Wave (ocean)

A wave is the formation of a ridge or swell in a fluid surface by wind or other causes.

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LARGE WIND WAVES

Large waves form under certain weather conditions at certain times of the year, travelling big distances in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. They become dangerous when they reach the shallow waters of the continental shelves at 200 metres/100 fathoms, especially when they meet currents, for example the Agulhas current to the east of South Africa and the Gulf Stream.

By Shalom Jacobovitz 

The highest wave ever recorded was 91ft (27m) — as tall as six double-decker buses — in the Gulf of Mexico during Hurricane Ivan in September, 2004.

The highest wave ever detected by a buoy was 62.3 feet (19m) high and happened on February 4, 2013, in the  North Atlantic Ocean between Iceland and the United Kingdom at coordinates 59° N, 11° W.

ROGUE WAVES 

Rogue or monster waves appear without warning and are extremely huge and often steep (cliff like) with very deep troughs.

Rogue waves are distinct from tides, caused by the Moon and Sun's gravitational pull, waves generated by underwater explosions or the fall of meteorites or tsunamis that are caused by underwater earthquakes, landslides or volcanic eruptions—all having far longer wavelengths than wind waves.

A widely reported phenomenon among sailors for centuries the first rogue wave documented and witnessed with measurable equipment was recorded at the Draupner platform in the North Sea off the coast of Norway on January 1, 1995 and was 25.6m (84ft) tall.

Merchant ship labouring in heavy seas as a huge wave looms ahead, ca. 1940.

The Agulhas Current, off the coast of Durban, in South Africa, produces some of the biggest waves in the world. In this busy shipping area, rogue waves can reach heights of over 100 feet (30 meters).

Rogue waves are considered responsible for the sudden disappearance, without distress calls of many sound ships.

TSUNAMI

A tsunami is a series of fast-moving waves in the ocean caused by powerful earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.

The typical length of tsunami waves is about 100 times the depth. As a result, the speed of travel of a wave in the ocean with an average depth of approximately 13,200 feet (4,000 meters) is of around 440 miles per hour (700 kilometers per hour), which means the speed of a jet aircraft.

The largest wave ever recorded by humans measured 1,720 feet (524 meters). It occurred on July 9, 1958 when Alaska's Lituya Bay was hit by a megatsunami triggered by an earthquake. The force of the wave removed all trees and vegetation from elevations as high as 1720 feet above sea level. Two occupants of a small fishing boat that was in the area surfed that wave and survived to tell the story.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was among the deadliest natural disasters in human history, with at least 230,000 people killed or missing in 14 countries bordering the Indian Ocean.

One of the few coastal areas to evacuate ahead of the 2004 tsunami was on the island of Simeulue. Due to island folklore recounting an earthquake/tsunami in 1907, the islanders fled inland following the initial shaking. Generational folklore saving the lives of the islanders 97 years later.

WAVE POWER

Wave power is power obtained by harnessing the power of the waves.

The idea of turning wave energy into electricity first took place in Paris in 1799 when Monsieur Girard and his son patented a mechanism to drive wave power to activate pumps, mills, saws and heavy machinery.

Various schemes to harness the power of the waves were advanced in the mid-1970s when oil prices rose dramatically and the prospects of an energy shortage became serious.

Pelamis Wave Energy Converter on site at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), in 2008

The world's first wave energy farm was installed in September 2008. Three Pelamis wave-following attenuation devices were installed offshore near Póvoa de Varzim north of Porto in Portugal.

In theory, the wave energy potential of the United States is estimated to be of 2.64 trillion kWh, which means around 65 percent of all the electricity in the country in 2016.

FUN WAVE FACTS

Most waves we see coming in from the horizon are a product of wind that blows over large areas of the ocean. Length, height, period and speed are the main characteristics of a typical sea wave.

In the Southern Hemisphere, there is less difference in wave height between the warm and cold seasons, resulting in more consistent surfing conditions throughout the year.

The sound of a wave breaking is actually that of hundreds of millions of air bubbles bursting at the shoreline.

Sources Hutchinson Encyclopedia, Surfertoday

Water

Water is a liquid without taste or odor.

Pure water has a slight blue color that becomes a deeper green as the thickness of the observed sample increases. The blue hue of the water is an intrinsic property and is caused by selective absorption and scattering of white light.

Its chemical formula is H2O, meaning that each of its molecules contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, connected by covalent bonds.

HISTORY OF DRINKING WATER

The Ancient Greeks discovered a distillation process whereby pure water was made by the evaporation of seawater.

In 0AD All the world's villages and towns were established close to a suitable water source such as lakes, rivers or wells. However in the large cities, the local natural water supply did not always suffice and local rivers were becoming polluted. To resolve this canals were built and wells became deeper.

In 1270 Louis IX of France sailed from Cagliari in Sicily to take part in the Eighth Crusade and landed on the African coast in July, a very unfavourable season for landing. Much of the army became sick due to poor drinking water, and on August 25th Louis himself died from a "flux in the stomach".

Beginning in 1619, piped water was supplied to houses in London.

Peter the Great built Russia's first spa in Karelia in 1718 based on the water-purifying qualities of shungite.

Henry Cavendish showed that water was composed of oxygen and hydrogen in 1781.

The Secchi disk, created in 1865 by Pietro Angelo Secchi SJ, is a circular disk used to measure water transparency in oceans and lakes. The disc is mounted on a pole or line, and lowered slowly down in the water. The depth at which the pattern on the disk is no longer visible is taken as a measure of the transparency of the water. This measure is known as the Secchi depth and is related to water turbidity.

Secchi disk YouTube.com

In 1900, the average American used just five gallons (19 litres) of water a day. Only 15 percent of households had flushing toilets, and even fewer had bath tubs. People often had no conception of what it was like to be wet all over. People on farms have to dig wells by hand and carry water to the house. They required 50 gallons (189 litres) of it for one load of laundry.

In 1908 chlorine was used in the United States for the first time to sterilize city water.

The "drink 8 glasses of water a day" is based on a 1945 recommendation that had no medical basis. The current recommendation is "drink when you are thirsty, unless you are outside on a hot day or are elderly- then drink a bit more."

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Fluoridation is the act of adjusting fluoride levels in water, with the goal of reducing tooth decay. In 1945, Grand Rapids, Michigan was the first city in the world to do it. In 1999, the CDC declared that water fluoridation was one of the ten great public health achievements of the 20th century.

By 1990 as a result of the hard work of the United Nations and various aid agencies it was estimated over one billion people have been provided with portable water over the previous decade. Unfortunately, many hundreds of millions especially in Africa still did not have access to safe drinking water.

Between 1900 and 2000, water consumption increased by 600% and, with natural sources of water becoming an increasingly valuable commodity the United Nations was anxious that rivers crossing national boundaries, would soon become a source of conflict.

Some studies suggest that by 2025 more than half the people around the world will not have enough fresh water.

WATER CONSUMPTION

70 percent of the Earth is covered by water. Only about .003 percent of it can be drunk by humans.

There are roughly 326 million cubic miles of water on Earth, according to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey.

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The average American uses 100 gallons (379 litres) of water per day. But according to the United Nations, the bare minimum we need is 13 gallons (49 litres).

Three-fourths of household water is used to flush the toilet and take baths and showers.

New York City is one of four major cities in the United States whose drinking water is pure enough not to require purification by water treatment plants. The city is supplied with drinking water by the protected Catskill Mountains watershed.

Iceland's natural water is so pure it is piped into homes without treatment.

FUN WATER FACTS

Studies show that children who drink a glass of water prior to an exam can improve their results by up to a third.

A buyer on eBay paid $455 for some water left in a plastic cup that Elvis Presley had drunk from at a concert in North Carolina in 1977. Fan Wade Jones, who was 13, saw Presley drink from it and a guard gave it to him as a souvenir. He kept the water in a freezer until 1985, then a sealed vial. Wade sold the water but still has the cup.

The rapper 50 Cent made most of his money not from his music, but from an investment in Vitamin Water - He made ten  times more than he ever made rapping.

The world's purest fresh water can be found on the southern tip of Chile, in a town called Puerto Williams. The water has been found to have only two chemical parts per million, hence making it the world's cleanest.

Water makes different pouring sounds depending on its temperature and 96% of people can tell the difference between hot and cold water by the sound it makes being poured. One reason is that hot water generally has more bubbles, so produces a higher frequency sound.

Water splashes when it hits something because a tiny layer of air trapped between liquid and surface prevents the drop from spreading.

You can make your own water by mixing hydrogen and oxygen in a container and adding a spark.

Water itself does not conduct electricity, but the impurities found in water do.

The "triple point" at which water becomes a solid, liquid, and vapor simultaneously occurs at exactly 273.16 K (0.01 °C; 32.02 °F)

At sea level, water boils at a temperature of 212 degrees Fahrenheit or 100 degrees celsius. However, in a plane at 10,000ft, it boils at around 194f or 90c, due to a change in atmospheric pressure.

65 percent of your body is water.

Sheep prefer to drink running water.

A seagull can drink salt water because it has special glands that filter out the salt.

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A 2021 study showed that Oceans are the largest reservoir of water on Earth (at 1.3 billion km^3) followed by groundwater (at 43.9 million km^3). Glaciers are a distant third at 158,000 km^3.

There is a water reservoir floating in space that is equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the Earth's oceans.

Source Compton's Encyclopedia

Ship

A boat is considered a ship if it weighs 500 tonnes or more. A more general distinction is that ships can carry boats but boats cannot carry ships.

HISTORY

The earliest known ships with oars date from around 3,500 BC.

As early as the 14th and 15th centuries BC small Mediterranean cargo ships were carrying exotic cargo from Canaan, Greece, Egypt, and Africa.

The Greeks and Phoenicians built wooden ships, propelled by oar or sail.

The Romans and Carthaginians fought in galleys equipped with rams and rowed by tiers of oarsmen.

Sternpost-mounted rudders started to appear on Chinese ships in the 1st century AD. However, the Chinese continued to use the steering oar long after they invented the rudder, since the steering oar still had limited practical use for inland rapid-river travel.

The oaken ships of the Norsemen were built for rough seas and propelled by oars and sail.

The invention of the compass in the 14th century lead to a great age of exploration by sailing ship, resulting in the discovery of 'new worlds.'

The largest European sailing ship of the 15th and 16th centuries was the Spanish carrack. The Madre de Deus, built in Lisbon, Portugal in 1589 was the largest ship in the world in her time. The carrack was 165 feet in length, had 47 feet of beam and could carry 900 tons of cargo.The Madre de Deus had seven decks, 32 guns in addition to other arms and contained 600 to 700 crew members.

Model of the Madre de Deus, in Lisbon's Maritime Museum By User:Marco2000

The carrack remained the standard vessel of Atlantic trade and adventure, until English Elizabethan naval commander John Hawkins transformed the top-heavy vessel into the more seaworthy galleon.

In 1604, shipwright Phineas Pett constructed at Chatham Dockyard "a miniature pleasure ship" for Prince Henry, the eldest son of King James I. "Garnished with painting and carving," the royal family cherished it although inexplicably it bore the ominous name Disdain.

Early in colonization, "Disposable Ships" were a type of craft built for a single voyage, after which they would be disassembled, the wood reused to build actual ships. Some disposables were the largest ships ever built.

By the turn of the 18th century, Holland and England were producing the magnificent ocean-going merchant vessels known as East Indiamen.

By 1760, over 30 per cent of Britain's ship tonnage was being built in the American colonies. This was due to the abundance of timber that made shipbuilding costs only half of what they were in Europe.

When the Columbia returned to Boston Harbor after a three-year global voyage in 1790, it became the first ship to carry the American flag around the world.

In October 1832 a Japanese sailing ship travelling from Nagoya to Tokyo was blown off course by a typhoon. It eventually ran aground on the northernmost tip of the Olympic Peninsula where current day Washington state is sometime in January 1834, with 3 out of 14 crew members surviving.

In the 1840s, iron began replacing wood in shipbuilding. SS Great Britain, the first ocean-going ship that had both an iron hull and a screw propeller, was launched from Bristol, England, in 1843. Isambard Kingdom Brunel's steamship was the largest vessel afloat in the world at the time and in 1845 it became the first propeller-driven ship to cross the Atlantic.

A painting of the launch in 1843

Swedish-American inventor, John Ericsson (July 31, 1803 – March 8, 1889) came to New York in 1839 with a commission to build a ship for the U.S. Navy. His propulsion system was used by commercial steamers and by the USS Princeton (1844), the world's first screw-propelled war vessel.

The sailing ship Marco Polo, built in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, was declared the fastest ship in the world in 1852. The ship had sailed from Liverpool, England, to Melbourne, Australia, and back in 140 days. The trip usually took 240 days.

The square-rigged clipper Andrew Jackson was built by the firm of Irons & Grinnell in Mystic, Connecticut in 1855. The vessel was designed for the shipping firm of J.H. Brower & Co. to carry cargo intended for sale to participants in the California Gold Rush.

Time was money, and the clipper ships were built for speed. The Andrew Jackson arrived at the Farallon Islands, the pilot boat entry point to the harbor of San Francisco on March 23, 1860. The run around Cape Horn from New York City to San Francisco, had taken the vessel 89 days and 4 hours. Andrew Jackson's journey was, by four hours, widely acclaimed in the newspapers as the fastest in history.

The Union ironclad, USS Monitor, was designed by John Ericsson in 1861. It was the first U.S. ship to have a flush toilet.

The British clipper Cutty Sark was built on Scotland's River Clyde in 1869 for the Jock Willis Shipping Line. Launched on November 22, 1869, it was one of the last clippers built for the 19th century tea trade, and one of three to survive to this day. The ship's name is Scots for a short petticoat and was taken from Robert Burns’s poem Tam O’Shanter, in which Tam spies on beautiful witch Nannie Dee, who wore one. The ship’s figurehead depicts her.

Cutty Sark with sails set.

The first attempts to ship refrigerated meat from the southern hemisphere were made in mid 1870s after French engineer Charles Tellier produced a chilled storeroom for the steamship Le Frigorifique. A cargo of 80 tons of mutton, using Tellier's mechanical refrigeration, was transported from France to Buenos Aires, in Argentina, onboard the Le Frigorifique, mainly to demonstrate the practicability of the intercontinental transport of frozen foods. On the return voyage the Argentine meat arrived at Le Havre in perfect condition despite a two month delay when Le Frigorifique run aground on the coast of Senegal.

The German SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse became the first ocean liner to have a commercial wireless telegraphy system when the Marconi Company installed one in February 1900. This new technology allowed the ship to transmit telegraphic messages to shore, emphasizing her image of security. The first ship-to-shore message was sent on March 7, 1900.

The RMS Olympic was a British ocean liner that was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. She was the lead ship of the Olympic class of liners, and was sister ships to the Titanic and Britannic. The Olympic was launched in 1910, and entered service in 1911.

During World War I, the Olympic was used as a troopship. On May 12, 1918, while en route to France with U.S. troops, the Olympic sighted a surfaced German U-boat, U-103. The Olympic's gunners opened fire, but the U-boat was able to dive below the surface. The Olympic then turned and rammed the U-boat, slicing through its hull. The U-103 sank with the loss of nine crewmen. The Olympic was not seriously damaged, and was able to continue on its journey.

The sinking of U-103 made the RMS Olympic the only merchant ship in World War I to have sunk an enemy vessel. The Olympic was decommissioned in 1935, and was scrapped in 1937.

HMT Olympic in dazzle camouflage while in service as a troopship during WW1

In both World Wars, allies ships were painted with bright black and white lines. This was designed as the "opposite of camouflage." It was supposed to confused the enemy, mask their direction, and hide their speed.

The converted World War II T-2 oil tanker, SS Ideal X, was the world's first commercially successful container ship. She left Port Newark, New Jersey on her first voyage in her new configuration, on April 26, 1956. The Ideal X carried 58 containers from Port Newark to Port of Houston, Texas, where 58 trucks were waiting to be loaded with the containers.

NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, was christened on July 21, 1959 as a showcase for Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace initiative. The U.S. President wanted the ship to serve as an ambassador for the peaceful use of atomic power.

It took another two and a half years years to complete the reactor installation and initial trials before the ship was moved to Yorktown, Virginia, under temporary oil-fired power, where the reactor was started and tested. The completed NS Savannah was launched on August 20, 1962.

NS Savannah passing under the Golden Gate Bridge in 1962

The NS Savannah was 181 metres long, cost $46.9 million to build and included a swimming pool, cinema and dance floor.

Only three other nuclear merchant ships were built. None is in service today.

The Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker Arktika was the first surface vessel to reach the North Pole on August 17, 1977. The Arktika was built at the Baltic Shipyard in Leningrad, Soviet Union, and was launched in 1975. It is 173 meters long and 34 meters wide, and it has two nuclear reactors that power its engines. The Arktika can break through ice up to 2.8 meters thick, and it can travel at speeds of up to 18 knots. The Arktika continued to serve in the Soviet and Russian navies for many years, and it was retired in 2008.

The longest ship ever built was a supertanker built in Japan in 1979 for a Greek business mogul who, by the time she was ready, changed his mind and refused to take delivery. Named the Seawise Giant, it was 1,500 foot long, had a 36 tonne anchor and it weighed 564,000 tonnes. It was eventually sold for scrap to a Indian breaking yard.

The RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest ocean liner ever built, was christened by her namesake's granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II on January 8, 2004.

Queen Mary 2 crosses Suez Canal in 2009. By أشرف العناني from alshekh zwaed, egypt 

FUN SHIP FACTS

The USS Constitution, a wooden frigate first launched in 1797 and still active for ceremonial and educational purposes, is the only active ship in the U.S. Navy fleet to have sunk an enemy vessel in combat.

On steam powered paddle ships, visibility was greatly hindered by the two large arches on either side of the ship. To combat this, a literal bridge would be built between them so the captain and helmsman could still get good visibility, thus why a ship's command center is called a "bridge".

The PS Skibladner paddle steamer made her maiden voyage on August 2, 1856. She is currently operating in Norway on Lake Mjøsa, making her the world's oldest paddle steamer still in timetabled service (though it sank twice while in storage).

Skibladner in Hamar 2015.

The U.S. Navy’s Wasp vessels are the largest amphibious ships in the world, with a length of 257m (844 ft). They can carry up to 1,894 marines, have on- board monorails to transfer cargo and kit around the holds, while two aircraft elevators move aircraft between the flight deck and the hangar.

Yugoslav frigate Split is the only ship in the world which shelled the city it is named after. During the Croatian War of Independence Split took part in the Battle of the Dalmatian Channels where it was noted for shelling the city of Split.

Filipinos make up more than one third of all container ship crews worldwide, with 250,000 at sea.

Ships are referred to as "she" from long tradition that they are female figures (e.g., mothers) who guide and protect its passengers and crew.

The use of the term "starboard" to denote the right side of a ship is so-called because they were originally navigated with a steering oar on that side. “stéor bord” in Old English literally means “steering side”. When tying up, the dock always had to be positioned on the left, hence “port”.

The 'SS' prefix in a ship's name refers to 'Screw Steamer', a propeller-driven steamship.

A single cargo ship can produce as much pollution as 50 million cars.

Sources Isaac Asimov's Book Of Facts, History World

Sea

A sea is a large body of salt water that is surrounded in whole or in part by land.

Only 1 in 1000 animals born in the sea survives to maturity.

135 million tons of seafood is consumed worldwide every year.

The modern scientific study of the sea—oceanography—dates broadly to the British Challenger expedition of the 1870s.

On January 23, 1960, Swiss engineer Professor Jacques Piccard, and US Navy Captain Don Walsh, took the submersible Trieste to a depth of 10,916 m (35,814 ft) in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, the sea’s deepest point.

The deepest ocean sinkhole in the world is in the South China Sea and is named the Dragon Hole, or Longdong. It is roughly 987 feet (301 meters) deep. Below 328 feet (100 meters) the hole is devoid of oxygen, and deadly to marine life.

The Sargasso Sea is a region in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by ocean currents. It is the only sea that has no coast.

Icarus tried to fly using a pair of wings his father made fashioned from wax and feathers. The youth flew too close to the sun, thus melting the wax. He then fell into the sea and drowned. The Icarian Sea in the Aegean is named after him.

The sea offers a very large supply of energy carried by ocean waves, tides, salinity differences, and ocean temperature differences which can be harnessed to generate electricity.

The first tidal power station in the world, the kilometer-long Rance Tidal Power Station, opened in 1966 on the estuary of the Rance River in Brittany, France. It produces around 540 GWh per year, around 3% of Brittany's total electrical consumption.

The Rance Tidal Power Station By User:Dani 7C3 

Sea foam is a type of foam created by the agitation of seawater, particularly when it contains higher concentrations of dissolved organic matter. These compounds can act as surfactants or foaming agents. As the seawater is churned by breaking waves in the surf zone adjacent to the shore, the compounds trap air, forming bubbles which stick to each other through surface tension.

Aea level rise is caused by two main factors, melting glaciers, and "thermal expansion" the expansion of space between water molecules as the ocean gets warmer. So the ocean is both gaining water molecules, and the water molecules are spreading out and taking up more space.

The salinity of seawater is almost four times that of our urine. Therefore, to get rid of all the excess salt taken in by drinking seawater, you have to urinate more water than you drank. Eventually, you die of dehydration even as you become thirstier.

Pacific Ocean

HISTORY

The first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by the Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão to the Maluku Islands in 1512.

The first European to set eyes on the east side of the Pacific was Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa on September 25, 1513. A companion of Cortez, he set eyes on the ocean at Darien on the Isthmus of Panama and exclaimed "Hombre".

It was the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan who first named it the Pacific in 1521, having encountered its waters for the first time on a particularly calm and peaceful day.

Map of the Pacific Ocean during European Exploration, circa 1702–1707.

The first cable across the Pacific Ocean was spliced between Honolulu, Midway, Guam and Manila  in 1903.

Australian aviator Charles Kingsford Smith  and his crew landed their Southern Cross aircraft in Brisbane at 10.50 a.m. on June 9, 1928, completing the first ever trans-Pacific flight from the United States mainland to Australia. The total flight distance was approximately 11,566 kilometers (7,187 mi). Kingsford Smith was met by a huge crowd of 26,000 at Eagle Farm Airport, and welcomed as a hero.

A photograph commemorating the first trans-Pacific flight.

The first people to row across the Pacific Ocean were Britons John Fairfax and Sylvia Cook. They reached Australia on April 22, 1972, 362 days after setting off from San Francisco, surviving shark bites and cyclones. The pair were fortified en route with Spam and malted milk.

In 1995, Steve Fossett landed in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon.

GEOGRAPHY

Covering 63.8 million square miles, the Pacific is larger than the entire land surface of the Earth.

The volume of the Earth's moon is the same as the volume of the Pacific Ocean.

The point on earth farthest from land is in the South Pacific halfway between Pitcairn Island and Antarctica. Point Nemo is 2,688 km (1,670 mi) from the nearest land.

Point Nemo

Point Nemo is also known as a "spacecraft cemetery" because hundreds of decommissioned satellites, space stations, and other spacecraft have been deposited there upon re-entering the atmosphere.

When ships pass through Point Nemo, the closest other humans are in the International Space Station 400km up.

There are points in the Pacific Ocean where, if you dug a hole to the opposite point on Earth, you would still be in the Pacific Ocean.

In geography, the antipode of any spot on Earth is the point on Earth's surface diametrically opposite to it. The Pacific Ocean is so big, there are spots in it which are antipodes. Parts of the Pacific off the coast of Peru are antipodal to parts of the same ocean off the coast of Southeast Asia.

The Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench of the Pacific is 6.831 miles deep, the deepest place on earth.

The pressure in the Marina Trench is more than eight tons per square inch — or 50 jumbo jets piled on top of you.

If a coin was dropped into the Marina Trench, it would take more than an hour to reach the bottom.

The bathyscaphe USS Trieste broke a depth record by descending to 10,911 metres (35,797 ft) in the Mariana Trench on January 23, 1960.

Trieste just before the record dive. The destroyer escort USS Lewis is in the background.

On March 25, 2012, filmmaker James Cameron piloted his specially designed submersible to the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. While there, his support crew on the surface sent out a pre-written tweet in his voice: "Just arrived at the ocean's deepest pt. Hitting bottom never felt so good. Can't wait to share what I'm seeing w/ you @DeepChallenge."

In his submersible, the Limiting Factor, Victor Vescovo broke the depth record by descending to 10,928 m (35,853 ft) in the Mariana Trench in 2019. He actually went back several times, proving the vessel was fully reusable.

The only island kingdom in the Pacific is Tonga, comprising 176 islands under King Tupou VI.

Because of plate tectonics, the Pacific is shrinking about 0.5 sq km a year.

Source Daily Express

Ocean liner

The Black Ball Line was a passenger line founded by a group of New York Quaker merchants. In 1817 they offered the first regular passenger service with emphasis on passenger comfort running between England (Liverpool) and North America (New York City) For the first ten years the passages of the fleet averaged 23 days outward and 40 days to the westward.

The SS Great Western, a paddle-wheel steamship designed by railway engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, began its first Atlantic service in 1838. She took 15 days to cross the Atlantic, as compared with a month by sail-powered ships.

The first voyage of SS Great Western (1838)

The Great Western was the first steamship to provide a regular transatlantic service. It confounded critics who asserted that such a vessel would never be able to carry sufficient coal to make the crossing.

In 1838 John Lea and William Perrins started manufacturing their Worcester Sauce. To help promote it they arranged for cases of their product to be on all ocean liners that came in and out of British waters. They paid the stewards to serve the sauce in the dining rooms, which led to passengers requesting to buy a bottle of this new appealing concoction to take home. As a result, the fame of Worcestershire Sauce spread very quickly.

The SS Great Britain was also designed by Brunel. Launched on July 19, 1843, it was the first ocean-going craft with an iron hull and screw propeller.

 SS Great Britain in dry dock at Bristol in 2005 Photo by mattbuck., Wikipedia 

When launched, the Great Britain was by far the largest vessel afloat. She was the longest passenger ship in the world until 1854.

Great Britain was the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic. She did so for the first time in 1845, in the time of 14 days.

The requirement for comfortable, but easily stowable, outside seats for use in the brisk ocean liner trade saw in 1884 the introduction of the foldable "deckchair", made by Edward Atkins of Bethnal Green, London on P&O liners.

In 1900 The German liner SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse became the first ship to send wireless signals to shore.

The SOS distress signal was used for the first time on June 10, 1909, when the Cunard liner SS Slavonia was wrecked off the Azores.

The Belfast slipway from which the British passenger liner RMS Titanic was launched in May 1911 was smothered in 22 tons of soap and tallow to ensure a smooth passage. The launch took just 62 seconds.

RMS Titanic at the docks of Southampton (1912).

The Titanic was one of the first ships to include an indoor heated swimming pool. The pool was 30 feet long and cost a shilling (5p) to use.

At 11:40 PM on April 14, 1912, during Titanic's maiden voyage, she hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean. The iceberg broke the Titanic's hull (bottom), letting water into the ship. The Titanic sank two hours and forty minutes later; 1,517 people were killed.

Before The Titanic sailed, many people thought it would be almost impossible for ships of such a design to sink.

On May 7, 1915, an U-20 torpedoed and sank the liner Lusitania off the West of Ireland. Almost 1,200 died including 120 Americans. The sinking was an important factor in the USA's decision to join the Allied cause during World War 1.

Lusitania arriving in port

In 1941, ten years before his The Catcher in the Rye was first published, J.D. Salinger took a job as activities director on board a luxury Caribbean cruise liner, the MS Kungsholm.

The SS United States was launched in 1951 and still holds the record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic in either direction by a passenger liner.

The Queen Mary 2, which offers a regular service from New York City to Southampton, England is the only passenger ocean liner still in service designed primarily for travel, rather than the leisure of a cruise ship.

It is estimated that a typical large cruise liner can use between 150 and 250 metric tons of fuel per day.

Cruise ships use a type of heavy fuel oil that is high in sulfur and other pollutants. As a result, they are a significant source of air and water pollution, and there are concerns about their impact on the environment and public health. In recent years, the cruise industry has taken steps to reduce its environmental footprint by using cleaner fuels and adopting other measures to reduce emissions and waste.

The cruise liner Queen Elizabeth II moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

Source Food For Thought by Ed Pearce

Ocean

OCEANIC DIVISIONS

The oceans cover just under 71 percent of the Earth's surface. The Pacific covers about 30 per cent of Earth, the Atlantic 21 per cent, the Indian 14 per cent.

The average temperature of the oceans is about 2C.

Arctic Ocean *Atlantic Ocean *Indian Ocean *Pacific Ocean *Southern Ocean

EXPLORATION

Though the oceans cover just under 71 percent of the Earth's surface, humans have only explored about 5 percent, meaning 95 percent of the planet's vast seas have never been seen.

About 250,000 species have been identified living in the oceans but it is estimated that there are over a million altogether.

DEPTH

The average depth of the oceans is two-and-a-half miles.

The deepest spot in the ocean is in the Mariana Trench, which reaches 10,994 metres (36,070 ft) at a small slot-shaped valley in its floor known as the Challenger Deep, at its southern end.

Location of the Mariana Trench

In the ocean it is totally dark at depths greater than 600 meters. About half the animals found below that depth glow.

In ancient times, people believed the ocean floor was a flat plain. However in the 1950s underwater mountain systems formed by plate tectonics were discovered. The Bible described this phenomenon, thousands of years before science in several places in the Old Testament. One example is the book of Jonah, written in the eighth century BC, which records the prophet Jonah being swallowed up by a big fish before being resurrected three days later and spat out on the shore. In chapter 2, the Bible describes his death and descent into the depths of the sea:
'The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me; seaweed was wrapped around my head. To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever. But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.' Jonah 2:5-6

PHYSICAL PROPERTIES

The world's oceans contain enough salt to cover all the continents in a blanket 500 feet thick.

The world’s oceans contain roughly 20 million tonnes of gold.

It's okay to pee in the ocean, since 95% of urine is water and the nitrogen in urea is used to feed ocean plants.

The ocean is blue because it absorbs red wavelengths quickly, while blue wavelengths get scattered and re-emitted from the ocean.

The blue-green color of water. By fichier personnel - Wikipedia

If all the water in all the oceans were shared equally among everybody on Earth, it would work out at a cubic mile of water for every 30 people.

OCEAN CURRENT

An ocean current is a continuous movement of ocean water from one place to another. Ocean currents are created by wind, water temperature, salt content, and the gravity of the moon. The current's direction and speed depend on the shoreline and the ocean floor.

American oceanographer, meteorologist and cartographer Matthew Maury (January 14, 1806 – February 1, 1873) used Psalm 8 as a guide when he discovered ocean currents in the 19th century At one time, when Maury was in bed recovering from a badly broken leg, he asked one of his daughters to fetch his Bible and read to him. She chose Psalm 8, the eighth verse of which speaks of "whatsoever walketh through the paths of the sea," he repeated "the paths of the sea, the paths of the sea, if God says the paths of the sea, they are there, and if I ever get out of this bed I will find them."

As soon as he was strong enough, Maury began his deep sea soundings and he found that two ridges extended from the New York coast to England. In 1847 he published the Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic, which showed sailors how to use the ocean's currents and winds to their advantage and drastically reduced the length of ocean voyages.

Matthew Maury

POLLUTION

June 8 is World Oceans Day. It was first celebrated in 1992 coinciding with the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. World Oceans Day was officially recognized by the United Nations in 2008. The International day supports the implementation of worldwide Sustainability Development Goals, and fosters public interest in the management of the ocean and its resources.

Every square mile of the ocean has over 46,000 pieces of plastic in it.

Researchers claim that in three decades, the world’s oceans will contain more discarded plastic than fish when measured by weight.

Source Daily Express

North Sea

Before the adoption of "North Sea," the names used in English were "German Sea" or "German Ocean". The latter referred to the Latin name "Oceanus Germanicus", and they persisted even into the 1830s.

1482 recreation of a map from Ptolemy's Geography showing the "Oceanus Germanicus"

Rogue or monster waves of a freakish height were long thought to be mythical, but the first proven one was recorded in the North Sea in 1995 and was 25.6m (84ft) tall.

The Danish settlement of Rungholt on the island of Strand was sunk into the North Sea by a massive windstorm on January 16 1362. Estimates put the number of deaths at around 10,000 and the coastline shifted east.

Located 15 miles into the North Sea off the coast of Lincolnshire is a trench 318 ft deep and 30 miles long known as The Silver Pit — so called because when it was found in the 1830s, it was teeming with fish.

The oil company Phillips Petroleum made the first oil discovery in the Norwegian sector of North Sea on December 24, 1969.

Oil platform Statfjord A with the flotel Polymarine

Seven countries have a coastline bordering the North Sea: Norway, Great Britain, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

The line from Calais to Dover is the boundary between the English Channel and the North Sea.

Amsterdam is connected to the North Sea by the North Sea Canal, completed in 1876.

Source Daily Mail

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is the body of water that separates Africa, Asia and Europe. It covers an area of 965,000 sq miles (2.5 million sq km) and has an average depth of 4,900 feet (1,500 meters).

It was the superhighway of transport in ancient times. The Mediterranean allowed for trade and cultural exchange between peoples of the region — Phoenicians, Egyptians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, and the Middle East (Arab/Persian/Semitic) cultures.

The Romans called the Mediterranean 'Mare Nostrum' (Our Sea).

The German architect Herman Sörgel (1885-1952) devoted his whole life to promote his grand scheme to drain the Mediterranean and unite Europe and Africa into one super continent. The plan was initially conceived as a solution to the economic and political turmoil gripping Europe in the early 20th century.

In 2008, artist Saimir Strati made his Homage to Mediterranean Life from 229,764 wine corks.

Being nearly landlocked affects the Mediterranean Sea's properties. Tides are limited by the narrow connection with the Atlantic Ocean. The water is saltier, partly because of evaporation.

The coast of the Mediterranean runs past 22 different countries.

The five largest islands in the Mediterranean are Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, Corsica and Crete. The only island nations in the Mediterranean are Cyprus and Malta.

Source Daily Express