OCEANIC UPHEAVALS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 22 July 1929, Page 2

OCEANIC UPHEAVALS

TASMAN SEA PHENOMENA STEAMER CAPTAIN’S STORY WATER :i() FEET IX HEIGHT Further details of flu* submarine upheavals witnessed by tin* crew of the steamer Aeiybr.yn in the 'Tasman Sea on Sunday week are given by Uie Sydney “.Morning Herald. - ’ Captain R. Stevenson said that at 1.20 p.m. on Sunday, without warning, a great surge of white water rose out of the sea a mile and a-half away on Hu l port bow. Gradually it assumed a concave formation, and reached a height of between 20ft. and 20ft. before settlement. set ini He estimated the width of the water, which must have weighed many thousands of tons, at between loft, and 20ft. wide. Fifteen minutes later the second upheaval occurred in’almost the same position, and in development, size and subsidence was practically the same as the first.

SEA A MILE DEEP Captain Stevenson explained that there was a south-westerly gale at the time, and the steamer's progress was down to five knots, and said that the rough condition of the sea would account for no sensation being felt on board. “There must have been a terrific upheaval at the bottom of the sea to have caused such results on the surface,” said Captain Stevenson. “According to the chart the depth at that point was (50110 ft., or. roughly, about a mile and a quarter. You can get some idea from that of the volume'of water that was dislodged. The happenings were observed by the second mate, Mr C. C. L. Bass, and the helmsman, as well as by inyself. No other ship was near ns, and we realised that if we had been on top of one of those walls of water nothing more would have been heard of us.” Captain Stevenson said that lie charted the upheaval as having taken place 530 miles east, true, of Sydney, and f.SO miles west, true, of Cape Maria van Diemen —latitude 34.25 south and longitqde 101.25) egst. This was 25 miles from a line drawn down the middle of the Tasman Sea. The time of the first occurrence was 1.20 p.m., and of the second 1.45 p.m., both being the apparent times of the ship. A report was submitted to the State Observatory on arrival in' Sydney. The officers at the observatory were intensely interested, as the report confirmed their view that the earthquake which caused such havoc in Xow Zealand recently bad its centre at a point nearer to Australia than New Zealand, and that there is an extensive fault plane somewhere in mid-Tasman. Another circumstance that might be linked up with Sydney’s happenings seen from the Aelybryn was the experience of the motor-tanker Brunswick when on her way across the Tasman after the earthquake. For more than an hour she steamed through an immense shoal of dead fish, which, apparently, bad been killed by a submarine upheaval. PROFESSOR'S VIEWS Captain Stevenson said that lie emphatically excluded any possibility of the walls of water having been ill the nature of waterspouts. ITe had spent a lifetime at sea, and bad seen many of them. Professor Cotton, of the Sydney Urnversity, said that such a movement of the earth’s crust as caused the upheaval occurred somewhere in the world about once every three weeks, but such- marked effects on the sea as the captain described were seldom seen, though they had been reported by mariners on previous occasions. Professor Cotton discounted the sug-o-estion that these movements might result some day in the uplifting of land in the Tasman Sea. What movements did occur there, he thought, would more likely have the effect of depressing the level of the sea bed. A LOST ARCHIPELAGO The occurrence lends point to a theory put forward some years ago by Professor Macmillan Brown that a violent convulsion bad taken place beneath the Pacific, and had swallowed a whole empire—a series of archipelagoes. Professor Macmillan Brown, commenting on the huge carved stones on Faster' Island. estimated that an archipelago formerly surrounded Hie island. This archipelago had been inhabited by a Polynesian people and hud l lP ,mi of great fertility. The empire had disappeared, lie considered, in the 17th century. Easter Island could never have supported the tens of thousands of people needed to quarry the stone and haul the huge statues to the platforms. The island was a vast necropolis and the platforms along the coast were’ the burial places. The images were those of departed kings and nobles from surrounding islands.