Communicated Agitation

General Discussion
1

From:

Surfing: A Royal Sport

Jack London,

from “The Cruise of the Snark” (1911)

http://www.mountainman.com.au/usenet_2004_a.htm

Quote:
And that is how it came about that I tackled surf-riding. And now that I have

tackled it, more than ever do I hold it to be a royal sport. But first

let me explain the physics of it. A wave is a communicated agitation. The

water that composes the body of the wave does not move. If it did, when a

stone is thrown into a pond and the ripples spread away in an ever widening

circle, there would appear at the center an ever increasing hole. No, the

water that composes the body of a wave is stationary. Thus, you may watch a

particular portion of the ocean’s surface and you will see the same water

rise and fall a thousand times to the agitation communicated by a thousand

successive waves. Now imagine this communicated agitation moving shoreward.

As the bottom shoals, the lower portion of the wave strikes land first and

is stopped. But water is fluid, and the upper portion has not struck

anything, wherefore it keeps on communicating its agitation, keeps on going.

And when the top of the wave keeps on going, while the bottom of it lags

behind, something is bound to happen. The bottom of the wave drops out from

under and the top of the wave falls over, forward, and down, curling and

cresting and roaring as it does so. It is the bottom of a wave striking

against the top of the land that is the cause of all surfs.

2

In one place we came upon a large company of naked natives, of both sexes and all ages, amusing themselves with the national pastime of surf- bathing. Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out to sea (taking a short board with him), then face the shore and wait for a particularly prodigious billow to come along; at the right moment he would fling his board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here he would come whizzing by like a bombshell! It did not seem that a lightning express-train could shoot along at a more hair-lifting speed. I tried surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself. The board struck the shore in three-quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me. None but natives ever master the art of surf-bathing thoroughly.

  • Roughing It Mark Twain
3

Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,

Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep

And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged

Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame

The coming of Arthur