One of the earliest publications about ocean currents was Dampier's Discourse of Winds, Breezes, Storm Tides and Currents published in about 1700. Dampier wrote his book in 1688 and he says:By currents I mean a motion of the sea which is different from the tides in several respects—both as to its duration and also as to its course; currents run a day, a week, nay sometimes more one way, then it may be, run another way. In some places they run six months one way and six months another. In some places they run constantly one way and never shift at all.After some remarkably detailed discussion of currents in the West Indies and off the coast of Africa and in the south seas he says, of the Indian Ocean currents, ‘north of the line the current stays with the monsoon but does not shift altogether so soon, sometimes not for three weeks or more and then never shifts again till the monsoon is settled in the contrary way’. Of the Gulf Stream he says, ‘near the shores on each side of this Gulf there are tides, especially on the Florida shore, and ships may pass which way they please, if they are acquainted’. In conclusion he says, ‘I humbly offer this not as a complete and perfect account but as a rude and imperfect beginning or specimen of what may be done by abler hands hereafter’.
Marine Branch, Meteorological O@eHE recommendations which were made by the Commission for Maritime T Meteorology a t their Conference in London last summer, and which were later approved by the Executive Committee of the World Meteorological Organization at Geneva, bring to the attention of the world the important part that merchant shipping plays in the meteorological picture. A note about this conference appeared in the October 1952 number of Weather, from which it will be seen that many of the resolutions concerned ways and means of improving the density of the meteorological network over the oceans and of improving the quality of the observations and simplifying the work of the observers aboard the ships. There is no doubt that adequate meteorological information from the oceans is essential if we are ever to learn much about the general behaviour of the atmosphere, either synoptically or climatologically.There is a unique feature about the method in which the world obtains its weather information from the oceans. With the exception of that provided by the small number of recently-established ocean weather stations and, very occasionally, naval vessels, this information is provided entirely voluntarily by the officers of the ' selected ' merchant ships of all nations. Here we have a live and healthy form of practical international co-operation which has gone on for nearly 100 years. Merchant shipping is, and always has been, essentially an international industry-not only is maritime commerce international, but shipping practice, as well as the customs, technical terms and jargon of the sea are more or less common to the mariners of all nations. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that the seaman so willingly plays his part, for no reward, in international meteorology. I t is interesting to recall that it was a seaman, in the person of Maury, who inspired the first International Meteorological Conference in Brussels in 1853.There are at present 2,400 ' selected ' ships of all nations whose officers voluntarily make meteorological observations and transmit the coded results by radio to various meteorological centres whenever the vessel is at sea, and of these 768 ships belong to nations of the British Commonwealth. It is upon these ' selected ' ships that meteorologists depend for their information about weather conditions at sea, and the world therefore owes a debt of gratitude to the men who serve in them.A total of 2,400 ships spread over all oceans would not make a very close network of observations even if every one of those ships happened to be at sea at the same time, and if the vessels were all equally spaced. In fact, it seems probable from investigations which have been made that no more than about 1100 of these ships are at sea on a given day. There is littl'e doubt that all these ships will be following specific Great Circle or rhumb-line tracks between certain large ports or prominent landmarks. In other words, they will be 140
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