HKB
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Often appears with: voyages and seafaring · shipwreck and peril at sea · famine, scarcity, and plenty · experiment, observation, and evidence · weather, storms, and the seasons · volcanic ash deposition · the fear of death · the earth and its formation · spitzbergen bays · siberian coastal timber drift · shipwreck survival · shipwreck
Usually: argument (4) · curiosity (3) · confronting death (2) · wonder (2) · narrative (1) · verse (1) · the stranger's arrival (1) · indignation (1) · lament (1)
“Time, Tide, and Space, We bound unto the task That thou shouldst fall, and such an one should ask.” Rudyard Kipling, Verses 1889-1896 · insight
Darwin describes experiments on how seeds survive seawater and argues that dried fruits and plant parts can float long distances, using current speeds to suggest sea dispersal across roughly 924 miles.
least of the islands would have been formed, like other mountain-summits, of granite, metamorphic schists, old fossiliferous or other such rocks, instead of consisting of mere piles of volcanic matter. I must now say a few words on what are called accidental means, but which more properly might be called occasional means of distribution. I shall here confine myself to plants. In botanical works, this or that plant i…
Lyell argues that very small sediment particles can settle extremely slowly in seawater, allowing mud and volcanic ash to be transported great distances by ocean currents before deposition across huge areas.
phosphate of lime require nearly an hour to subside about an inch and a half and two inches respectively,[468] so exceedingly small are the particles of which these substances consist. When we recollect that the depth of the ocean is supposed frequently to exceed three miles, and that currents run through different parts of that ocean at the rate of four miles an hour, and when at the same time we consider that some…
Lyell argues that drift-wood from rivers and warmer sources is carried into far northern coasts, citing Iceland, Spitzbergen, and Siberia where ocean currents supply timber even where trees cannot grow.
has not begun, and, finding the channel of the river blocked up with ice, it overflows the banks, sweeping through forests of pines, and carrying away thousands of uprooted trees. *Drift-timber on coasts of Iceland, Spitzbergen, &c.*--The ancient forests of Iceland, observes Malte-Brun, have been improvidently exhausted; but, although the Icelander can obtain no timber from the land, he is supplied with it abundantl…
He argues that “compensation” between warmer and colder meridional climate belts can explain species survival, citing ocean-circulation and Bering Strait geography, plus Sahara’s emergence affecting Mediterranean winds and Alpine snow.
(* Darwin, "Origin of Species" chapter 11 page 365; Hooker, "Flora of Australia" Introduction page 18 1859.) Such an hypothesis enables us to dispense with the doctrine that the same species ever originated independently in two distinct and distant areas; and it becomes more feasible if we admit the doctrine of the co-existence of meridional belts of warmer and colder climate, instead of the simultaneous prevalence …
Robinson describes his third day at sea after a stormy current catches his boat near a breach of the sea, nearly starving while realizing currents could carry him irrecoverably offshore.
the point: so that it was not safe for me to keep too close to the shore for the breach, nor to go too far off, because of the stream. The third day, in the morning, the wind having abated overnight, the sea was calm, and I ventured: but I am a warning to all rash and ignorant pilots; for no sooner was I come to the point, when I was not even my boat’s length from the shore, but I found myself in a great depth of wa…
A poem titled “THE DERELICT” presents a ship’s perspective as it is wrecked and left to drift, describing its suffering, the forces of sea and current, and fear that no rescue comes.
*And reports the derelict *Mary Pollock* still at sea.* SHIPPING NEWS. I was the staunchest of our fleet Till the sea rose beneath our feet Unheralded, in hatred past all measure. Into his pits he stamped my crew, Buffeted, blinded, bound and threw, Bidding me eyeless wait upon his pleasure. Man made me, and my will Is to my maker still, Whom now the currents con, …