Highland Recorder

DREAD VOLCANIC SEA WAVES

Most Skillful Sailor Fear Disaster From Which Human Skill Cannot Save Vessel.

Occasionally there appears a great wave sweeping across the calm surface of the ocean in the fairest weather and when no wind is blowing.

There are few perils of the sea to be more dreaded than such a wave. Fortunately these are very rare, yet more than once a ship has encountered one.

A vessel of a British line not long ago was met by a wave of this kind, which rolled upon her like a wall of water, and, breaking against her sides, swept the deck with irresistible force, killing one sailor and seriously injuring others.

The cause of these singular waves is believed to be some disturbance of a volcanic nature at the bottom of the sea. Volcanoes exist in the ocean as well as on land; in fact, nearly all the volcanoes known are on or near the seacoast. It is easy to see that an upheaval at the seabottom may start a billow at the surface of the water, when we remember that it has been reported that huge waves have been sent clear across the Pacific to our coast by volcanic shakings of the earth on the borders of Asia.

The world under water is not only three times as extensive as that which is covered only with air, but it possesses many of the same great natural phenomena on a scale that is perhaps proportionately vast, but of whose existence we are made aware only by such indications as the volcanic ocean waves that ships occasionally encounter.