Sea wall

“ The stone-works which have been built against the inroads of the sea consist first of all of several steep steps; then comes a slightly inclined plane, then again they rise a step, which is once more succeeded by a gently ascending surface, and last of all comes a perpendicular wall with an overhanging coping—over these steps—over these planes the raging sea rises until in extraordinary cases it even dashes over the highest wall with its projecting head. ”

“ He climbed the companionway stairs to the poop, and shut the scuttle behind him—for the rain was flooding the cabin—then looked around. The shore and horizon were hidden by a dense wall of gray, which seemed not a hundred feet distant. From to windward this wall was detaching great waves or sheets of almost solid water, which bombarded the ship in successive blows, to be then lost in the gray whirl to leeward. Overhead was the same dismal hue, marked by hurrying masses of darker cloud, and below was a sea of froth, white and flat; for no waves could rise their heads in that wind. ”

“ There may, however, be a dozen places possible in the world where it could be advantageous to build a sea-wall across the mouth of a natural basin or estuary, and to utilize the tidal energy of filling it and emptying it by means of sluices and water-wheels. ”

“ A sea wall has been built a mile along the shore southwest of the jetty, and forms, in fine weather, a most delightful promenade, but, being away from the fashionable quarter of the town, is seldom patronised by the swells. ”

“ Many of us have thought that our sea-wall is a specially divine arrangement to make and keep us a nation of sea-kings after the manner of our forefathers, secure against invasion and able to invade other lands when we need them, though they may lie on the other side of the ocean. ”

“ Besides a sea wall extending at intervals round the western base of the rock, and strengthened by curtains and bastions and three formidable forts, there are batteries in all available positions from the sea wall up to the summit, 1,350 feet above the sea, and a remarkable series of galleries has been hewn out of the solid face of the rock toward the north and northwest. ”

“ Then take the natural division into blocks made by joints in the rocks to which cliffs like the famous Castle Head at Bar Harbor owes its striking form. These blocks are so nearly true that you feel sure they must have been cut by stone-masons, and yet they have the variety which art demands; they have not the monotonous sameness of - 229 - shape of the bricks in a wall. This is mainly due to the differences in the strains which cracked the original rock mass. So, from the beginning a sea-wall built by nature is more picturesque than a sea-wall built by man. ”

“ As a sea wall it may have this advantage that a wave striking the stones from without acts like driving a wedge home, but it possess this great defect that it does not afford solidity or strength which is the great disederatum in any construction exposed to the force of waves. ”

“ With the growth of commerce32 one section after another could be added to meet the needs. The front sea wall should be built of stone or concrete, while the transverse wall between the sea wall and the land side should be built of sand and bush mattress as a temporary structure to be removed in case of the extension of the harbor. Once a harbor is formed there need be no trouble regarding the future conservancy work, for there is no silt-carrying water in the vicinity by which the harbor and its approaches may be silted up afterwards. ”

“ The main difficulty in maintaining an efficient sea-wall would seem to be to have an outer footing adequate to break the first violence of the incoming bore and to prevent the undermining of the foundations of the main bunding—in fact it would seem essential that the tides should be entirely kept from entering behind the wall. ”

“ A powerful searchlight has of recent years been added to the equipment of the relieving steamer, and is of much advantage in the guidance of the boats, though it has the peculiarity of grossly exaggerating the tempestuous appearance of the sea. The sea, which on the evening of the relief was comparatively calm, was the next day rolling down on us like a solid wall, and viewed from the balcony in all its magnificent grandeur what a puny, frail, unstable structure our habitation seemed in comparison. ”

“ Therefore he spake, and thus said he:— "Like unto ships far off at sea, Outward or homeward bound, are we. Before, behind, and all around, Floats and swings the horizon's bound, Seems at its distant rim to rise And climb the crystal wall of the skies, And then again to turn and sink, As if we could slide from its outer brink. Ah! it is not the sea, It is not the sea that sinks and shelves, But ourselves That rock and rise With endless and uneasy motion, Now touching the very skies, Now sinking into the depths of ocean. Ah! ”

“ The building of these massive sea-walls is a work of great labour and expense, for what seems to be an impregnable embankment, perhaps 30 feet high and 90 feet broad, solid and strong enough to resist the most violent breakers, will be undermined and fall to pieces in a few hours, if not made in the proper way. A digue, no matter how thick, which rests on the sand alone will not last. ”

“ By making a sloping bank to a certain height and then building a perpendicular wall upon it.—Now if the 1st of these constructions could be arranged, I have no doubt that it would be the best of all, because a sea does not break against a perpendicular face, but recoils in an unbroken swell, merely making a slow quiet push at the wall, and not making a violent impact. ”

“ If the Etesian wind blowing from the north-west in summer, could heap up the sea as a wall, on the right, or to the south, of fifty feet high, still the difficulty would remain, of building the wall on the left hand, or to the north. ”

“ It is evident from the prevalence of this succession of deposits within the hollow centres of the islets, that the sea has washed in the fragmentary materials of the outer margins, by a more than ordinary rise of the waters, and laid them in pretty equal strata at distant intervals of time, so that the centres have risen in height as the sea walls have been built and cemented up. ”

“ Seen from the Table-Rock, the tumbling green waters of the rapids, which persuade you that an ocean is approaching, the brilliant color of the water, the frightful gulf, and headlong torrent at your feet, the white column rising from its centre, and often reaching to the clouds, the black wall of rock frowning from the opposite island, and the long curtain of foam descending from the other shore, interrupted only by one dark shaft, form altogether one of the most beautiful, as well as awful scenes in nature. ”

“ If he takes a position where the water surrounds him—as at the mast-head of a ship out of sight of land, or on the summit of a small island far from the mainland, the surface of the sea appears to rise up on all sides equally and to surround him like the walls of an immense amphitheatre. He seems to be in the centre of a large concavity, the edges of which expand or contract as he takes a higher or lower position. ”

“ I never beheld a lovelier dome of sky, so tender in glory and rich in delicate perfections of tints. The sea spread in a firm dark line to it like a blue floor under some mighty roof of marble; the sun’s wake came in a misty stream of light to the port bends of the yacht, where it was flashed by the mirror-like wet blackness of the glossy side back deep into the brimming azure of the brine in a great puff of radiance that made one think of a cloud of brightly illuminated steam ascending from the depths. ”

“ Thus our simple hypothesis acquires the majesty of truth, for we are now prepared boldly to assert we know that the sea has its system of circulation, because it transports materials for the coral insect and its rock from one part of the world to another; because its currents receive them from the rivers, and hand them over to the little mason for the structure of the most stupendous works of solid masonry that man has ever seen—the coral islands of the sea. ”

“ Have you seen an old grey stone on the seashore, when at high tide, on a sunny day of spring, the living waves break upon it on all sides—break and frolic and caress it—and sprinkle over its sea-mossed head the scattered pearls of sparkling foam? ”

“ At the foot of the vertical walls of rock are tiny sandy bays for ever cut off from the foot of man even at low tide, and inaccessible to all save the sea-birds, who well know it! My mind brings back visions of great pieces of rock, torn and ripped from their hold, and apparently flung pell-mell on the beach. ”

“ Not only barriers and reefs owe their origin to these humble means, but large lands, stretching for miles in the centre of the ocean, rise gradually from beneath the surface of the sea, and, becoming clothed with verdure and vegetation, at last offer a resting-place for the daring seafarer. ”

“ Land in sight when I awake at 5 a.m., a grey streak across the oval of the port. With what intense satisfaction we gaze on the line of barren rock, which has a suspicion of green horizon on the summit of the grey cliffs, only those can picture who have been at sea for some time. ”

“ Elsewhere there are long shelves of rock which are never more than half-covered by the waves, and wildernesses of huge boulders, worn into all sorts of fantastic shapes, among which on calm days the sea winds itself into curiously fascinating pools and channels, where in storms there is a welter of foam and spray and angry water. ”

“ The ocean, in its action upon the cliffs and banks situated on the coast, breaks them down to a greater or less extent, and either accumulates the debris at their basis in the form of sea beaches of greater or less magnitude, or by currents carries it away to be deposited upon other shores, or to give rise to sand-banks near the coast, which, in the course of time, become united to the land, and thus secure it from the further action of the sea. ”

“ Along its land edges, the sea is constantly working on the shore—sometimes gently, sometimes violently—breaking down rock cliffs, opening bays and harbors, closing channels and inlets, smashing breakwaters and seawalls, and moving sand up and down and to and from beaches. ”

“ When considering the bottom of the ocean, we have, in the imagination, been disposed to regard the waters of the sea as a great cushion, placed between the air and the bottom of the ocean to protect and defend it from these abrading agencies of the atmosphere. ”

“ Solid as the ground appears, all is subject to elemental change and motion; and whenever the waves of the sea or the strong current of a river can plough some crumbling chine, or wear away the face of a cliff, down come the imbedded pebbles and crystals, and gradually form a beach upon the margin of the ocean. ”

“ Where a coast land emerges the—shore line moves seaward; where it is being submerged the shore line advances on the land.
Shores of elevation. The retreat of the sea, either because of a local uplift of the land or for any other reason, such as the lowering of any portion of ocean bottom, lays bare the inner margin of the sea floor. Where the sea floor has long received the waste of the land it has been built up to a smooth, subaqueous plain, gently shelving from the land. ”

“ Again quoting Sir Archibald Geikie:—"The materials carried down to the sea would arrange themselves then as they do still, the coarser portions nearest the shore, the finer silt and mud furthest from it. From the earliest geological times the great area of deposit has been, as it still is, the marginal belt of sea-floor skirting the land. It is there that nature has always strewn the dust of continents to be." ”

“ The coast is so narrow at this spot that there are but a few paces' breadth between the façade of the building and the sea, so that, in order to have a fair view of the whole, one must take a boat and put out from the shore until the proper point of view is found. Now it is not every one who will be disposed to take this trouble solely for the purpose of appreciating the effect of a façade. ”

“ The heights of our land are thus levelled with our shores, our fertile plains are formed from the ruins of the mountains; and those travelling materials are still pursued by the moving water, and propelled along the inclined surface of the earth. These movable materials, delivered into the sea, cannot, for a long continuance, rest upon the shore, for by the agitation of the winds, the tides, and the currents every movable thing is carried farther and farther along the shelving bottom of the sea, towards the unfathomable regions of the ocean. ”

“ The sea is dotted with bergs—small ones nodding and bobbing along, big ones gliding majestically before the wind, till, a pair of these latter colliding, down crumble spires and minarets, towers and pinnacles, suddenly as a child’s card-built house, sending up tall columns of water as they fall. ”

“ It is fascinating to watch the sea coming up, appearing like a circle on the horizon, and slipping gently over the sands, the circle ever narrowing, until the islands are covered once more, the boats float at anchor, and the waves precipitate themselves with a loud booming sound, heard for miles round, against the double walls that protect the sacred Mount. ”

“ The rock rises out of the sea with perpendicular sides of marble, and only in one spot is to be observed a natural opening made by the water, hardly two feet high, through which the boat passed at once into a spacious court, almost circular, and over-arched by the sky, the floor of which was covered by the sea, and adorned with a garden of corals. ”