HIGH TIDE HAVOC.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 119, 27 August 1910, Page 9

HIGH TIDE HAVOC.

QI'KEU I'laAiXivS II'LAYED BY THE SKA. If you want to see what tides can do you should visit Stonebencli, just below Gloucester, on a day when the southwest wind blows strong, and watch the "bore" on .the Severn (says a Home paper). You stand on t'he close-cropped turf of tme bank and look out across a wide expanse of drab-colored sands among which the river runs in long lanes of gently rippling water. Suddenly there is heard a low roar like distant thunder, and far down the broad channel a white-crested wave leaps into sight and comes rushing upwards at the speed of a fast-trotting horse. In a few minutes it is opposite, a solid wall of water six feet high, with other smaller waves behind it.

It roars past, the yellow sands disappear, and from bank to bank the river-bed is one mass of seething, turbulent flood. Within an hour it is high tide, and it takes the next eleven for this great mass of water to drain back to the. sea. The tides in the Bristol Channel are far the greatest on the British coasts, and are only exceeded by those of the Bay of Fundy. At the mouth of the Avon the rise of an ordinary spring tide is forty feet. At Chepstow it is fifty and sometimes fifty-three. It is one of the oddest of marine freaks that on the Irish coast, at Courtown, exactly oppew site the mouth of the Bristol Channel/ there is no tide at all! The sea remains always at the same level.

Wind makes an enormous difference in tides, and what east coast farmers dread beyond anything else is a spring title with an easterly gale behind it. There was a disaster of this kind early in 1897. Up the crouch the oldest inhabitant had never seen such a tide. At Fambridge it came right over the sea-walls, drowned great numbers of cattle, and turned hundreds of acres of rich pasturage into a, black and barren waste. Three years later there was a similar disaster. The tide in the Thames was an amazing sight. On the Embankment the water rose 'higher than the footpath, and percolating through the parapet, flooded the roadway. From Westminster to Blackfriars Bridge all the wharves on the Lambeth side were swamped. The damage was very great. At Yarmouth the tide rose eight feet above high-water mark, and the timber yards were turned into ponds. The odd thing was that on the other side of the North iSea similar conditions produced exactly opposite effects. The storm drove the water out, and the Elbe ran almost dry. Only small steamers were able to reach Hamburg at all, and all the larger vessels in the port were left lying on their sides, making it next to impossible to load or unload them. That gale is said to have cost Hamburg a little matter of £60,000. It is in the great flat district called the Fens that the inhabitants have most reason to dread a great tide. The whole area of the Fens is nearly 2000 square miles. Once high and dry, the level of the land was lowered by a great earthquake in the year 368; the sea burst in, and for centuries the whole wide stretch of country was a noisome siwiamp in summer, and in winter an inland sea. Drainage began ,on a large scale in the reign of 'Henry VII., but it was not until -Tames I. invited the great Dutch engineer, Cornelius Yermuyden, to take a hand that the country was finally cleared of water. His work was completed by Rennie and other English engineers at the beginning of last century.

In 1862 came disaster. An outfall j sluice near King's iLynn gave way. A: tremendous tide followed 1 , and tep square ■ miles of fertile land were inundated and destroyed. An army of workmen under tile engineer iHawks'haw were rushed to the spot, and after a terrific struggle a coffer-dam was completed and further damage avoided. Tidal currents penned in narrow straits produce races or sea torrents wlhich run at a speed which must be seen •to be believed. The worst race oft British coasts is between Jura and Scariba on the west coast of Scotland. (Even the Admiralty charts give its speed at nearly eleven miles an hour. iSailoTS put it at twelve and a-half miles. When the wind is against the tide no vessel can venture into this race. The whole expanse becomes a foaming cauldron infinitely more formidable than the far-famed mosigoestrom or maelstrom of the Norwegian coast. The Gaelic name of this terrible race is "Coirebhreacain,'' meaning "Cauldron of the Spotted Seas.'