Baltic Sea

“ While the countries bordering on the Mediterranean were blessed with a fertile soil and a mild climate, those on the Baltic were comparatively barren and ungenial; their inhabitants, therefore, induced by their situation to attend to maritime affairs, were further led to employ their skill and power by sea, in endeavouring to establish themselves in more favored countries, or, at least, to draw from them by plunder, what they could not obtain in their own. ”

“ The behavior of the Baltic as a sea-boat, is admirable in every variety of weather. This immense vessel rides upon the waves like a duck, and has, in general, a dry and comfortable deck, rarely shipping a sea, although the spray dashes over the forecastle in showers. The ship is warmed by steam tubes, passing under the marble tables. More than fifty persons are employed about the machinery, of whom forty-eight attend to the coal and the fires, and there are six or eight engineers. ”

“ From time to time questions of adding to existing neutralized areas are raised. When it was announced in 1905 that a British fleet was about to manœuvre in the Baltic Sea, several German newspapers suggested that Germany should combine with other Baltic powers to assure its neutralization. [9] No official observation on the subject, however, was made on the part of any Baltic power. The Baltic is still an open sea for the whole world, without restriction of any kind ”

“ Ever they hear the floe-pack clear, and the blast of the old bull-whale,
And the deep seal-roar that beats off-shore above the loudest gale.
Ever they wait the winter's hate as the thundering boorga calls,
Where northward look they to St. George, and westward to St. Paul's.
Ever they greet the hunted fleet—lone keels off headlands drear—
When the sealing-schooners flit that way at hazard year by year.
Ever in Yokohama port men tell the tale anew
⁠Of a hidden sea and a hidden fight,
⁠When the Baltic ran from the Northern Light
And the Stralsund fought the two. ”

“ And in the first place, the Baltic herself is unquestionably one of the safest and most commodious sea-boats in the world. She is probably not the fastest, especially with a strong head wind and sea, because of her great bulk and the area of resistance she presents both above and below the water-line; but for strength and excellence of construction, steadiness of movement, and perfection of accommodations, she can have no superior. ”

“ At the time of the formation of these mounds, the Baltic was a true sea, or an arm of the ocean, and these mollusks were taken from it. Now the Baltic has not the character of a true sea, but is merely brackish, and the oyster does not occur in the Baltic except at its entrance into the ocean. ”

“ Bismarck once rightly described the Baltic Sea as “a hole,” in which a German290 fleet could be easily shut up. The Baltic Canal was cut by the Germans as a way, and a short way, out of that hole; but the new British strategic base at Dover, closing the English Channel to the passage either way of a hostile fleet, has, together with other naval bases, constructed, or constructing, along the East Coast and up to the extreme north of Scotland, and in the Orkneys, rendered the North Sea itself something of a “hole,” on a larger scale. ”

“ The Baltic appears to have been formed by some most extraordinary convulsions, which have given it a character of its own. It has no ebb and flow, its saltness is far less than that of the North Sea, and decreases gradually towards the east ”

“ MR. WILTON. "They do not often cross the water in ships, but transact nearly all their business with the opposite shores, during the four months when the waters of this sea, which has no tides, is firmly frozen, and when they can travel across in sledges, comfortably defended from the inclemency of the weather. The Baltic being full of low coasts and shoals, galleys of a flat construction are found more serviceable than ships of war, and great attention is paid to their equipment by Sweden as well as Russia. ”

“ The sea which is of most importance to Russia is the Baltic, with its gulfs of Bothnia, Riga, and Finland. The chief Russian ports are to be found situated on its banks, and yet it can in no respect be regarded as a purely Russian sea.
The chief islands of the Baltic are: the Aland Archipelago, Dago, Oesel, Mohn, Hochland, and Kotlin, which contains the fortress of Cronstadt.
The Black Sea is becoming of more and more importance every year. The coast lands are being developed, and as the produce of the interior becomes greater so the importance of the Black Sea increases. ”

“ And at last she came to a sandy cove and the Baltic lay therein,
But her men were up with the herding seal to drive and club and skin.
There were fifteen hundred skins abeach, cool pelt and proper fur,
When the Northern Light drove into the bight and the sea-mist drove with her.
The Baltic called her men and weighed—she could not choose but run—
For a stovepipe seen through the closing mist, it shows like a four-inch gun
(And loss it is that is sad as death to lose both trip and ship
And lie for a rotting contraband on Vladivostock slip) . ”

“ Her seaboard upon the North Sea is a maze of shallows and sandbanks, through which devious channels leading to her naval and commercial bases are kept open only by continuous dredging. God has made Plymouth Sound, Spithead and the Firth of Forth; the Devil, it is alleged, has been responsible for Scapa and the Pentland Firth in winter; but man, German man, has made the navigable mouths of the Elbe, the Weser and the Ems. The Baltic is an inland sea upon which the coasting trade had for centuries been mainly in the hands of Scandinavians. ”

“ The coast of the Baltic is rocky only in the island-studded region at the head of the Baltic basin proper—a submerged lake-district—and the littoral generally is a typical morainic land, the work of the last great Baltic glacier. The southern margin of the Baltic is of peculiar interest. From Schleswig eastwards to Lübeck Bay the coast is pierced by a number of narrow openings or Fohrden, the result of encroachment of the sea caused by subsidence. ”

“ The water of the Baltic is colder and clearer than that of the ocean, and contains only a fourth of the proportion of salt found in the Atlantic. Ice hinders the navigation of the Baltic from three to five months yearly. ”

“ The circulation in the channels connecting the Baltic proper with the North Sea is of a complex character. It is necessary in the first place to distinguish clearly between outflowing and inflowing waters; in practice this is easily done, as the outflowing water always contains less than 30 parts pro mille of salt, and the inflowing water more than 32 pro mille. The Baltic receives much more water by rainfall, discharge of rivers, &c., than it loses by evaporation; hence a surplus must be got rid of by an outflowing current which may be named the "Baltic Stream." ”

“ The entrance to the Baltic, he says [iv. 11] , “between Aalborg, a headland of Denmark [i.e., the Skaw] , and the skerries of Nortmannia [Norway] , is so narrow that boats easily sail across it in one night.”
The Land of Women
There are in the Baltic [iv. 19] “many other islands, all full of savage barbarians, and therefore they are shunned by sailors. On the shores of the Baltic Sea the Amazons are also said to live in the country which is now called the Land of Women (‘terra feminarum’) .” ”

“ Its shallowness and narrowness, its numerous islands and reefs, the shoal coasts of Prussia on the one side, and the rocky coast of Sweden on the other, make the navigation of the Baltic very dangerous. ”

“ They are placed nearly fifty feet above the sea. At Nice, similar banks occur at nearly the same elevation; the coasts of Sicily, Greece, and Asia Minor, give similar evidence.
Both on the Baltic and the Atlantic coasts of the Scandinavian peninsula, phenomena of the same nature have been long known and rendered famous by the relation they bear to the hypothesis of the gradual subsidence of the level of the Baltic. Von Buch, Brongniart, Strom, Lyell, and Forchhammer have investigated the facts with attention and success. ”

“ So long as her fleet remained intact, it controlled the Baltic by virtue of an interior line through the Kiel Canal, thus providing a strangle hold on Russia and free access to northern neutrals. Only by dangerous division of forces, or by leaving the road to England and the Atlantic open, could the British fleet enter the Baltic Sea. England it is true had a superior navy (perhaps less superior than was commonly thought) , and a position of singular advantage between Germany and the overseas world. But for her the maintenance of naval superiority was absolutely essential. ”

“ Let us now look a little more closely at the history and the fauna of the Baltic and the adjoining lakes, in order to gain additional information as to the geographical changes which have had such lasting influence on the peninsula of Scandinavia. The Baltic is a shallow sea covering an area of 184,496 square miles, and its waters are decidedly brackish. The fauna is a poor one, being too salt for the purely freshwater species and not salt enough for the typical marine forms. ”

“ All this extent of water, which forms the Baltic Sea, the gulphs of Bothnia, Finland, and Livonia, must be looked upon as one great lake, supported by a great number of rivers which it receives, as the Oder, the Vistula, the Niemen, the Droine, in Germany and Poland; other rivers in Livonia and Finland; others still greater, which come from Lapland, Tornea, the Calis, Lula, Pithea, Uma, and many others that come from Sweden. ”

“ From the Baltic this form of boat may have spread to Norway, where it gradually attained its greatest perfection; and it is worth remarking that in that very district where the Baltic type of boat derived from the south-east reached a coast with superior harbours, richer fisheries, and better opportunities for longer sea voyages, namely, in Bohuslen and Viken, we find also the greater number of rock-carvings with representations of ships. ”

“ The Baltic is enclosed all round by European coasts; [Pg 28] the Black and Caspian Seas belong to both Europe and Asia; while the Mediterranean lies between the three continents of the Old World—Europe, Asia, and Africa. Now the Baltic, Black, and Caspian Seas are of about the same size, each having an area about three times that of England and Wales. The Baltic is connected with the Atlantic by several sounds between the Danish islands and Scania. The Black Sea has only one outlet, the Bosporus. The Caspian Sea has no outlet at all, and is really a lake. ”

“ A line of levels from Swinemünde through Eger to the Adriatic showed the Level.mean level of the surface of the Baltic to be 0·499 metres (1·6 ft.) above that of the Adriatic Sea. The mean level of the surface of the Baltic rises about 0·5 metres (1·6 ft.) from the coast of Holstein to Memel, probably as a result of the prevailing westerly winds; this mean difference is exceeded with strong westerly winds, and disappears or is reversed with easterly winds. The waves of the Baltic are usually short and irregular, often dangerous to navigation. ”

“ The “Sallust” map at Geneva, of about 1450, is also antiquated, but its Baltic resembles the compass-charts, and the two mountain ridges, one along the north coast of the continent, the other parallel with it in the interior, strongly recall Vesconte’s map of the world. On the other hand, the connection by water between the Baltic and Mæotis (the Sea of Azov) is evidently derived from an earlier age (cf. p. 199) . Out in the ocean to the north-west and west of Norway lie four islands. ”

“ The Sound being the only frequented entrance to the Baltic, the great Mediterranean of the North, few parts of the sea display so frequent a navigation. In the height of the season not fewer than a hundred vessels pass every four-and-twenty hours for many weeks in succession; but never had so busy or so splendid a scene been exhibited there as on this day, when the British fleet prepared to force that passage where, till now, all ships had vailed their topsails to the flag of Denmark. ”

“ The place cannot now be identified, as the formation of the Baltic coast has been much modified in the course of subsequent centuries, partly by the gradual silting up of the sea, and partly by the storms of the 14th century. ”

“ Ships from the Baltic, which have not made the land, are often driven off the coast, from the caution they are obliged to take, in consequence of their not knowing what their situation is respecting this rock; which, from being covered early in the tide, and having little or no sea or breakers on it in moderate weather, the wind being off the shore, the soundings are no guide whatever; for, within one mile of the south-east side, the depth of water is 32 fathoms, (the general soundings on the coast) ”

“ In this way it is very probable that the boulders which lie scattered over the surface of the countries south of the Baltic were transported from Scandinavia and Finland on ice-shoals, at a time when the East Sea yet spread over those regions. Banks also are thrown up along the shore by the ice; they are never composed of large stones, but on flat sandy shores principally of sand. ”

“ Then while the boat was gliding along the river between flat banks he had completely forgotten officer Peterson's interrogatory; and all that had gone before, his sweet, sad, and regretful dreams during the night, the walk he had taken, the sight of the walnut-tree,--these had again become powerful in his soul. And now that the sea opened out he saw from afar the shore on which as a boy he had been privileged to listen to the summer dreams of the sea; saw the gleam of the light-house and the lights of the seashore hotel where he had stayed with his parents ... The Baltic! ”