F. H. Harrison in the Port of London Magazine. The southern end of Vancouver Islland is one of the danger zones in which many ships have been wrecked on the deadly rocks. The Government has built a lighthouse with a foghorn and set out bell buoys the noise of which ought to be heard for some distance, and yet survivors from these wrecks have declared that they heard no sound at all. This can only be accounted for by a “zone of silence” or ofl “dead air” hovering about this spot, changing with the wind and tide .but always in existence. Once a ship in within this zone, no sound, even that of the powerful siren of the Race Rocks lighthouse is audible. This phenomenon was experienced by the crew of a small tug which got in amongst the rocks and actually saw the keepers of the lighthouse and yet were unable to detect the roaring signals which were distinctly heard four or five miles in other directions. Ocean currents shown on all set charts are often depended on by the skippers of vessels when the sun is obscured 1 and they are forced to use dead reckoning. But even these may alter either their speed or course, as has been discovered when the Gulf Stream was found to have increased its speed to almost double what it had been. The currents in the North Sea once changed their courses, as was shown when pieces of wreckage, which usually tended to drift in a southerly direction, were found to be appearing on the northern .shores and isles of Grea t Britain. '

■ln September, 1923, a large steamer was in mid-Atlantic, when she suddenly stopped and quivered so violently that it was thought she had, struck a wreck. 'She then moved ahead, but, after a little while, began to tremble from bow to stern for a short time. This strange occurrence was undoubtedly caused by a submarine earthquake, and the sea, being about two miles deep, luckily prevented serious damage.

Another steamer had even a worse experience. About midnight, when some little distance from Marseills, the crew heard a sudden explosion and saw a huge tongue of flame leap out of the sea, and at the same time the ship quivered as if she had been struck. It was thought at first that another vessel had blown up, but as no wreckage could be found, it was attributed to the explosion of a submarine volcano. If this ship had been over that spot at the time nothing could have saved her from destruction. Another peril is that of falling meteors, which Arc sometimes seen from ships. A large mass of molten stuff fell from the sky some time ago and narrowly missed a large tramp steamer on her way to Hamburg. A similar story was that of a Dutch steamer, the Ocean, Avhen, crossing the Atlantic in 1908, an enormous meteor fell so close to her that the huge ivaves flung up flooded the decks of the of gas shot forth from Avhere it fell, and the men on deck, had to go below to save themselves from being, suffocated.