Atlantic Ocean

“ Could the waters of the Atlantic be drawn off, so as to expose to view this great sea-gash, which separates continents, and extends from the Arctic to the Antarctic, it would present a scene the most rugged, grand, and imposing. The very ribs of the solid earth, with the foundations of the sea, would be brought to light, and we should have presented to us at one view the empty cradle of the ocean.... ”

“ The Atlantic it certainly was. Not a rood of land lay between us and America. Yet the illimitable ocean "where the great ships go down," rolled in to our feet in baby ripples, disporting itself harmlessly, and tempting my two little mermaids to swim out to the utmost limit that prudence allowed. And how delightful it was to run back barefoot across the soft sand to the beautiful dressing-room of serpentine rock, where one could sit and watch the glittering sea, untroubled by any company save the gulls and cormorants. ”

“ NED’S TERRIBLE PERIL.
Beneath the Electric Monarch, soaring eagle-like far above it, a glimmering speck against the blue, lay the Atlantic. The ocean was in a calm mood. Viewed from above, its surface appeared to be as smooth as a mirror.
But Jack knew that appearances were deceptive. The Atlantic is never absolutely at rest. Even on the calmest days its bosom heaves with long, swinging swells, running shoreward to break in heavy, thunderous surf on the beach. ”

“ The deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean.—The greatest depths at which the bottom of the sea has been reached with the plummet are in the North Atlantic Ocean, and the places where it has been fathomed do not show it to be deeper than twenty-five thousand feet. ”

“ Here, then, we have the backbone of the ancient continent which once occupied the whole of the Atlantic Ocean, and from whose washings Europe and America were constructed; the deepest parts of the ocean, 3500 fathoms deep, represent those portions which sunk first, to wit, the plains to the east and west of the central mountain range; some of the loftiest peaks of this range—the Azores, St. Paul's, Ascension, Tristan d'Acunha—are still above the ocean level; while the great body of Atlantis lies a few hundred fathoms beneath the sea. ”

“ Atlantic Ocean.—On the Atlantic there are more ships than on any other ocean, because Europe and North America, which lie on either side of it, carry on more trade than the other continents. Ships, carrying passengers and goods, are constantly crossing this ocean. ”

“ Your readers will possibly comprehend that the Atlantic, in this parable, stands for the mighty ocean of ether through which we drift and that the bunch of corks represents the little and obscure planetary system to which we belong. A third-rate sun, with its rag tag and bobtail of insignificant satellites, we float under the same daily conditions towards some unknown end, some squalid catastrophe which will overwhelm us at the ultimate confines of space, where we are swept over an etheric Niagara or dashed upon some unthinkable Labrador. ”

“ The genii of the four great oceans dominate the scene. They are mounted upon cavorting marine monsters and surrounded by the smaller waters, fearlessly playing, head-downwards, upon dolphins about to dive. The Atlantic Ocean faces East ”

“ As it is with elevations of the earth's surface, so it is with bodies of water; they may be connected together without being the same thing. The Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea are connected together at the Straits of Gibraltar ”

“ It is found in the Roman writers and in the Greek geographers of the Roman period, sometimes for the whole body of water surrounding the earth, and sometimes with epithets which mark the application of the word to the Atlantic Ocean, which is also called simply Oceanus; while, on the other hand, the epithet Atlanticus is found applied to the Ocean in its wider sense, that is, to the whole body of water surrounding the three continents. ”

“ In all probability they will be weeks of infinite content and delight, for the southern half of the Atlantic Ocean is milder in her moods than the northern half, and there will be a sufficient number of stops en route to relieve the journey of monotony. ”

“ It is true that in the case of the Atlantic Ocean he assumes that only a portion of its width is due to the dragging away of the American block, whilst the remainder has been submerged and forms the elevation in the floor of the Middle Atlantic. ”

“ There is the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean: and yet there are not three oceans, but one ocean. The Atlantic Ocean is not the Indian Ocean, nor is the Indian Ocean the Pacific Ocean: they are all together the one universal ocean—"the ocean". ”

“ It is simply a part of the Atlantic Ocean, adjoining the coast of Europe between latitudes 43° 46′ and 48° 28′. I have not been able to ascertain that the wind blows harder, or that the sea runs higher there than elsewhere in the same latitudes, and am inclined to rank the prejudice against that particular tract of sea-water among vulgar errors.
The adventurer who has attempted to open up a trade with some distant region is accustomed, as he returns home, to count up the profits of his expedition ”

“ The belief that there can ever have been such an island in that part of the Atlantic is disposed of by the fact that the ocean there is nowhere less than two miles in depth. See the beautiful map of the Atlantic sea-bottom in Alexander Agassiz's Three Cruises of the Blake, Boston, 1888, vol. ”

“ All recent observations, he said, have shown that the vast expanse of water which has its centre in the southern hemisphere is the one great ocean of the world, and the Atlantic with the Arctic Sea, and the North Pacific, are merely its northward-extending gulfs: any physical phenomena affecting obviously one portion of its area must be regarded as one-of an interdependent system of phenomena affecting the ocean as a whole. ”

“ In the meantime the Atlantic is to us a practically permanent ocean, varying only in its tides, its currents, and its winds, which science has already reduced to definite laws, so that we can use if we cannot regulate them. ”

“ To one who really loves the ocean, the return to it after a period of exile on the land, is an indescribable satisfaction. There was at least one of our crew who experienced this emotion as our staunch little craft turned her nose to the blue water, and with all sail set and lee rail almost under water, leaped away from the petty restrictions of the shore into the practically limitless expanse of the Atlantic. In a week we were on the fishing ground and sentiment gave way to business. ”

“ The remote oceanic islands of the Atlantic Ocean, measuring only a few square miles in area, have a location so independent of other inhabited lands, that before the period of the great discoveries they had never appeared on the horizon of man. ”

“ The principal currents in the Atlantic run to and fro between the equator and the Northern Ocean. In the Pacific they run between the equator and the southern seas. In the Atlantic the tides are high, in the Pacific they are low. The Pacific feeds the clouds with vapours, and the clouds feed the Atlantic with rain for its rivers. If the volume of rain which is discharged into the Pacific and on its slopes be represented by 1, that discharged upon the hydrographical basin of the Atlantic into the Atlantic would be represented by 5. The Atlantic is crossed daily by steamers, the Pacific rarely. ”

“ We have come now nearly 3,000 miles through the Atlantic, and if someone had not been over the route before and we did not believe that land would appear at a certain time it would certainly look as if the ocean would never end. ”

“ If you will look at a globe, or, if you have not a globe, at a map of the world, turning the South Pole from you, or uppermost, and, supposing yourself to be in a ship, sail across the Atlantic Ocean till you come to the Equator, which is an imaginary line that divides the northern half of the globe from the southern; then "cross the line," as it is called, and sail along the South Atlantic, in the direction of the coast of South America, till you arrive at its southern extremity, which you will see is called Cape Horn ”

“ Economy ::Atlantic Ocean
Economy - overview:
The Atlantic Ocean provides some of the world's most heavily trafficked sea routes, between and within the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Other economic activity includes the exploitation of natural resources, e.g., fishing, dredging of aragonite sands (The Bahamas) , and production of crude oil and natural gas (Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and North Sea) . ”

“ Modern writers bring weighty evidence to prove that the tradition handed down to us by the ancient philosophers, of a submerged continent, occupying a portion of the area covered by the Atlantic Ocean, was scientific truth. If one continent sank, another must have arisen to balance it. ”

“ When I'm playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales! I scratch my head with the lightning, and purr myself to sleep with the thunder! ”

“ But this is effecting our purposes by means that belong only to stout-hearted mariners, since none but those who are familiar with the ocean, skilful pilots, and obedient and ready seamen, can traverse the waters, without better guides than the knowledge of the stars, currents, winds, and other phenomena of the Atlantic, and such aids as may be gleaned from science. The reason on which I act, is a conviction that the earth is round, whence it followeth that the Atlantic, which we know to possess an eastern boundary of land, must also have a western ”

“ In the writings of the ancients we find reference made to an island which, if it ever did exist, now exists no longer. It was situated opposite the Straits of Gibraltar, was nearly two hundred miles in length, and was called "Atlantis"—hence the name of the Atlantic Ocean. Many believe, and with some reason, we think, that this island was not altogether a myth, although much that is said of it is undoubtedly fabulous. ”

“ I have never seen any more difficulty in erecting light-houses on the lakes, than on the ocean; in improving the harbors of inland seas, than if they were within the ebb and flow of the tide; or in removing obstructions in the vast streams of the West, more than in any work to facilitate commerce on the Atlantic coast. If there be any power for one, there is power also for the other ”

“ Atlantic, The, the most important, best known, most traversed and best provided for traffic of all the oceans on the globe, connecting, rather than separating, the Old World and the New; covers nearly one-fifth of the surface of the earth; length 9000 m., its average breadth 2700 m.; its average depth 15,000 ft., or from 3 to 5 m., with waves in consequence of greater height and volume than those of any other sea.
Atlan′tis, an island alleged by tradition to have existed in the ocean W. of the Pillars of Hercules ”

“ Where the central oceanic buckle attains the water-line we have our oceanic islands, seen in our type ocean, as St Helena and the Azores. Although the apparent crust-waves are neither equal in size nor symmetrical in form, this complementary relationship between them is always discernible. The broad Pacific depression seems to answer to the broad elevation of the Old World—the narrow trough of the Atlantic to the narrow continent of America. ”

“ The Atlantic occupies a long, winding, comparatively narrow trough, that measures about ten thousand miles north and south, from the ice of the Antarctic to the ice of the Arctic ocean, and has only a few islets south of Iceland, the Faroes and the Shetlands, which rise from a plateau stretching from Labrador to Great Britain, the higher points of which were probably above the water within comparatively recent geological times, possibly since man appeared upon the globe. ”

“ The reason undoubtedly is, that the coasts of those countries are washed by enclosed seas, which naturally cannot be compared with the ocean; whilst the countries themselves, especially Germany and France—and the latter even in spite of its extent of coast towards the Atlantic—have an unmistakeable continental character. It is clear, moreover, that the ocean, as well as the smaller and enclosed seas, have, according to the difference of latitude, an entirely different influence on the people who inhabit their shores. ”

“ Suffice it to say, that the facts which we already have, indicate that the south-east trades, both of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans are fresher than the north-east trades of the Atlantic, May we infer from this that the south-east trades of the Pacific are also fresher than the north-east trades of that ocean? If we may so infer, and be right, then there is another step which we may take with boldness, and pronounce the atmospherical circulation of the southern hemisphere to be much more active than that of the northern. ”

“ That the tides may have their full motion, the ocean in which they are produced ought to be extended from east to west 90°, or a quarter of a great circle of the earth, at least; because the places where the moon raises most, and most depresses the water, are at that distance from one another. Hence it appears, that it is only in the great oceans that such tides can be produced, and why, in the large Pacific ocean, they exceed those in the Atlantic. ”

“ While the prevalence of certain winds, and the form of the coast of South-America, are favorable to a direct trade with the continent of North-America, they are such as to compel the commerce with Europe to pass along our shores, and thus constitute our Atlantic seaports so many stopping places at which the ships of the old world may touch in their voyages to and fro. ”

“ The eastern tendency of the water in the northen part of the north Atlantic, due to the prime moving force mentioned above and independent of the winds which prevail there, causes the surface of the ocean in the latitude of Newfoundland to be somewhat depressed below the general level next to the coast, which also adds to the force of the Gulf-stream. ”