The Probert Encyclopaedia of Places of the World

ATLANTIC OCEAN

The Atlantic Ocean is the sea to the west of Europe and east of America. The Atlantic Ocean is shaped somewhat like a letter 'S'. The coastlines of the Americas and Europe-Africa being approximately parallel. In the north, where extensive plains reach down to the sea, there are wide areas of continental shelf on both the eastern and western sides; that is, round the British Isles; around Newfoundland and North-Eastern USA. In contrast, the continental shelf in the South Atlantic Ocean is much narrower, especially where the plateaux of Africa and Brazil drop steeply to the coast. Running southwards in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, half-way between the two continental masses and roughly parallel to their coasts, is a submarine ridge. This ridge, known as the Dolphin ridge in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Challenger ridge in the South Atlantic Ocean, occasionally rises above sea-level. Where this occurs are islands such as the Azores, St Paul's Rocks, Ascension Island, and Tristan da Cunha. Such islands as these are known as oceanic islands because they rise from the depths of the ocean; in contrast, islands like Newfoundland and the British Isles which rise only from the shallow floor of the continental shelf are known as continental islands. On each side of the Central Atlantic ridge are the great deeps, but the deepest Atlantic sounding yet taken is that of the Nares deep just north of Porto Rico.
The principal inlets and bays are Baffin'sand Hudson's Bays, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, the North Sea or German Ocean, the Bay of Biscay, and the Gulf of Guinea.
The principal islands north of the equator are Iceland, the Faroe and British Islands, the Azores, Canaries, and Cape de Verd Islands, Newfoundland, Cape Breton, and the West India Islands; and south of the equator, Ascension, St Helena, and Tristan da Cunha.

The great currents of the Atlantic are the Equatorial Current (divisible into the Main, Northern, and Southern Equatorial Currents), the Gulf-stream, the North African and Guinea Current, the Southern Connecting Current, the Southern Atlantic Current, the Cape Horn Current, Kennel's Current, and the Arctic Current. The current system is primarily set in motion by the trade-winds which drive the water of the intertropical region from Africa towards the American coasts. The Main Equatorial Current, passing across the Atlantic, is turned by the S. American coast, along which it runs at a rate of 30 to 50 miles a day, until, having received part of the North Equatorial Current, it enters the Gulf of Mexico. Issuing thence between Florida and Cuba under the name of the Gulf-stream, it flows with a gradually expanding channel nearly parallel to the coast of the United States. It then turns north-eastward into the mid-Atlantic, the larger proportion of it passing southward to the east of the Azores to swell the North African and Guinea Current created by the northerly winds off the Portuguese coast. The Guinea Current, which takes a southerly course, is divided into two on arriving at the region of the north-east trades, part of it flowing east to the Bight of Biafra and joining the South African feeder of the Main Equatorial, but the larger portion being carried westward into the North Equatorial drift. Kennel's Current, which is possibly a continuation of the Gulf-stream, enters the Bay of Biscay from the west, curves round its coast, and then turns northwest towards Cape Clear. The Arctic Current runs along the east coast of Greenland (being here called the Greenland Current), doubles Cape Farewell, and flows up towards Davis' Strait; it then turns to the south along the coasts of Labrador and the United States, from which it separates the Gulf-stream by a cold band of water. Immense masses of ice are borne south by this current from the Polar seas. In the interior
the North Atlantic there is a large area comparatively free from currents, called the Sargasso Sea, from the large quantity of sea-weed (of the genus Sargassum) which drifts into it. A similar area exists in the South Atlantic.

In the South Atlantic, the portion of the Equatorial Current which strikes the American coast below Cape St Roque flows southward at the rate of from 12 to 20 miles a day along the Brazil coast under the name of the Brazil Current. It then turns eastward and forms the South Connecting Current, which, on reaching the South African coast, turns northward into the Main and Southern Equatorial Currents. Besides the surface currents, an under current of cold water flows from the poles to the equator, and an upper current of warm water from the equator towards the poles.
Research Atlantic Ocean