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Show NEW OCEAN VALLEY. A discovery of great importance to navigators in coastal shipping on the Pacific is announced. It is the fixing fix-ing of the location of a new submarine valley, or, perhaps, it were better to say, an ocean valley 1 hitherto ' uncharted. un-charted. The coast and geodetic survey sur-vey places the axis of the valley about ten miles north and west of Cape Mendocino, Men-docino, California, with its head about five miles off shore. A similar submarine sub-marine valley is shown on the charts with its inshore limit about three miles due south of the cape. Such unusual features of the ocean bottom as this are of great assistance to the navigator in determining the position of his vessel in thick weather by sounding, and they serve to some extent to make up for the invisibility of land marks on the shore when thes are hidden during a storm or fog. In order to give this assistance, however, their position and shape must be 'correctly 'cor-rectly charted. Tho existence of the newly, discovered discov-ered valley has been suspected by nautical nau-tical experts for several years, and the fact that it was uncharted at the time is said to have been a factor in causing the tragic wreck of the Steamer Steam-er Bear in .Tune, 1916. Six lives were lost, as well as tho ship, valued at $1,000,000. The master of the Bear was deceived by the combination of unknown currents cur-rents and the misleading soundings due to an abrupt change in the depth at the then unknown valley. He thought he had arrived at tho charted southern valley. On this erroneous assumption, he changed his course and headed his ship directly for a rocky coast. Now that the advent of peace has released ships for use of tho coast survey, sur-vey, tho work of charting the ocean's bottom will be resumed, and when it shall have been completed every mariner mari-ner will know just where be is when he drops his lead. |