TIDES.
"And it being low water, he parkisj went out with the tide." —Dicauss, " David Copperfield."
rr1HE interest in and knowledge of tides are almost limited L with most people to their fortnight or month's holiday at the seaside. The question with them is whether the tide is "in" or "out," as it enters into their plans for the day. They generally speak of the tide as coming in or going out, as if it were a train, or a pleasure steamer, or some other feature of the holiday resort.
It is hard for people unfamiliar with our coasts to realise of what vital importance the tides are to hundreds of thousands of the folk using the sea. How often does the state of the tide mean life or death to a vessel driven by stress of weather into shoal-water; to fishing-smacka trying to claw off the land in the teeth of a gale until the tide shall have risen enough to enable them to make their harbour with safety; or to a faithful ship ashore on a sandbank, pounding her very heart out in a heavy blow, the officers and men hoping against hope that she will hold together until the tide floats her, and the salt-crusted, smoke-begrimed tug can tow her into shelter I Then, again, a great steamer, running for port in an onshore gale ; she has not waited for the tide to give her more water and a truer sea, and, trying to enter too soon, is wrecked on the very doorstep of home. These, and countless other crises in the lives of ships and seamen wherein the tides play so large a part, the man from inland cannot know.
Encyclopaedias contain the information that the sun and moon govern the tides ; that the moon's influence is two and a quarter times that of the sun; that spring tides occur just after the full and change of the moon, and rise higher and fall lower than neap tides, which occur at the moon's quarters. Beyond this, and the explanation of it, we step into the deep waters of " tideology," one of the least developed sciences. In writing of tides in his famous " Wrinkles," Captain Lecky says that we must look to the future to produce a commanding genius who shall elucidate some of the many mysteries. It is noticeable in the accounts of tides and tidal streams in nautical almanacs, or the Admiralty Tide Tables, that often one comes across extraordinary phenomena about which the best authorities can only say : " These peculiarities are probably due to " For instance, speaking of the double low water at Weymouth, Captain Lecky writes that it is not to be explained, but he adds characteristically that some one has "had a shot at it" on p. 220 of the Admiralty Tide Tables. The double high water at Southampton is simple enough. The twelve-foot rise to the westward of the Bristol Channel, which increases to twenty-seven feet at Lundy Island and forty feet at Bristol, and the Severn boa, are easy to under- stand from the shape of the land. That there is a six- to seven-foot rise on the English coast by the Isle of Wight and a sixteen- to seventeen-foot rise on the French coast opposite is not so simple; but one could go on quoting ad infinitum.
The object of this article is not to deal with the scientific side of tides, but to recall a few instances of extraordinary tides caused by the weather, and the connexion between the two ; to mention briefly some of the many men whose worka- day lives are bound up with tides, and to relate some of their observations and beliefs with regard to them. Apart from peculiarities of their own in normal weather, tides are affected by strong winds and a low barometer, and then the tide-tables, with their• rise and fall to an inch and time of high-water to a minute, become absolutely inaccurate. A strong N.N.W gale in the North Sea will raise the surface two or three feet and make the tides r•un longer on the flood ; a strong S.E. or S.W. wind produces the opposite effect. A low glass and a strong S.W. wind will make big tides at the entrance of the Channel by Plymouth.
On October 14th, 1881, a large mail-steamer was unable to dock at the East India Docks, London, because a severe westerly gale had kept the tide back so that at high water it was five or six feet below its proper level, and the next flood came up three hours before its time. In January of the samo year a tide was registered at London four feet ten inches above high-water mark. At Liverpool there is a r•ecor•d of a tide six feet above " H.W.O.S.," which is the abbreviation for high-water ordinary springs. At Milford Haven, January, 1884, during a heavy westerly gale, the tide stopped falling two hours before the proper time for low water, and at low-water• time had risen fifteen feet.
These instances, which abound by the score in every port and tidal river, may or may not have a purely academic interest to landward people. To those who own marshland under the sea-wall, and the thousands who live in houses below the level of the` sea at high water, the interest is too real at times. It was after the fierce gale in November, 1897, had veered from. S.W. to N.W. that so many breaches were made in the sea-walls of the East Coast estuaries and so many marshes "went to sea." Watchers on Latchingdon Hill, which overlooks the little archipelago between the rivers Crouch and Thames, saw a weird sight that day. With the shift of wind the atmosphere had cleared, and the shores of Kent were visible. At the time of high water there was a big tide, and the flood was still running strong, and continued for nearly two hours beyond its proper time. Suddenly great streaks of white appeared along the east side of Foulness Island. It was the tide pouring over the sea-walls.. Then Havengore Island, New England Island, Rushley and Potten Islands disappeared, save for the solitary farmhouses standing in the water, and an occasional knoll—a few feet higher than the marshland—crowded with frightened beasts. Then the tide flowed over the sea-walls of the Roach River and across Wallasea Island to the river Crouch. Finally, little Bridge- marsh Island, and the North Fambridge marshes for two miles to the west of it, disappeared, the tide rolled up to the high ground, and the sea appeared to stretch from Kent to the foot of Latchingdon Hill.
All round the coast from every port and tidal river the many little fleets which trawl and line are manned by men whose working days are settled by the tides. They start work on the ebb and come homeward on the flood, no matter what the hour. It is the same too with the thousands of red-sailed barges which collect and distribute their cargoes in every tidal creek and river on our coasts. These craft cannot work without fair tides : they sail when tides are fair and sleep when foul. Generally speaking, they cannot berth except at high water, for nearly all the ports between which they trade are tidal.
Hundreds of small places would cease to exist but for the tides which bring the ships and trade. Even the hay and straw are borne by barge straight from the farms near all the tidal creeks and estuaries in Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk. And so it comes that many use the tides as a reference of time as landsmen do the clock. They will say that such-and- such a thing happened about an hour before high water, or the skipper of the ' Ladybird' went ashore just as the boats were swinging to the flood. If the skipper of a barge is asked when he is going to get under way, he will say : "As soon as the tide serves "; or if asked why he did not arrive before, he will reply : " I could not save my tide."
Barges are the craft to follow if one wants to learn how to " work " the tides, for their skippers have reduced this to a science. Just as a traveller consults his Bradshaw to make the best connexions from place to place, so bargees study the ways and times of the tides and work them to the best advantage. For instance, when the Fleet was last lying off Southend and stretching five miles to the eastward of it, the writer's own boat, anchored under the edge of the Maplin Sands, swung to the flood an hour and a half before the battleships and cruisers in the fairway. Then the barges bound up were sailing along close in to the Maplins with a fair tide, and those bound down were in the fairway also with a fair tide. The result of all this dependence upon tides has made them the object of much observation and talk among fishermen, smacksmen, and bargemen. Naturally the "turn of the tide " both at high and low water comes in for more watching than any other time. It is a common belief among smacksmen that if it starts to rain at high water it will continue for the whole of the ebb. They will say one to another: " I doubt that'll rain the ebb daown," or " We're agoen to have an ebb's rain." Others say that they will have a•" coarse flood" if it starts to rain at low water on the flood. Again, on a calm summer morning, if it is high water at seven or eight, and the wind then springs up easterly (that is, a sea breeze), there will be an easterly wind all day. But if the tide is a midday one there will be no wind till high water. Many have noticed that sometimes it will blow a fresh wind just on high water whei there has been no wind before, and there is none after high water.
Fishermen have told the writer that if they get ashore on a sandbank in a bit of a sea, they can tell at once whether the tide is ebbing or flowing by the way the vessel bumps. On the flood tide they say the sand is alive, but on the ebb it is dead, and has no "give" in it. They will point out, too, that in a flat calm and flood tide the sand can be seen " boiling up " in the water, but never on the ebb. Certainly smacksmen believe that frost checks the tides. They say it " nips " them, a play upon the word "neap," which they use as a verb, and pronounce " nip."
Many say that fog checks the tides, and certainly the writer believes it, for he once spent a week " neaped " on a sandbank owing to this. It had been foggy for three or four days, and the little yacht had groped her way amid fog and sandbanks to near home. The fog lifted in the morning, and close at hand in the Swin he saw twenty-seven steamers getting under way in a hurry. Four hours later the fog showed signs of shutting down again. By this time it was getting on his nerves, so he decided to try the short cut home across the Maplins into Havengore Creek. He consulted the skipper of a barge anchored near as to the water available. The skipper asked the yacht's draught, and said : " The way the tide's a-comen up you'll 'ave a foot and a 'arf to spare." But be was wrong; for one hour before high water the tide stopped rising. Do what one could, the yacht could not be moved. The tides were "taking off," or diminishing, and the little ship was " neaped " and not due to float for eleven days. Luckily, after six days, when there ought to have been a bare foot of water round her at high water, a north-west wind sprang up, brought a good tide, and she floated. It was an anxious week, particularly at high water, for sometimes, although the little vessel did not float, she bumped till the owner's teeth rattled, for the sand is very hard both on the flood and ebb, with all due deference to those who know better. Vessels have been known to be " neaped " for months.
Dredgermen on the river Crouch will tell one that in winter, after a flood tide with the wind easterly, the bottom of the river is " shet (shut) daown hard as a road," and the dredges slide over a hard bottom and will not lift the oysters. This is a, fact one can verify for oneself. The explanation is not so simple. Undoubtedly an onshore wind and a flood tide do bring sand into the lower reaches, for the men find it in the dredges. On the other hand, others declare that the bed of the river is closed as much as twelve miles from the sea, and deny the presence of sand, which they say would be found in the dredges, as it is lower down. This hardening does not appear to occur so infallibly in the upper reaches.
In tidal rivers on the East Coast there are, adjoining the sea-walls in most places, what are known as saltings. Spring tides cover the saltings with a foot or more of water, but neaps do not. Among East Coast folk there is a, pretty belief, very widely held, that in May, when the sea-fowl are hatching out on the saltings, Providence checks the spring tides so that they do not rise high enough to interfere with the birds. These they call by the appropriate name of "bird tides."
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