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Updated: June 9, 2025
As far as I could see around me the water was covered thickly with gulf-weed, and with this was all sorts of desolate flotsam planks, and parts of masts, and fragments of ships' timbers lolling languidly on the soft swell that was running, yet each scrap having behind it its own personal tragedy of death and storm.
Yes, that's the gulf-weed, or sargassum, or fucus natans, as the big guns variously call it in their Latin lingo. A rum sort of tackle, isn't it?" "Yes, it does look funny, queer stuff, sir," said I, for I had never had the opportunity of noticing it before, all my voyages hitherto backwards and forwards across the Atlantic having been outside the limits of the uncanny looking gulf-weed.
Indeed, when I began to think again, though not very clearly, I had half a mind to drop my arms to my sides and so go under and have done with it so despairing was I as I bobbed about on the swell among the patches of gulf-weed which littered the dark ocean, with the brig drawing away from me rapidly, and no chance of a rescue from her even had she been near at hand.
In a large ship, with a numerous crew, when it was deemed expedient to be particularly classical, Neptune appeared in full costume, accompanied by the fair Amphitrite, decorated with a profusion of sea-weed or gulf-weed, shells, coral, and other emblems of salt water sovereignty, and followed by a group of Tritons and Nereids fantastically arrayed.
"There, Haldane," said Captain Applegarth, pointing over the taffrail at a lot of straggling masses of quasi-looking stringy stuff that came floating on top of the water close by the ship, resembling vegetable refuse discarded from Neptune's kitchen garden. "That's the gulf-weed Mr Fosset was just speaking about to me." "Indeed, sir, I can't say much for its appearance.
Very different indeed were these patches of marine growth from the elegant wreaths of the Gulf-weed with which parts of the North Atlantic are so thickly covered. Their colour was deep brown, almost black is some cases, and the size of many of the leaves amazing, being four to five feet long, by a foot wide, with stalks as thick as one's arm.
The Doctor told me this was gulf-weed. A little further on it became so thick that it covered all the water as far as the eye could reach; it made the Curlew look as though she were moving across a meadow instead of sailing the Atlantic. Crawling about upon this weed, many crabs were to be seen. And the sight of them reminded the Doctor of his dream of learning the language of the shellfish.
If a ship has not much way through the water, these weeds will impede her course. It has been very justly remarked, that if the latitude where these weeds commence was accurately determined, it would fix exactly the extent of the voyages of the Carthaginians in this direction. The weed alluded to is probably the fucus natans, or gulf-weed.
Thursday, September 15th. This morning the temperature and peculiar appearance of the water, the quantities of gulf-weed floating about, and a bank of clouds lying directly before us, showed that we were on the border of the Gulf Stream. This remarkable current, running northeast, nearly across the ocean, is almost constantly shrouded in clouds and is the region of storms and heavy seas.
The immense fields of gulf-weed, with their parasitical inhabitants, that we now began to fall in with; the stately species of nautilus, known as he Portuguese man-of-war, floating so gracefully, with its transparent body and delicate tints; and the varieties of fish occasionally seen, including the flying-fish, dolphin, boneta, and shark, all furnish to an inquiring mind subjects of deep and abiding interest.
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