Average in Different Oceans--Fifty-Two Feet the Height of the Tallest
Billow Yet Measured--Not More Than Thirty Feet in North Atlantic.
Waves are the agents of tremendous force, as the batterings received by
the big ocean liners in the winter storms tend to prove. But in spite of
the stories told by timid or imaginative passengers on the Europe-America
ferry, the surges of the North Atlantic are not the highest waves nor the
most forcible. The most tremendous of seas are those that form south of
the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, where the oceanic belt is unbroken by
land.
How high those southern waves rise has not been accurately measured, so
far as can be discovered; but probably they are not very much higher than
the waves farther north. Says the New York _Sun_:
Sailors in modern times have never seen such waves as those
which the early navigators declared attained heights of one
hundred to one hundred and thirty feet. La Perouse asserted
that he saw waves towering in the Pacific to a height of
nearly two hundred feet. In these more scientific days we
may say that the highest wave yet measured had an altitude
of about fifty-two feet.
This was in the southern ocean, a little north of the
Antarctic regions; and it is quite certain that the highest
waves ever seen in that region did not surpass fifty-eight
feet in altitude. A wave of that height would certainly be a
formidable looking object, and its crest would wash the
windows of the fifth story of many New York buildings.
The average height of the waves in different oceans has been
ascertained with some approach to accuracy as the result of
a great many measurements. The highest waves observed in the
Indian Ocean, for example, are about forty feet. The highest
waves in the North Atlantic are from twenty-five to
twenty-nine feet, and in the Mediterranean from sixteen to
nineteen feet.
Even the smallest of these great waves has considerable
destructive power. Some of them travel along at a speed of
twenty-five miles an hour. A wave about thirty feet high
contains thousands of tons of water, and when this immense
force is dashed against any structure the ruin wrought is
likely to be impressive.