Severin, Tim, 72, 75
Severn River, 146
Shakespeare, William, 24–27, 149–52, 168–69
Shannon River, 146
Shanwick Oceanic Control Centre, 342–43
Sheep, 30 f, 73–74
Sheffield (ship), 207–11, 267
Shetland Islands, 204–5
Shipping. See Cargo shipping
Shipping newspapers, 180
Ships
art depicting, 165–66
battleships, 242
Christopher Columbus’s, 86
container, 350–52
first boats and sailing, 61–62
increasing size of, 112
Irish, 71–72
ironclad, 247–51
Native American, 91
packet ships and shipping, 290–301 (see also Cargo shipping)
passenger liners, 11–12 (see also Passenger transport)
Roman, 211
slaving, 228, 232 (see also Slave trade)
space shuttle fleet names from, 126n
steam-powered steel battleships, 252–57
Viking and Norsemen, 70–71
Shipwrecks, 150–52, 322–27, 449–56
Sight reduction tables, 112
Silent Spring (book), 354, 357
Simon Boccanegra (music), 194
Sir Charles Elliott shipwreck, 451, 456–57
Skaggerak, 145, 253–54
Skálholt Map, 79–80
Skeleton Coast, 449–59
Skeleton Coast (book), 452
Skidbladnir vessel, 160
Skull and crossed bones flags, 223
Slave castles, 227–29, 232–34
Slave trade, 87, 199–200, 221, 227–39
Slocum, Joshua, 201–4
Smell of the sea, 429n
Snoek fish, 281n
Snows (ships), 232
Soderini Letter, 93, 95
Somers, Sir George, 151–52
Sonar, 250
Soundings, 112, 136–37
South Africa, 56–60, 181–86, 419
South African snoek, 281n
South Africa Pilot (book), 56–57
South America, 96, 331, 409, 444–47
South Atlantic Ocean. See also Atlantic Ocean
as African Ocean, 96n
commercial whaling in, 287–89
delineation of, 143–44
icebergs in, 410–12
management of South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands fishery in, 378–89
Southern Ocean, 409n
Southern Ocean Super-Gyre, 438–39
Southern Whale Fishery, 287–89
South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, 378–89, 411
Soviet Union. See Russia
Space shuttles, 126n
Spain. See also Cádiz, Spain
art of, 164–65
Christopher Columbus and, 85–90
fishing pirates of, 389
naval warfare of, 241–46
New World warfare of, 215–20
Phoenician trade in, 65
returning to, on Gulf Stream, 116–17
trawler fleet of, 372–73
Treaty of Tordesillas of, 93n
Spanish Armada defeat, 241n, 243
Special Publication No. S.23, 102, 142–43, 409n
Spenser, Edmund, 168
Spermaceti, 288–89
Sperm whales, 285n, 287–89
Squid-jiggers (ships), 388
Staten Island, Argentina, 128, 444–47
Statue of Liberty, 177, 179
Statue of Liberty (ship), 323
Steam locomotives, 295n
Steam-powered ships, 252, 300–301, 315–16, 368–69
Steel battleships, 252–57
Steerage travel, 318–21
Stefansson, Sigurd, 79
Sterling (term), 278
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 191, 225, 321
St.-Exupéry, Antoine de, 106
Stockholm (ship), 323, 324 f
“Storm, The” (poem), 169
“Storm at Sea” (poem), 153–54
Strait of Gibraltar, 35, 65–66, 101
Strait of Magellan, 444
Strait of Malacca, 447
Submarines, 250, 257–66, 268–70
Sufferings in Africa (book), 239n
Sugimoto, Hiroshi, 197
Sulfur emissions, 348, 353
Sullivan, Arthur, 194
Sumatran tsunami, 433
Sundry Circumstances Relating to the Gulph Stream (letter), 118
Surtsey Island, 46, 433
Survey expeditions, 124–40
Sustainable fishing, 362
Sykes, Mark, 271
Symphony at the end of the world, 445
Szczecin, Poland, 278n
Tactics, naval warfare, 240–46
Tangier, Morocco, 100–101
Tapestries, 160
Teach, Edward, 225
Tectonics. See Plate tectonics; Seismic activity
Telegraph, transatlantic, 131–32, 302–10
Tempest, The (play), 150–52
Terrorist attacks, 343n
Textiles, 293–95
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 305n
Thames Barrier, 415–16
Thames River, 146
Tharshish, 66n
The Future Is Wild group, 442
Thermal expansion, 407–8
Thermal vents, 428
Thermohaline circulation, 426
Thompson, Jeremiah, 293–99
Thomson, C. Wyville, 136, 139
Thoreau, Henry David, 305
Thorfinsson, Snorri, 83–84
Tides, 112, 114, 121
Tierra del Fuego, 125–26, 128, 208–11, 444
Times Atlas of the Oceans (book), 325–26
Tin, 65–66
Titanic (ship), 254, 263, 321–23
Tobacco, 84n, 90
Tomlinson, Charles, 205
Toothed whales, 285n
Toothfish (Chilean sea bass), 362–63, 378, 384–86, 389
Topography, 121
Torrey Canyon (ship), 325–26 f
Tor Rocks, 7–8
Toxic wastes, 357–58
Tracks, shipping, 348–49
Trade
Hanseatic League and rules of, 275–80
Phoenician, in Mediterranean Sea area, 62–69
routes, 319 f
Trade winds, 121, 424
Trafalgar Battle, 243–46, 251
Tramp ships, 295–96
Travailleur (ship), 141
Trawling, 368, 370
Treaty of Paris, 366
Treaty of Tordesillas, 93
Trial of Black Bart’s Men, 227–30
Triana, Rodrigo de, 86–87
Triangular slave trade, 232–39
Triassic period, 40
Triple Divide Peak, 147–48
Triremes (ships), 211
Tristan da Cunha, 112, 183n, 437–38
Tristan und Isolde (opera), 194
Tropical cyclones, 423. See also Hurricanes
Tsunamis, 432–36. See also Seismic activity
Tuna, 363
Turbidity currents, 434
Turner, J. M. W., 197–98
Tuvalu Islands, 412n
Typhoon (book), 205
Typhoons, 423n
U-boats, German, 261–66, 268–70
Uluburun archaeology site, 64–65
Undersea cables. See Cables, undersea
Undersea oil exploration, 403–4
Undertow (painting), 198–99
Union Castle passenger liners, 186
United Nations, 176, 372n
United States
air transport to and from, 330–32
British Post Office service to, 291–93
Civil War of, 247–50
commercial whaling of, 287–90
literature of, 200–203
motivations of, for Atlantic Ocean exploration, 123–24
Naval Observatory
, 130
rivers as Atlantic Ocean sources, 147–48
slave trade and, 221, 230–39
steel ships and, 257
transatlantic cable and, 305–10
War of 1812 of, 246–47
United States Exploring Expedition, 126–29
Ur supercontinent, 38
Uruguay, 257–60
van de Velde, Willem, 166
vaz de Torres, Luis, 112
Venezuela, 87–88
Verdi, Giuseppe, 194
Verne, Jules, 128, 445
Vernet, Claude, 167
Vespucci, Amerigo, 93–96
Viarsa (ship), 389
Victoria, Queen, 309
Victoria Falls, 47
Victory (ship), 243
Vikings, 70–71, 75–85, 89–90, 212–15, 282. See also Norsemen; Norway
Vincennes (ship), 130
Vinland, 76–84
Violins of Saint-Jacques, The (book), 436
Virgin Atlantic, 347
Virginia (ship), 248–50
Virgin of the Navigators, The (painting), 164–65
Virgin Rocks, 8–9
Viscosity, ocean depth and, 132–33, 306
Visual art, 159–67, 196–99
Volcanoes, 40–43, 46–47, 343, 432–33, 436–38. See also Seismic activity
Vroom, Hendrick Cornelisz, 166
Vulcanology, 434n
Wagner, Richard, 194
Walcott, Derek, 34, 164
Waldseemüller, Martin, 48, 93–96
Walton, William, 194–95
Warfare. See Naval warfare
Warming, global. See Global warming
War of 1812, 246–47
Warrior (ship), 247
Waste, radioactive, 355–57
Water, 35–36, 145
Watkinson, James, 297
Watling’s Island, 86
Waypoint names, 342n
Weather patterns, 121, 402, 417–27, 439–40
Wegener, Alfred, 48
Weizmann, Chaim, 269–71
West African slave trade, 221, 227–39
Westbound air travel tracks, 341–42
Western Cape, 56–60
Western civilization, Atlantic Ocean and, 19–20, 448–49
Western Ocean name, 96
Whale oil, 286n
Whaling
American, 126–27
early commercial, 285–90
Faroe Islands and, 30 f
Russian and Japanese harvest totals, 288n
in South Atlantic Ocean, 383–84
White Empresses (ships), 1, 3 f
Whitman, Walt, 195
Wilberforce, William, 231 f
Williams, Ralph Vaughn, 195
Willshire, Ohio, 239n
Willshire, William, 239
Wilson, J. Tuzo, 442n
Wilson Cycle, 442n
Windjammers, 314–16
Winds, 121, 419, 424, 438–40
Windsor Castle (ship), 186–87
Wireless communication, 250, 311–14
Witten, Laurence, 76
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, 126n, 140, 430
World War I, 251–56
World War II, 257–66, 281n, 449–52
World Wildlife Fund, 361
Wreck of the Minotaur, The (painting), 197 f
Wrecks. See Shipwrecks
Wright, Isaac, 295–99
Wright, Orville and Wilbur, 335
Yale University, 76–79
Yankee clippers, 314–16
Zionism, 270–71
Zoological oceanography, 120–21, 136–40
Acknowledgments
It goes almost without saying that researching a book that took me to places as distant and varied as Morocco, Brazil, Argentina, Newfoundland, Monte Carlo, Namibia, and Norway, as well as to such islands as St. Helena, Greenland, Tristan da Cunha, Bermuda, Muckle Flugga, and a score of others, was enormously interesting and the greatest of fun. But it was all made very much more rewarding by the kindness and assistance of a great many people, both Out There and Back Home; and though I remain haunted by the fear that I might have left out someone who put me up in his seaside house for a long weekend or loaned me his entire personal library of antiquarian works on maritime history, I hope in the few lines that follow to thank at least most of those without whose help the writing of this book would have proved quite impossible.
The idea of my writing about the Atlantic was in fact born on the shores of a competing sea, the Indian Ocean. One evening, on the terrace of the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo, the British writer and diplomat Tom Owen Edmunds, the Galle Literary Festival’s chief organizer Libby Southwell, my wife, Setsuko, and I were gazing into the sunset and chatting idly about the relative richness of the historical associations of the world’s great seas. As the evening wore on, it became abundantly clear that, lively though the Indian and Pacific oceans might be, in terms of the making of the modern world, the Atlantic could lay claim to having played a role that was infinitely livelier. So to Tom and Libby—now married and happily established in Islamabad—my thanks for assisting in the inspiration; and my gratitude to Setsuko, too, for seeing matters through from that point to this, and for her farsightedness, kindly patience, and endless practical support.
I soon discovered I was not alone in sporting a fascination for the Atlantic. Anne-Flore Laloë, at the University of Exeter, was at the time writing a thesis on the history of European and American intellectual connections with the ocean, and she jumped at the chance to be helpful. We met first at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, in the company of two researcher-curators on staff there, Claire Warrior and John McAleer. These three experts then established the beginnings of a paper trail for me, suggesting directions, books, libraries, and all the other paraphernalia I would need for my subsequent journeying, and I am grateful to them beyond measure. Anne-Flore, now Dr. Laloë, remained an enthusiastic supporter throughout, sharing her thoughts and discoveries as she assembled her own monumental work.
Deborah Cramer, in Boston, and Richard Ellis, in New York, have each written a number of critically acclaimed books about this ocean specifically and about the seas more generally and the life within them. Both gave unstintingly of their time and advice, and I am delighted to acknowledge their generosity of spirit and depth and breadth of their maritime knowledge.
Ted Nield, an old friend at the Geological Society of London, has written extensively about the formation and brief existences of the supercontinents, and was able to lead me down the maze of winding passageways that runs for the millions of years between Ur and Pangaea and up to the present day. John Dewey, a former Oxford geology professor now with emeritus standing at the University of California–Davis, kindly offered his thoughts on zircons and the origins of the earth, and his advice was augmented by insights from Stephen Moorbath, still at Oxford; Bruce Watson at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York; John Rogers at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill; and by robust rebuttals from the much-respected British critic of plate tectonics, Joe McCall.
Chris Scotese, known for creating legendary tectonic visions at his PALEOMAP Project at the University of Texas–Arlington, offered his valuable time and expertise, too; we happily use, on pages 41 and 446, his impeccably crafted images of the imagined surface of the world as it probably once was and in time may well be.
Among others who took the time and trouble to help, I most gratefully mention: Amir Aczel in Cambridge, Massachusetts; David Agnew and Martin Collins, who, from their offices in London and the Falkland Islands respectively, gave wise counsel about the state of South Atlantic fisheries; Lesley Bellus and the staff of Wilderness Safaris in Windhoek, Namibia, who helped me with accommodation and logistics on the Skeleton Coast; Renee Braden, archivist of the National Geographic Society, who provided me with a wealth of early cartographic information; Kent Brooks of the University of Copenhagen, who advised about the ice conditions off the East Greenland c
oast; Penny Chisholm of MIT, to whom Amir Aczel introduced me, and who gave me the latest information on her phytoplanktonic discoveries; Charles Clover in London, who writes about the environmental impact of ocean fishing; Simon Day and Bill McGuire in London, experts on the possible impending collapse of the great Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands; Susan Eaton in Calgary and Gregory McHone of Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, who together helped me to understand the notion of congruent margins—the geological “fitting together”—around the North Atlantic coast; Chris Ehret of the University of California–Los Angeles, Curtis Marean of Arizona State University and Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania, who research the origins of humankind in southern Africa; Paul Falkowski of Rutgers University, who made a series of very specialized undersea Atlantic maps available to me; Dennis Feltgen and Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center in Miami; Ed Hill, director of the National Oceanographic Centre in Southampton, England; Ian Hogg of Tsawwassen, British Columbia, whose company I enjoyed in the South Atlantic and who later kindly read chapter 4, and as a former Royal Navy officer with a keen knowledge of warfare, made critical comments; Susana Lopez Lallana of Cordoba, Argentina, who made useful contacts for me on the Isla de los Estados; Paul Marston and Richard Goodfellow of British Airways in London, who arranged a detailed preflight briefing for me on the progress of Speedbird 113 between Heathrow and Kennedy airports; Captain Christopher Melhuish, USN (Ret.), former commander of the USS Constitution and now a civilian policy planner with U.S. Navy Fleet Forces HQ in Norfolk, Virginia; Eyda Merediz of the University of Maryland, who has written about the Canary Islands; David Morley, colonial administrator of the British territory of Tristan da Cunha; Iain Orr, a former British diplomat and now biodiversity champion in London; Alex Roland of Duke University, a specialist in the commercial shipping history of the North Atlantic; Jenny and Murray Sayle, now of Sydney, Australia, whose marriage essentially originated when Murray singlehanded his way most of the way across the ocean in a small yacht, comforted through the storms by Jenny on the radio in Newport, Rhode Island; Patricia Seed of the University of California–Irvine, who gave great help on early Portuguese navigators in the South Atlantic, especially Gil Eannes and the attempts to double Cape Bojador; Kirsten Shepherd-Barr of Oxford University, who led me into the byways of Faroese literature; Athena Trakadas, of the National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton, who explained in absorbing detail just how purple dye was extracted from the murex of Essaouira; Captain Robert Ward, a director of the International Hydrographic Organization in Monaco; and Mary Wills of the University of Hull, whose field is the study of the suppression of the slave trade.
I must thank Sir Richard Gozney, HM Governor of Bermuda, for his kindness as well as for the hospitality generously offered both by him and Lady Gozney on my visit to the Crown Colony at the time of the 400th anniversary of the island’s European settlement.