Neap tide

“ For instance, it will happen sometimes that when both the sun and moon are acting conjointly they will both be at their nearest point to the earth, and when this is the case the spring tide will be much higher than usual.
For many years the writer has observed that artesian wells, made by deep borings of small diameter into the earth to a water supply, have a daily period of ebb and flow, as well as a neap and spring tide, the same as the tides of the ocean, except that the process is reversed. ”

“ It seems as if the whole of the great sea was forever slowly rising or falling, up and down, with a slow and solemn motion.
Any boy who lives by the shore knows that this is the tide. He knows that all his fun depends on this regular rising and falling of the tide. At high tide the fishing is good. At low tide the flats are bare, and the boys can dig clams or watch the long-legged plovers wading about in the shallow water. This curious rising and falling of the tide is caused by the attraction of the moon. The sun also helps, but in a lesser degree. ”

“ I have often been out there in a dead calm at the slack of the tide; and a strange place it is, with the sea swirling and combing up and boiling like the cauldrons of a linn, and now and again a little dancing mutter of sound as though the Roost were talking to itself. But when the tide begins to run again, and above all in heavy weather, there is no man could take a boat within half a mile of it, nor a ship afloat that could either steer or live in such a place. ”

“ At low tide for miles out one sees only a vast plain, moist, strewn with shells, and intersected here and there with deep hollows and shifting sandbanks; but when the tide changes, and long before the waters appear in sight, are heard tremendous sounds, crash after crash, thunder after thunder, of the advancing tide, which comes in leaping like a huge monster, thirty to forty feet high, and breaks with terrific violence against the shore, carrying everything before it. ”

“ It did not check his progress; he was never one to be easily daunted. It was contrary to his very nature to seek shelter in a storm. He went swinging on to the very edge of the quay, and there stood facing the violence of the waves, the fierce turmoil of striving elements.
The tide was extraordinarily high—such a tide as he believed he had never seen before in summer. He stood in the pouring rain and looked first one way, then the other, with a quick birdlike scrutiny, but as far as his eyes could pierce he saw only an empty desolation of waters. ”

“ Extraordinarily high tides may be expected when the moon is new or full, and in her position nearest to the earth at the same time as her declination is near the equator, and they will be still further augmented if a strong gale has been blowing for some time in the same direction as the flood tide in the open sea, and then changes when the tide starts to rise, so as to blow straight on to the shore. ”

“ The air soft, and truly balmy, not like real air at all. It somehow fails to satisfy. Doesn’t seem to fill the lungs. By noon to St. Simon’s Sound, where we struck the fiercest of ebb tides. Nobody ever told me about these tides. There is a rise and fall of 7 feet and with kicker going strong and braced to a light air, we could not gain and over yank in deep water where we had to give 15 fath. scope. The tide was running better than 4 knots and that’s some tide. A beautiful afternoon and I boiled and roasted half a ham besides a duck which H. got yesterday on the wing with the rifle. ”

“ BEAUMONT QUAY
In May, when the sea-birds are hatching their young, the spring-tides are slack and do not cover the saltings. In a pretty figure of speech the fishermen call these tides the Bird Tides.
The lives of the fishermen are ruled by the tides. For them the working hours of the clock have no significance. On the first of the ebb, be it night or day, their work begins, and it is on the flood that they return to their homes. They have no leisure or liking for the time-devouring practice of sailing over a foul tide. The tide in the affairs of these men is absolute. ”

“ I don't know how the tides are, but if it is high tide now, the top of the opening would be eighteen inches out of water at low tide, for, as you know, the tide only rises about two feet on this coast. In that case a boat would be able to come in and out at low tide, but of course a man wanting to come in or go out could easily dive under at any time. Well, that settles that point for the present. It was a clever plan; any amount of water could flow out in flood time, and yet no one who took the trouble to come behind that ledge of rocks we saw would have any idea that there was an opening. ”

“ In considering the effect of the natural forces still in operation during the many thousands of years during which they have been at work, it is necessary to bear in mind that the level of the sea has all along remained the same, except so far as it is varied by the rise and fall of the tide, and by the exceptional exaggerations of tidal movement caused by the wind. ”

“ Along the dry shore of an ancient sea when the tide was out, rain-drops fell on the sand and dust. Tides often come in with a rush, in wild waves driven by the wind, but when there is no wind and no waves rolling in from far - 245 - distant storms the tide may overspread such delicate things as the imprint of rain-drops with a thin protecting film of mud. ”

“ And so we notice that for about six hours from the time when the tide begins to rise, the sea gains upon the land, either stealing on, step by step, over the pebbly beach, and creeping tip the mouths of the rivers, or, when the winds are abroad, rushing over the sand, and dashing against the rocks, as if it would sweep all before it. No power upon earth can stop that steady onward march of wave upon wave, until the unseen boundary is reached. ”

“ The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveller hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls ”

“ And it is probable the time is yet future when we shall have any theory that will fully account for all the phenomena of the tides. On account of the shallowness of some seas, and the narrowness of the straits in others, there arises a great diversity in the phenomena, only to be accounted for by an exact knowledge of the place. For instance, in the English channel and the German ocean, the tide is found to flow strongest in those places that are narrowest, the same quantity of water being, in this case, driven through a smaller passage. ”

“ If, however, the ball is hanging by a long string we can play at battledore and shuttlecock with it, and it always meets our blows. The latter is the analogue of the tides, for a free wave in our shallow canal Tides Inverted. goes slowly, whilst the moon's tide-generating action goes quickly. Hence when the system is left to settle into steady oscillation it is low-water under and opposite to the moon, whilst the forces are such as to tend to make high-water at those times. ”

“ I was at a strange loss to understand this, and resolved to spend some time in the observing it, to see if nothing from the sets of the tide had occasioned it; but I was presently convinced how it was - viz. that the tide of ebb setting from the west, and joining with the current of waters from some great river on the shore, must be the occasion of this current, and that, according as the wind blew more forcibly from the west or from the north, this current came nearer or went farther from the shore ”

“ If the theory of the tides was to be the simple one so often described, then at every port noon should be the hour of high water on the day of the new moon or of the full moon, because then both tide-exciting bodies are on the meridian at the same time. Even if the friction retarded the great tidal wave uniformly, the high tide on the days of full or change should always occur at fixed hours ”

“ Here accordingly the flood-tide—for this tide often retreats from the land and bursts back again over the beach coming on with a rush and roar—thrust them suddenly on to the innermost shore, and but little of the keel was left in the water. And they leapt forth from the ship, and sorrow seized them when they gazed on the mist and the levels of vast land stretching far like a mist and continuous into the distance; no spot for water, no path, no steading of herdsmen did they descry afar off, but all the scene was possessed by a dead calm. ”

“ Were it not for the moon, Sandy Hook would creep [Pg 772] slowly out over the shallow waters until it nearly reached Coney Island. The friendly tide comes sweeping in from the sea, and spreads far and wide over the bay. It fills miles and miles of bays and rivers with water, and then when the moon passes on, and the water can follow her no farther, it turns in a mighty flood, and scours and sweeps out all the channels. The outflowing tide is a big broom to brush away the sand and mud, and keep the front door of our port open to all the ships of the world. ”

“ It is sometimes possible to effect the desired end by applying the power of the tide. A sea-wall judiciously thrown out will sometimes concentrate the tide into a much narrower channel. Its daily oscillations will be accomplished with greater vehemence, and as the tide rushes furiously backwards and forwards over the obstacle, the incessant action will gradually remove it, and the impediment to navigation may be cleared away. Here we actually see the tides performing a piece of definite and very laborious work, to accomplish which by the more ordinary agents would be a stupendous task. ”

“ It would be an easy matter to pull out and back before there should be any change in the weather. Six of the best oarsmen in the place, therefore, set off on the last of the tide in the gray dawn. They pulled a steady stroke, and the swiftly ebbing tide seemed to fairly shoot them along and out across the bar. When well outside they turned southward, and those watching from the shore could note the small boat rise and fall with the swell of the sea. ”

“ You must understand, then, that all tide takes its rise in the free and open ocean under the action of the moon. No ordinary-sized sea like the North Sea, or even the Mediterranean, is big enough for more than a just appreciable tide to be generated in it. The Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Southern Oceans are the great tidal reservoirs, and in them the tides of the earth are generated as low flat humps of gigantic area, though only a few feet high, oscillating up and down in the period of approximately twelve hours. ”

“ Rufus went on as if he had not spoken. "There's danger all along that beach as far as the Spear Point. Adam will tell you the same. When it's a spring tide there's times when there's such a swell that it's round the Point and over the pool like a tidal wave. You'll hear the bell-buoy tolling when there's a swell like that. We call it the Death Current hereabouts, because there's nothing could live in it, and the bell always tolls. And once it comes up like that the way to the cliff-path is under water in less than thirty seconds. And the quicksand is the only chance left." ”

“ A heavy flood tide was setting through it against the northeast gale, which raised a heavy sea. The waves reared as if about to fall backward, while the wind tore off their white curling tops and carried them away in the form of gray scud. Never before have I seen the sea in so hearty and exhilarating a motion. ”

“ This termagant humor is said to prevail only at half tides. At low water it is as pacific as any other stream. As the tide rises, it begins to fret; at half tide it rages and roars as if bellowing for more water; but when the tide is full it relapses again into quiet, and for a time seems almost to sleep as soundly as an alderman after dinner. It may be compared to an inveterate hard drinker, who is a peaceable fellow enough when he has no liquor at all, or when he has a skin full, but when half seas over plays the very devil. ”

“ The tides of the sea—as the two great flowings and ebbings of the water every twenty-four hours are called—are caused principally by the attractive influence of the moon, which, to a small extent, lifts the waters of the ocean towards it, as it passes over them, and thus causes a high wave. This wave, or current, when it swells up on the land, forms high tide. When the moon’s influence has completely passed away, it is low tide. ”

“ The only time that any difficulty is encountered, is when the freshes, after heavy rains up the country, add their strength to that of the ebbing tide, which then runs out at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour, and encounters a gale from seaward, for this causes the water to break right across, and vessels must await the turn of the tide to get in ”

“ But the tide was still rising, and very soon the biggest waves began to come quite over the rocks, rolling the big beasts over and even washing them off, and it angered them when the waves struck them, and they roared aloud, and by and by they began to go away, some disappearing beneath the water, others with heads above the surface swimming away out into the open sea, until all were gone. ”

“ It is well known that where there are deep Inlets, large Creeks, etc., into low lands, that it is not occasioned by fresh water Rivers; there is a very great indraught of the Flood Tide, the direction of which will be determin'd according to the possition or direction of the Coast which forms the Entrance into such Inlets; and this direction the Tide must follow, let it be ever so contrary to their general Course out at Sea, and where the Tides are weak, as they are in general upon this Coast, a large Inlet will, if I may so call it, attract the Flood tide for many Leagues. ”