Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/96

70 warmth of the Gulf Stream was known, a voyage at this season from Europe to New England, New York, and even to the Capes of the Delaware or Chesapeake, was many times more trying, difficult, and dangerous than it now is. In making this part of the coast, vessels are frequently met by snow-storms and gales which mock the seaman's strength and set at naught his skill. In a little while his bark becomes a mass of ice; with her crew frosted and helpless, she remains obedient only to her helm, and is kept away for the Gulf Stream. After a few hours' run, she reaches its edge, and almost at the next bound passes from the midst of winter into a sea at summer heat. Now the ice disappears from her apparel: the sailor bathes his stiffened limbs in tepid waters; feeling himself invigorated and refreshed with the genial warmth about him, he realizes, out there at sea, the fable of Antaeus and his mother Earth. He rises up, and attempts to make his port again, and is again, perhaps, as rudely met and beat back from the north-west; but each time that he is driven off from the contest, he comes forth from this stream, like the ancient son of Neptune, stronger and stronger, until, after many days, his freshened strength prevails, and he at last triumphs, and enters his haven in safety, though in this contest he sometimes falls to rise no more, for it is terrible. Many ships annually founder in these gales; and I might name instances, for they are not uncommon, in which vessels bound to Norfolk or Baltimore, with their crews enervated in tropical climates, have encountered, as far down as the Capes of Virginia, snow-storms that have driven them back into the Gulf Stream time and again, and have kept them out for forty, fifty, and even for sixty days, trying to make an anchorage.

185. Running south to spend the winter.—Nevertheless, the presence of the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, with their summer heat in mid-winter, off the shores of New England, is a great boon to navigation. At this season of the year especially, the number of wrecks and the loss of life along the Atlantic sea-front are frightful. The month's average of wrecks has been as high as three a day. How many escape by seeking refuge from the cold in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream is matter of conjecture. Suffice it to say, that before their temperature was known, vessels thus distressed knew of no place of refuge short of the West Indies; and the newspapers of that day—Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette among them—inform us that it was no uncommon occurrence for vessels bound for the Capes of the