Applied Underwater Acoustics.

- eBook
PDF
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebooksecure.com/download/applied-underwater-acoustics-ebook-pdf/
Applied Underwater
Acoustics

Leif Bjørnø
UltraTech Holding, Taastrup, Denmark

Edited by

Thomas H. Neighbors III

David Bradley
Elsevier
Radarweg 29, PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, United Kingdom
50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Details on how to
seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and our
arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the
Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions.
This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by
the Publisher (other than as may be noted herein).

Cover image: HISAS 1030eproduced image of a sunken WWII oil tanker copyright
©Kongsberg Maritime AS and Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI).
Reprinted with permission.

Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and
experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional
practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in
evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described
herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety
and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.
To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or
editors, assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a
matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any
methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN: 978-0-12-811240-3

For information on all Elsevier publications

visit our website at https://www.elsevier.com/

Publisher: John Fedor

Acquisition Editor: Anita Koch
Editorial Project Manager: Amy Clark
Production Project Manager: Paul Prasad Chandramohan
Designer: Maria Inês Cruz
Typeset by TNQ Books and Journals
This book is dedicated to the memory of

Professor Walter G. Mayer

Department of Physics
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.
List of Contributors

D.A. Abraham
Ellicott City, MD, United States
L. Bjørnø
UltraTech Holding, Taastrup, Denmark
Ph. Blondel
Department of Physics, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom
M.J. Buckingham
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego,
La Jolla, CA, United States
A. Caiti
University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
N.R. Chapman
University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada
B. Dushaw
University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
D. Fattaccioli
LMA-CNRS, Marseille and DGA Naval Systems, Toulon, France
P. Gambogi
University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
A. Gavrilov
Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia
G. Grelowska
Gdansk University of Technology, Gdansk, Poland
P. Grenard
CTBTO, Vienna International Centre, Vienna, Austria
G. Haralabus
CTBTO, Vienna International Centre, Vienna, Austria
R.A. Hazelwood
R&V Hazelwood Associates LLP, Guildford, United Kingdom
S. Ivansson
Swedish Defence Research Agency, Stockholm, Sweden
D.R. Jackson
Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, WA,
United States

xiii
xiv List of Contributors

E. Kozaczka
Gdansk University of Technology, Gdansk, Poland
P.A. Lepper
Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, United Kingdom
J.F. Lynch
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, United States
P. Mikhalevsky
Leidos Inc., Arlington, VA, United States
J.L. Miksis-Olds
University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States
T.H. Neighbors III
Leidos Corporation (Retired), Bellevue, WA, United States
A.E. Newhall
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, United States
L. Pautet
CTBTO, Vienna International Centre, Vienna, Austria
M. Prior
CTBTO, Vienna International Centre, Vienna, Austria
M.D. Richardson
Marine Geosciences Division, Naval Research Laboratory,
Stennis Space Center, MS, United States
S.P. Robinson
National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, United Kingdom
D. Scaradozzi
University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
J.-P. Sessarego
LMA-CNRS, Marseille and DGA Naval Systems, Toulon, France
C.C. Tsimenidis
Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
M. Zampolli
CTBTO, Vienna International Centre, Vienna, Austria
Preface

The preface is a personal introduction to the book, with some comments about the
contents as seen by the author, the intent of the work, and recognition of those who
have contributed. The last is easy: the team of authors who contributed chapters or
sections of chapters are, without qualification, an outstanding group of experts who
have given their time and knowledge to make this book a valuable and useful text for
those working in the world of undersea science and technology. They have been a
joy to work with and are complemented and thanked for their efforts. From conver-
sations with Leif, we know his intent was to provide the undersea community with a
science-based text, yet an easily understood and practical reference to the details of
Underwater Acoustics. From these same conversations, it was clear his concept was
to draw on multiple expertises, vice singular authorship, as he felt strongly that the
readership would benefit from the depth that a group of experts would provide.
The introduction is “short and sweet”: Consider the following to be a practical
compendium of the knowledge of Underwater Acoustics; it is meant to be a working
document that readers can draw on to accomplish their specific task and a reference
base for further study, if required.
Leif wished to dedicate this book to Walter G. Mayer, late Professor of Physics at
Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., USA, a close personal friend and
colleague for many years.
I thank Irina, my wife, for her support, encouragement, and patience; her presence
at my side is critical in endeavors like this.
For Leif Bjørnø,
Tom Neighbors and Dave Bradley

xv
 CHAPTER

General Characteristics
of the Underwater
Environment 1
L. Bjørnø1,y, M.J. Buckingham2
1
UltraTech Holding, Taastrup, Denmark ; Scripps Institution of Oceanography,
University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States2

1.1 INTRODUCTION
Over the past about 100 years the exploitation of the seas and their resources has
continuously increased. Acoustic waves have turned out to be a very useful tool
for detecting resources and objects in the water column and on the seafloor. Other
methods have been used with varying degrees of success depending on the objects
to be detected or investigated. These methods include magnetics, magnetic anomaly
detection, where minor changes in the earth’s magnetic field due to presence of an
object can be measured; optical methods; electric field changes; hydrodynamics
such as pressure changes; thermal methods; and electromagnetic waves. While
radar is very useful for detection of objects above water, electromagnetic radar
waves are strongly absorbed in seawater. While electromagnetic waves in the visible
frequency band from 4 to 8$1014 Hz are much less absorbed, with a minimum ab-
sorption coefficient of 3$103 cm1 in the green-blue light near 455 nm wavelength
(i.e., 6.59$1014 Hz), electromagnetic wave absorption in the normally used radar
bands is several orders of magnitude higher than in the visible band. Seawater salt
contains magnesium that makes the water conduct electricity since the Mg2 þ cation
constitutes 3.7% of seawater salt. A 1 GHz radar wave in the ultra-high frequency
(UHF) band with a 0.3 m wavelength has a 1400 dB/m absorption coefficient while
the same wavelength in the 5 kHz sound wave has a 3$104 dB/m absorption coef-
ficient. Therefore, radar systems are not useful for detecting objects under water.
Underwater sound is used in many applications, such as hydrography, off-shore ac-
tivities, dredging, defense and security, marine research, and fishery.
Hydrography includes harbor and river surveys, bathymetric surveys, flood damage
assessment, engineering inspection, pipeline and cable route surveys, exclusive eco-
nomic zone (EEZ) mapping, breakwater mapping, and so on. Off-shore activities
include pipeline and cable installation and inspection, leakage detection, route and
site surveys, subsea structure installation support, renewables, remotely operated
vehicle (ROV) intervention guidance, decommissioning, reconnaissance surveys,

y
30 March 1937e24 October 2015.
Applied Underwater Acoustics. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-811240-3.00001-1 1
Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
2 CHAPTER 1 General Characteristics of the Underwater Environment

search and recovery, oil and gas prospecting, and prospecting for minerals and re-
sources on and in the seafloor. Dredging includes sonars used by rock and stone
dump vessels, excavator and trailing suction hopper dredgers, cutter suction and
bucket dredgers, clamshell grab cranes and underwater plow vessels, and
placement support. Defense and security includes mine counter measures,
submarine and torpedo detection, obstacle avoidance, search and recovery, underwa-
ter communication, vessel and fleet protection, waterside security, diver detection, and
so on. Marine research includes environmental monitoring, ambient noise measure-
ments, marine archeology, marine mammal research, and fishery research.
Fishery includes fishery operations, fish school detection, catch monitoring and
control, trawl position control, phytoplankton and zooplankton investigations,
communication between monitoring sensors on fishing gear and the fishing vessel,
seabed mapping, bottom discrimination, and so on.
The counterpart to radar above water is sonar under water. SONAR is the
acronym for sound navigation and ranging. It was originally used during World
War II as an analog to the name “radar” and as a replacement for the name “asdics”
for underwater detection systems using sound, which were used by the British Royal
Navy during World War I. The two most common sonar types are passive and active.
In a passive sonar system, the acoustic signal originates at a target and propagates to
a receiver, where the acoustic signal is converted to an electrical signal for process-
ing. In an active sonar system, an electrical signal is converted to an acoustical signal
by a transmitter and the sound waves propagate from the transmitter to a target and
back to a receiver, where conversion from acoustical to electrical signal takes place
followed by electronic signal processing. Signal processing is aimed at enhancing
the return signal from the target or reducing the noise in which the return signal
may be embedded, as discussed in Chapter 11. The transmitter is normally called
the projector and the receiver is called the hydrophone, as discussed in Chapter
10. If the return signaldthe echodfrom a target is detected, the position and the
potential target movement are determined by the time delay of the echo from the
target and the direction of the echo, respectively. The speed of a moving target
can be estimated from the frequency shiftdthe Doppler shiftdin the echo from
the target, as discussed in Chapter 2.
When a sound wave is produced in water it propagates from the site where it is
produced. Sound sources can be natural, such as breaking waves, rain falling on the
water surface, seismic activities in the seafloor, and so on, or man-made such as
sonar signals, underwater explosions, ship noise, and so on, as discussed in Chap-
ter 6. During propagation the sound signal is exposed to a number of processes
which may change the sound signal and its propagation, such as sound signal
amplitude attenuation due to absorption, divergence, and scattering, as discussed
in Chapter 4. Scattering takes place during the sound wave’s interaction with
the sea surface, seafloor, and inhomogeneities in the water column, as discussed
in Chapter 5. These inhomogeneities can be natural, such as plankton, fish and
sea mammals, and variations in the sea temperature and salinity. Scattering and
reflection of sound signals may cause sound waves to follow different paths, pro-
ducing multi-path sound propagation, which can make detection of objects in the
 1.1 Introduction 3

water column and on the seafloor difficult. The scattering of underwater sound may
lead to reverberation which limits detection. Use of advanced signal processing on
the transmitted and received signal opens up the possibility to avoid or reduce the
degradation of the propagated sound signal, as discussed in Chapter 11. Ambient
noise in the sea can also become a limiting factor for signal detection. The sound
signal received by a hydrophone carries information about the signal source and
what the signal has encountered while propagating from the source to the hydro-
phone. The signal received by the hydrophone is processed to extract information
of value to the user. This complicated “underwater world,” where sound propaga-
tion is influenced by many individual sources with effect on the sound signal’s
amplitude, phase, and spectral composition, is the basis for this book, “Applied
Underwater Acoustics.”
Each chapter is introduced with a section giving the necessary definitions and
describing the physical background for the subsequent sections of the chapter. The
man-made sources of sound from sonar systems of various types are described in Chap-
ter 10. This chapter also describes the different transducer types, their charge forming
elements, and their geometries. Chapter 10 illuminates the sonar types available today,
characteristic features, as well as their design, calculation, and calibration. Hydro-
phones, including array types, and their characteristics are also a part of Chapter 10.
The sound wave propagation through the water and the different factors which
influence the propagation path are discussed in several chapters. The oceanographic
features with influence on sound propagation are illuminated in Chapter 2. Chapter 2
also includes definitions and describes important acoustic wave concepts, such as
wave geometries, divergence, convergence, reflection and transmission at interfaces,
refraction and diffraction, and propagation through inhomogeneous media.
Chapter 3 discusses the capability to calculate sound propagation in the sea using
available models.
Absorption of sound in fresh and in seawater is caused by the several mecha-
nisms described in Chapter 4. The interplay of these mechanisms and their depen-
dence on frequency are discussed in detail, and the best formulations for
calculating sound absorption are provided.
When a sound wave in the sea hits a boundary, such as the seafloor, sea surface,
or an object in the water column, the sound wave is reflected and scattered. Chapter 5
describes the scattering dependence on the geometry of the scattering object and its
surface qualities. Useful expressions for scattering calculations including
perturbation approximations and the HelmholtzeKirchhoff method are provided.
Also scattering from one and two scales of surface roughness are presented. Chapter
5 provides an in-depth discussion of scattering which can lead to reverberation,
which in turn can limit sound signal reception in the sea.
Chapter 6 discusses ambient noise in the sea produced by natural sources, such as
seismic activities, breaking waves, bubbles formed near the sea surface, precipitation,
biological activities, ice, and man-made sources, such as shipping, prospecting for oil
and gas, and so on. The spectra, directivity, and ambient noise coherence are pre-
sented, and self-noise produced by the ship making, the noise measurements, and
4 CHAPTER 1 General Characteristics of the Underwater Environment

procedures for noise reduction are an integral part of Chapter 6. The temporal and
spatial variability of noise and statistical methods for characterizing noise are
emphasized.
Sound propagation in shallow water is strongly influenced by the physical prop-
erties and geometries of the sea surface and seafloor. These boundaries form a sound
channel through which the underwater sound is guided. It is possible by using
information about the boundaries to produce models for calculating sound
propagation through the channel. Many experiments have given valuable informa-
tion about sound propagation in shallow water, the continental shelf, and ice-
covered water. Chapter 7 provides up-to-date results and procedures for measuring
and calculating sound propagation in shallow water.
The seafloor has frequently the strongest influence on sound propagation in
seawater, in particular in shallow waters. This influence is produced by the nature
of the seafloor sediments, their elastic qualities and porosity, and the seafloor surface
geometry. Also, rocks and boulders on and in the seafloor influence reflection and
scattering from the seafloor. Practical models for calculating scattering from the sea-
floor at high and at low sound frequencies are provided in Chapter 8. The chapter
also includes an in-depth discussion of the physical properties important for seafloor
sound propagation, reflection, and scattering. Methods for measuring sediment geo-
acoustic properties, seafloor roughness spectra, and statistics for seafloor heteroge-
neity including methods for seafloor identification and characterization by using
sonar are presented in Chapter 8.
Underwater sound is used to investigate oceanographic and environmental sea
qualities. Sound velocity profiles are created by variations with water depth in tem-
perature, salinity, and pressure, which form sound ducts in the sea that can be used
for sound propagation over great distances. This sound propagation is used to detect
and describe oceanographic phenomena such as gyres and eddies, fronts, influx of
warmer into colder water, and water flow with different salinity, by measuring
acoustic signal arrival time to known positions around an acoustic source. This
process, which is named tomography, is used for studies at basin scale down to
shorter distances in shallow water. Acoustic tomography is described in Chapter
9. The acoustic thermometry of the ocean, where long-time variations in the ocean
temperature are detected by measurements of the arrival time of coded acoustic sig-
nals propagated over thousands of kilometers, is also an aspect of tomography. In
general acoustic signals gather information about the qualities of the materials in
which they have propagated. This information can be unveiled through inversion
procedures, where return signal processing can inform us about seafloor qualities
and characteristics of the water column and help perform rapid environmental
assessment. Inversion procedures are discussed in Chapter 9.
When underwater signals have been picked up by a hydrophone or a hydrophone
array these signals are processed. Frequently the desired signal is embedded in noise
such as ambient noise or reverberation. To detect the signal it is necessary to filter the
received signal from noise and to amplify the desired signal before the detection and
estimation process is performed. As of 2016, several signal processing “tools” are
 1.2 A Brief Exposition of the History of Underwater Acoustics 5

available to the underwater acoustician. These tools and their applications are
described in-depth in Chapter 11.
Underwater acoustic methods are used extensively to detect the type and magni-
tude of biomass in the sea. Studies range from very smallescale phyto- and
zooplankton, over various species of fish to sea mammals. Systems for catch
monitoring and control and habitat mapping are described in Chapter 12, which
also includes target strengths of single fish and fish shoals and the acoustic models
used for studies. Sound produced by certain fish types, and the sensitivity of marine
fish and mammals to underwater sound are also discussed in Chapter 12.
In general, sound propagation is considered a linear process. However, higher
sound signal amplitudes may produce nonlinear processes such as harmonic distor-
tion and acoustic saturation. Nonlinear processes are also found in focused sound
fields and in cavitation, a local bubble formation process formed by pressures below
the hydrostatic pressure. Nonlinear underwater acoustics includes the use of para-
metric acoustic arrays for sound generation and reception and underwater explosions
used for prospecting for oil, gas, and minerals. Finite-amplitude underwater sound is
discussed in Chapter 13.
Chapter 14 describes a series of underwater sound applications for marine
renewables, underwater surveillance networks, investigations of soundscapes,
characterization of noise from ships and production platforms, nuclear-test-ban
treaty monitoring, underwater communication and networks, unmanned vehicles
for surveillance and monitoring, underwater archeology, investigations in polar
environments, warning against seismic activities and against tsunamis, model exper-
iments in water tanks, and seafloor application of ocean observatories.
Section 1.2 of this chapter provides a brief history of underwater acoustics.
Section 1.3 presents the international system of units used in the book, followed
in Section 1.4 with a discussion on the use of the decibel scale. Section 1.5 covers
the features of oceanography including sound speed profiles, thermoclines, arctic
regions, deep isothermal layers, expressions for the speed of sound, surface waves,
internal waves, bubbles from wave breaking, ocean acidification, deep-ocean hy-
drothermal flows, eddies, fronts and large-scale turbulence, and diurnal and
seasonal changes. Section 1.6 discusses the sonar equation which is fundamental
to underwater acoustics. Section 1.7 contains a list of the acronyms. The chapter
concludes with the list of references.

1.2 A BRIEF EXPOSITION OF THE HISTORY OF UNDERWATER

ACOUSTICS
Underwater acoustics is one of the fastest growing fields of research and develop-
ment in acoustics. This is reflected by the increasing number of publications each
year in international journals and conference proceedings. The relations between un-
derwater acoustics and other fields of importance to the international community
such as oceanography, meteorology, seismology, fishery, oil and gas industry,
6 CHAPTER 1 General Characteristics of the Underwater Environment

communication, shipping, defense, and security are becoming closer. The compre-
hensive activity in underwater acoustics is based on research and development
over more than two millennia, spawned by human curiosity about the sea and its
ability to support sound wave propagation.

1.2.1 UNDERWATER ACOUSTICS BEFORE 1912

As far as we know today [1] the work on underwater acoustics was started by the
Greek philosopher Aristotle (384e322 BC) who was the first to note that sound could
be heard in water as well as in air. In 1490 the Italian scientist and artist
Leonardo da Vinci (1452e1519) wrote in his notebook, “If you cause your ship to
stop and place the head of a long tube in the water and place the other extremity
to your ear, you will hear ships at great distances.” Of course, the ambient noise level
in lakes and seas was much lower during his days than today, when several kinds of
ships and offshore activities pollute the seas with noise. About 100 years later, the
English philosopher Francis Bacon (1551e1626) in his work Historia Naturalis et
Experimentalis supported the idea, that water is the principal medium by which
sounds originating therein reach a human observer standing nearby. In the 17th,
18th, and early 19th centuries, several scientists became interested in light, as well
as sound, transmitted in air and water. The Dutch astronomer Willebrord Snellius
(1580e1626) worked on the refraction of light. Snell’s Law follows from Fermat’s
principle of least time, which in turn follows from propagation of light as waves.
This concept was contradictory to Sir Issac Newton’s (1643e1727) assumption
that light propagated as particles. Christiaan Huygens (1629e1695) formulated the
principle named after him that each point on a wave front is an origin for spherical
elementary waves and the wave front propagates as the envelope surface of the
elementary waves. This principle is important for understanding the sound propaga-
tion in water. The interference between waves was studied by Joseph von Fraunhofer
(1787e1826) and Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788e1827). The mathematical tools to
describe sound propagation in water were formed during the 17th through 19th cen-
turies. G.W. Leibnitz (1646e1716) formulated the notation for differentiation and the
rules for integration. Other contributions to the mathematical foundation for under-
water acoustics today were formulated by various scientists, such as Daniel Bernoulli
(1700e1782), Leonhard Euler (1707e1783), J.R. d’Alembert (1717e1783), J.-L.
Lagrange (1736e1813), P.-S. Laplace (1749e1827), A.-M. Legendre (1752e1833),
J.B.J. Fourier (1768e1830), S.D. Poisson (1781e1840), and Hermann von Helmholtz
(1821e1894). Important contributions to the instruments used in underwater acoustics
arise from H.C. Ørsted (1777e1851), who discovered the electromagnetism, and J.P.
Joule (1818e1889), who contributed to the discovery of the magnetostrictive effect.
The discovery of the piezoelectric effect in 1880 was based on works by Henri
Becquerel (1852e1908) and the brothers, Paul-Jacques Curie (1856e1941) and
Pierre Curie (1859e1906).
Direct sound speed measurements in fresh and saltwater, and comparing these
measurements with the speed of sound in air were also performed by several
 1.2 A Brief Exposition of the History of Underwater Acoustics 7

scientists in the 18th and 19th centuries. Sound sources included bells, gunpowder,
hunting horns, and human voices. The scientists’ ears usually served as receivers. In
1743, J.A. Nollet (1700e1770) conducted a series of experiments to prove that wa-
ter is compressible. With his head underwater, he heard a pistol shot, bell, whistle,
and loud shouts. He noted that the intensity of the sound decreased only a little with
depth, thus indicating that the loss mostly occurred at the water surface. In 1780,
Alexander Monro (1733e1817) tested his ability to hear sounds underwater. He
used a large and a small bell, which he sounded both in air and in water. The bells
could be heard in water. However, he found that the pitch sounded lower in water
than in air. He also attempted to compare the speed of sound in air and in water,
and he concluded that the two sound speeds seemed to be the same.
The breakthrough in sound speed measurement came in September 1826, when
the Swiss physicist J.D. Colladon (1802e1893) and the French mathematician
J.K.F. Sturm (1803e1855) made the first widely known measurement of the sound
speed in water on Lake Geneva at a water temperature of 8 C. A bell hanging down
from a boat was used as transmitter, and when striking the bell a flash of light was
made by igniting gunpowder. This flash could be seen by Colladon in a boat about
10 miles from the transmitter. He started his watch when he saw the flash and
stopped it, when he heard the sound signal in the water about 10 s later. His receiver
was a trumpet designed with one end in the water and the other in his ear. By using
this rather primitive setup they were able to measure the sound speed in water at 8 C
as 1435 m/s, which is only about 3 m/s less than today’s accepted value [2]. From the
sound speed and water density they could determine the bulk modulus of the water.
During the years 1830e1860 scientists started thinking about applications of un-
derwater sound. Questions such as “Can the echo of a sound pulse in water be used
for determination of the water depth or the distance between ships?” or “Can the
communication between ships be improved by underwater transmission of sound?”
were posed. The frustration in relation to the use of underwater sound for depth mea-
surements is obvious from M.F. Maury’s (1806e1873) words in Chapter 12 of his book
Physical Geography of the Sea, 6th ed. 1859, where he says, “Attempts to fathom the
ocean, by both sound and pressure, had been made, but out in blue water every trial
was only a failure repeated. The most ingenious and beautiful contrivances for deep-
sea sounding were resorted to. By exploding petards, or ringing bells in the deep sea,
when the winds were hushed and all was still, the echo or reverberation from the bot-
tom might, it be held, be heard, and the depth determined from the rate at which
sound travels through water. But though the concussion took place many feet below
the surface, echo was silent, and no answer was received from the bottom.”
During the latter half of the 19th century, when the maritime world changed from
sail to engine driven ships and wood was replaced by steel in ship construction,
concern was expressed about safe navigation in fog and the danger of collision
with other ships or icebergs. John Tyndall (1820e1893) in England and
Joseph Henry (1797e1878) in the USA in separate investigations found sound prop-
agation in air to be unreliable and in 1876 recommended to the lighthouse authorities
in both countries that they adopt high-power siren warning installations at all major
8 CHAPTER 1 General Characteristics of the Underwater Environment

lighthouses. From 1873 joint experiments took place and a large-scale steam-driven
siren was built at the South Foreland lighthouse in England driven by a steam pres-
sure of 5$105 Pa and 100 to 400 Hz frequencies were investigated [3]. Sound trans-
mission conditions, however, caused problems. Wind speed and temperature
gradients over the sound propagation path caused strong variations in the sound
detection distance. The possible advantages of signaling by sound in water were
taken up again in the late 1880s by Lucien Blake and Thomas Alva Edison
(1847e1931) in the USA. Edison invented an underwater device for communication
between ships; however, for some unknown reason the US government lost interest
in his invention.
Submerged bells on lightships were introduced to a large extent during the last
years of the 19th century. The sound from these bells could be detected at a great
distance through a stethoscope or by using simple microphones mounted on a ship’s
hull. When the ship was outfitted with two detecting devices, one on each side of the
hull, it became possible to determine the possible bearing of the lightship by trans-
mitting the sounds separately to the right and the left ears of the observer. Elisha
Gray, who was working with Edison on improving the telephone, recognized that
the carbon button microphone in a suitable waterproof container could be used as
a hydrophone to receive underwater bell signals. In 1899, Gray and A.J. Mundy
were granted a patent on an electrically operated bell for underwater signaling.

1.2.2 THE YEARS 1912 THROUGH 1918

In 1912, the Submarine Signal Company hired the Canadian R.A. Fessenden
(1866e1932), to develop a sound source more efficient than pneumatically or elec-
trically operated bells. Fessenden designed and built a moving coil transducer to
emit underwater sound. The Fessenden oscillator which was designed somewhat
like an electrodynamic loudspeaker, allowed ships to communicate with each other
by using Morse code or to detect echoes from underwater objects. The acoustic po-
wer transmitted into the water was about 2 kW at a resonance frequency of 540 Hz,
and the electroacoustic efficiency was 40e50%. In 1914, the echo location process
known as echo ranging was developed to a level where it could locate an iceberg at a
distance of 3.2 km. Unfortunately this development came too late to avoid the
Titanic disaster.
The outbreak of World War I and the later introduction of unrestricted submarine
warfare were the impetus for developing a number of military applications of under-
water sound. In France the Russian electrical engineer Constantin Chilowsky collab-
orated with the physicist Paul Langevin (1872e1946) on a project involving a
condenser (electrostatic) projector and a carbon button microphone situated at the
focus of a concave acoustic mirror. The first successful underwater acoustic signals
were sent across the river Seine in Paris below the Pont National by the end of 1915
[4]. In 1916 Langevin and Chilowsky filed a joint application for a patent based
on their method and equipment. In April 1916 they were able to transmit an under-
water signal over 2 km and detect at 200 m echoes reflected by an iron plate. Since
 1.2 A Brief Exposition of the History of Underwater Acoustics 9

FIGURE 1.1
Langevin’s piezoelectric quartz-based transmitter/receiver. (1) connected to a.c. oscillator
and amplifier and to the receiver. (2) The steel inner electrode. (3) The watertight
container. (4) The steel outer electrode. (5) The layer of 0.004 m thick slices of quartz.
Reproduced from Lasky, M., Review of undersea acoustics to 1950. J. Acoust. Soc. Amer., 61, (2), pp. 283e297
(1977), with the permission of the Acoustical Society of America.

Chilowsky left the project after filing the patent, Paul Langevin, who had
moved to Toulon, in 1917, turned his interest to the piezoelectric effectdoriginally
discovered by the Curie brothers in 1880dto develop transmitters and receivers for
underwater use. The newly developed vacuum tube amplifier, the Audion valve, was
used by Langevin for his quartz receiver, and in 1918 he completed the development
of his sandwich-type, steelequartzesteel transmitter, shown in Fig. 1.1. This trans-
mitter had a resonance frequency of 40 kHz produced by the sandwich consisting of
a layer of quartz in the form of a square mosaic 0.004 m thick and 0.2 m in square
between two square steel plates each of thickness 0.03 m. This transmitter increased
the range for one-way transmission to more than 8 km, and clear submarine echoes
were heard in February 1918.
In England Lord Rutherford had assembled a strong group of physicists at Uni-
versity of Manchester. In particular, two persons, who joined this group in 1915
and in 1916, respectively, Albert Beaumont Wood (1890e1964) and the Canadian
physicist Robert William Boyle (1883e1955) contributed substantially to sonar
development and to underwater acoustics. In 1917 several members of Lord
Rutherford’s group were moved to Parkeston Quay in the England, where they, under
leadership of professor W.H. Bragg, carried out research and development related to
underwater echolocation and passive listening under the top secret “ASDIC” project.
ASDIC is an acronym for “Allied Submarine Detection Investigation Committee” [4].
Boyle started out using the Fessenden oscillator, but found early on that its low
frequency, around 1 kHz, would not produce the necessary resolution for detecting
submarines. After contact was established between Boyle and Langevan in 1917,
10 CHAPTER 1 General Characteristics of the Underwater Environment

Boyle visited France and the scientists shared information. A slab of quartz was sent
to Boyle in England, and was tested by Boyle, who in March 1918 achieved an echo
from a submarine at nearly 500 m. The first practically working active sonar, or AS-
DICS as the British preferred to name it, was built by Boyle in November 1918. It
was successfully tested out fitted to a trawler a few days after the armistice on
November 11, 1918.
In the USA, Dr. Harvey C. Hayes (1880e1969) had gathered a group of special-
ists at Naval Experimental Station, New London, with the terms of reference “to
devise as quickly as possible the best of available technology to defeat a U-boat.”
Hayes and his group developed the towed hydrophone assembly called “the Eel,”
and a passive sonar installation using 48 hydrophonesdhull mounted and towedd
was tested on a US destroyer. This installation was the most advanced passive sonar
system produced during World War I [3].
In 1911 in Kiel, Germany, Karl Heinrich Hecht (1880e1961) developed a hydro-
dynamic siren source for producing underwater sound. Also, he developed an elec-
tromagnetic membrane transmitter, which during World War I was built into several
hundred surface ships and submarines.
The German scientist Alexander Behm (1880e1953) successfully tested the first
echosounder on the seafloor of the Fjord of Kiel in February 1916. Also, the German
engineer Hugo Lichte (1891e1963) performed extensive underwater acoustic
studies in which he correctly deduced the effects of temperature, salinity, and pres-
sure on the speed of sound. He predicted in 1919 that upward refraction produced by
pressure in deep water should produce extraordinarily long sound listening ranges.
This fact was verified many years later.

1.2.3 THE YEARS 1919 THROUGH 1939

During 1918e1940, three uses of underwater acoustics based on wartime experi-
ences were slowly developed extensively. They were echo sounding, sound ranging
in the ocean, and seismic prospecting. A significant practical impetus was received
from advances in electronics, which made available new methods and devices for
amplification, processing, and displaying received underwater signals. M. Marti in
1919 patented a recorder to be used for echo sounding. This recorder, which turned
out to be of extreme importance to ocean studies using sound, consisted of a sheet of
paper constrained to move slowly beneath a writing pen which traversed the paper
from one side to the other perpendicular to the motion of the paper. The pen was
driven laterally to the paper motion by an electric signal, whose amplitude was pro-
portional to the output from the underwater sound receiver. By viewing the succes-
sive echoes side by side as a function of time, a profile of the seabed could be
produced. In 1922 the first long echosounding depth profiles were made while
exploring a cable route between France and Algeria.
The need for improved and more robust high-power underwater sound sources
instead of the Langevin-type transducers based on quartz or Rochelle salt crystals,
led G.W. Pierce in the USA, in 1925, to develop a magnetostrictive oscillator
operating at 25 kHz with an emitted sound power of few kilowatts, without
 1.2 A Brief Exposition of the History of Underwater Acoustics 11

the risk of fracturing the oscillating element, frequently found in crystal-based

transducers.
During the same period, the US Coast and Geodetic Survey in their attempt to
establish geodetic control by horizontal sound ranging was experiencing a strong
variability in sound intensity and speed in the sea. Also the Naval Research Labora-
tory, established in 1923 on a suggestion from Edison, when seeking to improve sub-
marine hunting, working at 20e30 kHz, found the same variability. Some of this
variability appeared to show a diurnal cycle, where the equipment in the morning
was working according to the specifications while in the afternoon, it did not pro-
duce any echoes from submarines, except at very short ranges. The same “afternoon
effect” was found in several regions of the ocean. Dr. Harvey Hayes and scientists
from the newly established oceanographic institution at Woods Hole, including
the institutions head, Columbus Iselin, decided to study these phenomena in more
depth.
It soon became clear that the upper parts of the ocean were heated during the
day by the sun, thus leaving a layer 4.5e9 m thick with a temperature 1e2 C
warmer than the more uniform water layer beneath and with a gradual decrease
in temperature with distance from the surface of the sea. Since the appearance
of the temperature layer coincided with the signal reception deterioration the sci-
entists concluded that the warm layer caused sound entering the water to bend
downward toward the low temperature region thus producing an acoustic shadow
zone in which a submarine could hide. This discovery in 1937, which explained the
“afternoon effect,” achieved through cooperation between acousticians and ocean-
ographers, L. Batchelder of the US Submarine Signal Company and Columbus Ise-
lin, led to the start of a new field of research called acoustical oceanography. The
same year Athelstan Spilhaus from MIT invented and build the first bathythermo-
graph, a small torpedo-shaped device that held a temperature sensor and an
element to detect changes in static water pressure. By the beginning of World
War II, all US naval vessels engaged in antisubmarine work were equipped with
the Spilhaus device.
The SONAR developments in the years before World War II were based on
exploiting the crystals quartz, Rochelle salt, and tourmaline, along with magneto-
strictive Ni-Fe alloys. Single hydrophones, as well as linear and planar arrays,
were developed and tested and found their way into the major navies. To provide
water tight protection of the charge-forming elements such as quartz and in partic-
ular Rochelle salt, which could be dissolved in water, a rubber material with nearly
the same acoustical impedance as water, “rho-c” rubber, was developed around
1930. A Rochelle salt-based hydrophone was developed in Germany in 1935 for
use onboard warships. For example, the German battle cruiser, Prinz Eugen, during
World War II was equipped with hydrophones based on Rochelle salt covering the
frequency range from 500 Hz to 10 kHz. The hydrophones were mounted on each
side of the ship in groups with six hydrophones in each group. Several groups
worked together and formed the so-called Gruppen Horch Gerät (GHG), or group
listening apparatus.
12 CHAPTER 1 General Characteristics of the Underwater Environment

1.2.4 THE YEARS 1940 THROUGH 1946

The outbreak of World War II launched great activity in underwater acoustics
research in Europe, USA, and the Far East. The hunt for submarines received
high priority. The combination of convoys, aircraft patrols, and ASDIC gear effec-
tively held off most conventional daylight attacks by the initial small number of
German submarines (less than 30 when the war started in 1939). This number
increased substantially during the war and a total of over 1100 submarines of various
sizes were built in Germany during World War II. In addition, the Germans soon
learned to launch night attacks on convoys using “wolfpack” techniques. The devel-
opment of airborne radar, in particular the Allied’s monopoly on the 10 cm radar,
and the use of improved depth charges and the invention of “hedgehog” techniques,
became a great help in hunting down and destroying German submarines, of which
Germany lost 781 during the war.
Apart from the development of underwater arms such as the acoustic homing
torpedo, acoustic mine, and scanning sonar, a much better understanding of under-
water factors influencing sound propagation was established. Concepts, such as
target strength, ship self-noise, reverberation of the underwater environment, sound
scattering, and sound absorption in seawater, were established and studied. Sound
propagation under the influence of vertical variations in sound speed was investi-
gated and modeled using the “ray theory” borrowed from the theory of light. Sound
propagation in layered media such as the water column and seafloor was calculated
by using the normal mode theory, developed by C.L. Pekeris in 1941 [5]. Most of
the achievements in underwater acoustics during World War II were published in
the USA just after the war in 23 reports called “National Defense Research Com-
mittee Division 6, Summary Technical Reports.” One of these reports entitled
“Physics of Sound in the Sea” comprises chapters on deep- and shallow-water
acoustic transmission, on intensity fluctuations, and on the explosion as a source
of underwater sound.

1.2.5 THE YEARS AFTER 1946

The developments in underwater acoustics during the years immediately after World
War II were strongly influenced by discoveries and developments during the war.
The wartime discoveries and developments in the USA were reported in NDRC’s
summary reports, of which the summary technical report from Division 6 is of
particular interest to underwater acousticians. Books published later on, such as
Urick’s book titled “Principles of Underwater Sound for Engineers” from 1967,
are based substantially on results from the research carried out during World War II.
Maurice Ewing, a professor of geology at Columbia University, had during the
war studied the characteristics of low frequency sound propagation in the sea, and
he was convinced that it would be possible to propagate sound over hundredsd
possibly thousandsdof kilometers through the ocean if both source and receiver
were appropriately placed. In 1945 he propagated sound from a small explosion
over a distance of more than 3000 km from Eleuthera in the Bahamas to Dakar in
 1.2 A Brief Exposition of the History of Underwater Acoustics 13

West Africa. The sound propagation took place in a ubiquitous permanent sound
channel of the deep ocean. Ewing called the channel the SOFAR (SOund Fixing
And Ranging) channel. The first application of this discovery was aimed at
providing a rescue system for downed-at-sea airmen. From his inflated rubber
boat, the airman should drop small cartridges over the side set to explode on the
axis of the SOFAR channel situated at about 1200 m depth in the North Atlantic,
as shown in Fig. 1.2. Sound from the explosion would be refracted back to the chan-
nel axis and the propagation would only be influenced by cylindrical spreading. The
signals would then be picked up by hydrophones positioned on the channel axis at
various positions off the continental shelves, making it possible by comparing signal
arrival times to find the position of the source. Maurice Ewing in the USA and acade-
mician L.M. Brekhovskikh in the USSR were studying the undersea sound channel.
In the years just after the war Brekhovskikh discovered the existence of the sound
channel in the Pacific Ocean by analyzing signals received from underwater explo-
sions in the Sea of Japan.

FIGURE 1.2
A characteristic sound velocity profile in the North Atlantic Ocean. The minimum sound
speed forming the SOFAR channel is at a depth of about 1200 m. Below the minimum
sound velocity, the sound speed increase is caused by increasing pressure. The
temperature is nearly constant at about 2 C.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 CHAPTER VIII.
THE SHIP.

he next morning was Sunday, and Peggy’s heart

sank when her aunt said to her, “I think I won’t let
you out of my sight to-day, Peggy, for something
always happens whenever you go even into the
garden alone.”
“It seems to,” Peggy admitted sadly, but she did
not like the idea of remaining all day long with Aunt
Euphemia.
Church was long and hot, and then there was
dinner, and then Aunt Euphemia said she would
read Peggy a story. Peggy did not care about this; she wanted to go
out, and yet did not dare to say so. But just as they were sitting down
to read, Dr. Seaton came in, and Peggy was delighted to have the
reading stopped.
“I’ve come to take Peggy with me to the harbour, if you will allow
it, Miss Roberts,” he said. “I promised to take her there some day,
and I have more time this afternoon than on week days.”
Aunt Euphemia was really rather pleased to get Peggy off her
hands for an hour. She was feeling sleepy, and it was a bother to her
to look after Peggy, so she consented to Dr. Seaton’s proposal
without any difficulty.
It was not a long walk to the harbour, where there was much to
see.
“I am going to take you on to a Danish ship,” Dr. Seaton said;
“you will hear the men talking a queer language you have never
heard before, and the captain will take you down into his cabin, I
dare say.”
 The Danish ship was lying close up to the quay. It was painted
very bright emerald green, and Dr. Seaton pointed out to Peggy the
figure of a woman made of wood and painted white which was at the
bow of the ship.
“Poor lady, she goes through all the storms with her white dress.
When she comes into harbour after a winter storm she is crusted
over with salt from the waves,” he said.
“Why do they have a wooden lady at the end of the ship?” Peggy
asked.
“Because they think it brings luck to the ship,” said Dr. Seaton.
They came to the side of the quay, and he called to some of the
sailors, and they came running forward to lift Peggy on board.
Sailors are always specially
clean and tidy on Sunday,
dressed in their best clothes.
They were such nice-looking
men—tall, with yellow hair; and
Peggy noticed the rings in their
ears at once. Of course, she
couldn’t speak to them, or at
least they couldn’t understand
what she said; but the captain
took her hand, and led her all
round the ship, letting her look
at everything she wanted to see
—the huge anchor, all red with
rust, that took ever so many
men to lift; and what interested
Peggy more than anything—the cargo of tubs that the ship had
brought over. There were tubs of every imaginable size, down to tiny
ones of white wood.
“Oh, I could wash my doll’s clothes in these!” Peggy cried. She
wanted one dreadfully, and yet didn’t know how to get it, for the man
wouldn’t understand about her doll. As she was standing there
saying, “Doll, doll, doll,” and looking wistfully at the dear little tubs,
Dr. Seaton came round again from the cabin where he had been
seeing a boy with a broken arm.
“Oh, I do want a tub to wash my doll’s clothes in so dreadfully!”
Peggy cried, “and he doesn’t understand what I mean.”
Dr. Seaton said something in German, and in a minute the
captain began to pull out dozens of tubs for Peggy to choose from.
But she was not quite pleased till she had explained through Dr.
Seaton that she wanted to buy the tub. “I would never ask for
anything,” she explained—“mother doesn’t let me do that; and I’ve
got a whole shilling of my own to pay it with.”
Dr. Seaton had to explain this to the captain, and they both
laughed a great deal.
“But you must pay it for me just now please, Dr. Seaton, because
I haven’t my shilling with me,” Peggy explained; and then a horrid
fear overcame her that perhaps Dr. Seaton did not carry so much
money about with him either, and she would have to go away without
her tub; and he had told her that the ship would sail next morning!
She began to look very dismal at this thought, while Dr. Seaton
was feeling in his pocket; but to her great relief he drew out quite a
handful of shillings, and gave one to the captain, who took it and
laughed again.
“There now, Peggy; you can choose which you like best,” he said.
It took Peggy a very long time to
make up her mind. At last she chose a
beautiful little tub, oval shaped, bound
with three hoops of white wood, and
with two handles to lift it by. Dr. Seaton
wanted to hold it for her, but Peggy
wouldn’t let it out of her own hands,
she was so well pleased with it.
The captain told her that the tubs came from a place in Russia
with a funny name—Archangel; and that pleased Peggy even more,
because it was so much more interesting to have an Archangel tub
than an ordinary Scotch or English one.
Then the captain led the way down into his cabin. The cabin of a
ship like this is not like that of a large passenger steamer. It is almost
as small and dark as a cupboard, and has only just room for a tiny
table and two or three chairs. The table was securely fixed to the
floor, so that when the sea was rough with big waves it should not
slide about.
The captain brought out from a cupboard a funny-shaped bottle,
and the smallest glasses Peggy had ever seen. He poured a little
stuff out of the bottle into the glasses, and offered one to Dr. Seaton,
who took it and smiled; then the captain took one, and held it out,
and knocked the edge of the little glasses together, making a tinkling
sound like a bell.
“What does he do that for?” Peggy asked.
“It’s a way of being friendly and polite in Denmark,” Dr. Seaton
replied.
Then they both smiled and nodded again, and each drank off the
stuff from the glass.
“Let me taste, please,” said Peggy, standing on tip-toe by the
table.
“You would think it horrid,” said Dr. Seaton, laughing; “it would
burn your throat.”
“Oh, just a tiny taste—just the tip of my tongue; I want to so
much,” said Peggy.
So the captain poured another drop into the tiny glass, and
tinkled the edge against his own; and Peggy, thinking she must
imitate Dr. Seaton’s manners, bowed and smiled and tried to give the
same funny gulp down of the liquid as he had done. But there was
only a drop at the bottom of the glass, and that drop was such horrid
stuff, it was like trying to swallow mustard, Peggy thought. She
coughed, and coughed, and coughed till her eyes filled with tears,
and both the men stood laughing at her.
 “That will cure you of drinking
habits, young woman,” said Dr.
Seaton, “Now we must say good-bye
and come home.”
Peggy was very sorry to leave the
ship, for there seemed to be all
manner of queer things to see there
still. But she said good-bye to the
captain very nicely—so nicely that he
told her to wait for a minute; and going
to the cupboard, he drew out from it a
huge scarlet shell, which he handed to
Peggy with a bow.
“O Peggy, that is a present you will like!” said Dr. Seaton.
Peggy could scarcely believe her own good luck. The shell was
so perfectly beautiful; and Dr. Seaton showed her also that if she
held it to her ear she would hear a rushing noise inside it.
“O captain, thank you very, very much,” said Peggy, quite
overcome with delight.—“I think you must carry the tub, Dr. Seaton,
for I can’t give my shell out of my hands,” she said.
Dr. Seaton translated her thanks to the captain, and he seemed
very pleased, and told Peggy he had a little girl on the other side of
the sea just her age. Peggy stood still looking very uncertain and sad
at this bit of news. Then she pulled at Dr. Seaton’s hand and
whispered something to him. She felt it was her duty to say so, but it
was so difficult that she could not say it out loud. It was this,—
“Won’t his little daughter want the shell?”
She waited very impatiently to hear what answer the captain
would make; but, to her great relief, he said that his daughter had
lots of shells, because he took them home to her from almost every
voyage. Then they all shook hands, and Peggy was lifted up on to
the quay again, clasping her large red shell.
“I shall always be able to hear the sea now, even when I go home
far away from it,” she said.
 When they reached Seafield, Peggy ran into her room, and came
back with a little netted purse in her hand. Out of this she took her
shilling, and gave it to Dr. Seaton for the tub. But Dr. Seaton would
not take the shilling, and Peggy was quite distressed, and turned to
Aunt Euphemia to know what she ought to do. “Please, auntie, I
bought a tub, and now Dr. Seaton won’t take my shilling,” she said.
Aunt Euphemia, too, tried to make him take it, but all in vain.
So Peggy had to replace the shilling in her purse, and thank him
very much.
 CHAPTER IX.
THE WASHING DAY.

onday morning was hopelessly wet. The rain came down in

sheets, and the garden looked like a pond. But Peggy was
delighted. “It’s such a good washing day,” she explained to
her aunt, “and all my doll’s things are so black.”
Aunt Euphemia suggested that Janet
would allow the washing to go on in the
kitchen; and Peggy at once ran away to fetch
the doll’s clothes and her little tub, and carry
them all to the kitchen. Janet was very
pleased. She put the tub on a stool, so that it
should be just the right height for Peggy to
wash at, and filled the tub with nice soapy hot
water.
Then she pinned up Peggy’s sleeves to
her shoulders, and together they undressed
the doll (which was a baby one, in long white
robes), and laid its clothes in a heap on a chair.
Peggy would have liked to wash them all at once, but Janet told
her that washerwomen did things one at a time, so she consented to
do this. The doll’s long, tucked white robe was the first to go into the
tub. It was not indeed very white, for it had got rather dirty on the
railway journey.
“Rub it all over with soap, Miss Peggy,” Janet said, and Peggy
rubbed on the soap as hard as she could. How the water fluffed up! it
almost filled the tub, and Peggy had to part the frothy suds away with
her hand to see to rub the cloth. After the robe had been well
washed, Janet gave Peggy a basin full of clean water to rinse the
soap out of it, and then she took a ball like a big blue cherry,
wrapped it in a bit of muslin, and shook it about in the water. The
water became bright blue too!
 “Now, Miss Peggy, put the robe in,”
said Janet. Peggy was afraid to do it;
she thought it would come out bright
blue. But Janet assured her it would
only have a nice bluish look that would
make the white whiter; and Peggy
believed her, and dipped the robe in
the blue. It came out as white and nice
as possible.
Then Janet hung it before the
kitchen stove to dry, and Peggy saw
that on the stove Janet had put the
dearest little iron to heat.
“Am I to iron it out my own self,
Janet?” she asked.
“Oh yes, Miss Peggy, that you are.”
It took only a few minutes for the frock to dry, and then Janet put
a blanket with a sheet over it upon the lid of a large box, and gave
the box to Peggy for an ironing table.
The little iron was not at all difficult to manage, and Peggy found
that it was delightful to squeeze all the creases out of her doll’s robe.
It looked as good as new when it was done.
“Why, Janet, Belinda won’t ever need new robes at all; I can go
on washing and washing them,” Peggy said.
There remained, however, all Belinda’s under-clothes to be
washed; and before they were half finished, Peggy began to think
that washing was rather hard work.
“My hands feel so queer, Janet,” she said, drawing them out of
the soapy water. They looked indeed most strange; the skin was all
crinkled up in the funniest way. “Oh, look!” Peggy cried in dismay.
Janet assured her they would come right in a very short time.
“But I’m thinking you’ve washed enough, Miss Peggy, for one day;
maybe I’ll finish it for you,” she said.
 Peggy wasn’t altogether sorry. “Well, Janet, if you will be so kind
as to finish for me, I will go and listen to my shell,” she said, “and
perhaps my hands will stop feeling funny.”
There was a small library at Seafield where Peggy was allowed
to play by herself. She liked the room much better than the drawing-
room, because there were such lots of books with nice pictures in
them. Those she liked best were Hume’s “History,” with pictures of
the kings and queens, and Blair’s “Grave,” with illustrations by a man
called William Blake. Peggy used to spread the large book upon the
floor and pore over the pictures. She didn’t understand them, but that
only made them more interesting. To-day, instead of looking at the
pictures, she got her red shell, and sat down on the corner of the
sofa holding the shell to her ear. The rushing sound in the shell was
just like the noise of the sea outside, and Peggy listened to it for a
long time. Then getting a little tired of this, she went to the window
and looked out. The rain had stopped, and the sun was beginning to
come out. The thrushes were singing as if they liked the rain, and
Peggy thought it would be nice to go out and see what it felt like
also. So she went out to the front door, and stood there looking out.
Then she stepped out on to the gravel; then she ran a little bit down
the avenue; then she came to the gate and looked out at the sea;
and then a new thought struck her—why should she not look to see
if she could find any lovely red shells on the beach? The tide was
out; there was a stretch of sand with little pools and rocks covered
with seaweed: surely in these pools or on the sands she might find a
red shell for herself! This was stupid of Peggy, for shells like that the
captain gave her come from tropic seas, not from our own sea; but
she did not know this.
Out Peggy skipped along the shining sand. It was firm and nice to
run on, and she wondered she had not done this long ago; it was far
nicer than the garden. Her feet made tracks on the sand like the
footprint Crusoe saw, she thought. Then she came to a pool with
little seaweedy rocks in it. The first thing she saw there made her
stand still with interest: it was a lot of things like little red flowers
growing on the edge of the rock. But when she put her hand down
and tried to get one, she found it was alive; and when she touched it,
it drew in all its waving red feelers, and became like a lump of red-
currant jelly fixed to the rock! “I hope I didn’t hurt it,” Peggy thought.
She leant over the pool and watched it till it cautiously put out first
one feeler and then another, and at last it looked as pretty as ever
again and as much alive. Peggy wondered what it was called. Then
down on the slushy sand at her feet Peggy saw a great big lump of
jelly, six times as large as the little one in the pool. It didn’t look very
nice, she thought, but she wondered if, when it was put into the
water, it would bloom out like the other. The only way to find this out
was to lift it into the pool, but Peggy hesitated about doing this. Then
she saw a long flat stone like a slate lying near, and taking this in her
hand, she tried to slip it under the “jelly beast,” as she called it. But
the jelly beast didn’t seem to like being disturbed, and it sank down
and down into the soft sand till it almost disappeared. Peggy became
more and more anxious to get it. She dug her slate down into the
sand, and at last, with a great effort, lifted the jelly beast, along with
a great lump of sand, and flung it into the pool. Then she sat down to
watch it. To her great joy it began, just like the other one, to put out
one feeler after another, till it lay there at the bottom of the pond like
a big pink rose. “Oh, it’s lovely; I do want to have it for my own!” she
cried. “I wonder if I would be allowed to have it in my tub.” She bent
down to look nearer, and under the fringe of seaweed suddenly she
saw something shining red. She plunged her hand down and
grabbed the prize. But, oh dear me! the next moment she screamed
and screamed. It was a large red crab she had caught at, and the
crab had caught her! Have you seen the crabs lying in the fish-shop
windows twitching their claws? They look harmless enough, but with
these claws they can hold on in the most terrible way, once they
catch hold of you. Oh, how Peggy screamed! She ran towards the
house splashing through the pools, with the big red crab hanging on
to her hand. She was in an agony of pain and terror. The sound of
her screams brought James running from the garden. Peggy ran
straight to him, calling out for help; and James caught up a stone,
and gave the crab such a blow on its claw that it let go in a moment,
and fell to the ground. Peggy’s finger was bleeding a good deal, and
he took out his own handkerchief and bound it up for her, and then
took her other hand and led her, still sobbing, up to the house.
 “We’ll gang into Janet, missie,” he said
wisely. He knew that Janet was a more
comforting person than Martin, and Peggy
thought so too. Janet took her on her knee,
and kissed her and wiped her eyes, and
looked at the poor nipped finger till gradually
Peggy stopped crying. Then Janet took her to
the pump, and washed her face and hands, and began to tell her a
funny story about a crab that had nipped her own finger once, till
Peggy found herself laughing instead of crying.
When she was quite happy again, Janet said to Peggy that they
would go together and tell Aunt Euphemia all about it. Peggy was a
little frightened, but Janet said she must do it, and together they went
into the drawing-room.
Here it seemed to Peggy that Janet took all the blame on herself.
She told Aunt Euphemia how she had allowed Peggy to go away
from the kitchen, and had not looked after her, and how Peggy had
gone out alone, and then she told the sad story of the crab. And Aunt
Euphemia, instead of being angry, accepted the excuses Janet
made, for she was very fond of Janet, and never thought anything
she did was wrong.
“Maybe, ma’am, you would let me take Miss Peggy to the shore
myself?” Janet asked; “then she’d get no mischief.”
“Indeed, Janet, I see she must never be left alone for a minute;
so when your work is done, you may certainly take the child out with
you,” said Aunt Euphemia.
“Come away then, Miss Peggy,” said Janet; “ye’ll bide wi’ me till I
make the currant tart, and in the afternoon we can gang till the
shore.”
Peggy ran off to the kitchen as happy as possible to make the
currant tart, and Janet told her that they would go down to the shore
together, carrying Peggy’s tub, and fill it with all manner of sea
beasts, and bring them back to the house. And wasn’t this a
delightful suggestion?
 CHAPTER X.
THE SEA BEASTS.

I
t was wonderful how many sea creatures Peggy and Janet found
when they began. The little tub was quite full before long, and
Peggy, looking into it, told Janet that she was afraid they wouldn’t
be very comfortable.
Janet considered for a minute, and then told Peggy that there
was an old washing-tub in the scullery which she was sure her aunt
would let her use instead of her own little one; then there would be
room enough for all the creatures to be happy.
“But how would we ever get a washing-tub filled with water out of
the sea?” Peggy asked.
“Hoots! James and me can
carry it up in pails,” said Janet.
“Will you ask Aunt
Euphemia about it?” Peggy
asked. She had begun to see
that Janet could get anything
she wanted. Janet said that she
would, and went off to gain Aunt
Euphemia’s consent to the
scheme. She came back
smiling, and Peggy knew all
was right, so she clapped her
hands with delight.
“O Janet, do you think James will get the water to-night?” she
cried. “For it would be horrid if my poor beasts died, or were sick for
want of it.”
Janet then went off to look for James, and before long Peggy had
the joy of seeing him come toiling up the walk, carrying two huge
pails of water. Then Janet went down to the sea again with two pails,
and brought them back filled, and James brought two more, and
when they had all been poured into the tub it was quite full.
“Now I can put in my beasts!” Peggy cried.
The first of all was a great prize: it was a bit of
stone with two sea anemones attached to it. Sea
anemones are the creatures that Peggy had
seen in the pool that were like little pink flowers.
Janet had explained to her that it hurt anemones
to be scraped off the rocks, and so they had to
hunt till they found them growing on a small
stone that it was possible to lift. It had been some time before they
found this, but at last, at the bottom of a pool, Janet spied a small
stone with two beautiful anemones sticking to it. Whenever she lifted
the stone out of the water, the funny little creatures drew in all their
pretty petal-like feelers, and became like lumps of red-currant jelly;
but the moment Peggy placed them in the tub of water, out came the
feelers one by one till they were as pretty as ever again.
Then there was one of the big ones that had been scooped out of
the sand with great difficulty, and was rather offended evidently, for it
took a long time to put out its feelers—just lay and sulked on the
bottom of the tub. Peggy watched it for a long time, but as it wouldn’t
put out its feelers, she turned to the other creatures.
There were a number of whelks. Whelks, you
know, are sea-snails. They live in shells, and
draw themselves in and out of them very quickly.
The moment Peggy put them into the tub, they
pushed their shells on to their backs as snails do,
and began crawling slowly along the edges of the
tub.
“O Janet, my whelks will walk out and get lost!” Peggy cried. But
Janet told her she thought they liked the water best, and would stay
in it.
Then there were three mussels. Mussels live in tight, dark blue
shells; but when they please they can open their shells, much as you
open a portfolio, for there is a kind of hinge at the
back of the shell. However, they too were sulky,
and lay still quite tight shut.
Janet had picked up a very large shell, and
put it into the tub, and Peggy asked her why. She
said they would see before long. Now she took the large shell and
laid it in the water. Peggy watched, and suddenly she saw a thin
green leg come stealing out; then another and another, till at last a
tiny green crab came scrambling altogether out of the shell, and ran
rapidly about the tub.
“O Janet, it’s a little crab! How did you know? Do they always live
in these big snail shells?” Peggy cried.
Janet told her that they were called hermit crabs, and that they
lived in the cast-off shells of other creatures, just using them as
houses.
“Put your hand into the water, Miss Peggy, and you will see him
run in,” Janet said.
Peggy shook her hand in the water, and saw the little crab scuttle
away and get into his shell like lightning.
Janet had wanted to add a big red crab, like the one that nipped
Peggy, but Peggy wouldn’t have it. There were some limpets, in their
little pyramid-shaped shells, and then Janet had added a lot of
seaweed of different kinds. Some of it was slimy green stuff, like long
green hair, which Peggy didn’t at all admire; but there were pretty
feathery pink weed and nice brown dulse.
“I wonder if James could get a flounder,” Janet said thoughtfully.
Peggy asked what a flounder was, and Janet said it was the kind
of flat little fish Peggy had had fried for breakfast that morning.
“They’re ill to catch,” she added. “But maybe James could get ye
ane.”
“Oh, a fish—a real live fish—in my tub would be so delicious!”
cried Peggy.
 She ran off to beg James to try to
catch one for her; and James, who
was very obliging, went off once again
to the shore with a pail in search of a
flounder.
Peggy stood and watched him for
quite half an hour as he went slowly
across the sands, stooping over each
pool to see if there were flounders in it.
At last he came back, and Peggy
scarcely liked to ask him whether he
had got one, for she felt it would be so
disappointing if he hadn’t—her
collection would be quite incomplete.
But James was grinning with pleasure,
and he showed her two nice brown
flounders in the pail.
“Oh, they are flat!” cried Peggy.
She dived her hands into the pail, and attempted to catch them—
quite in vain. Then James slowly poured away all the water on to the
ground, and there the flounders lay, flopping about at the bottom of
the pail. Peggy was almost afraid to touch them, but James said they
would do her no harm; so she caught hold of one of the slippery,
wriggling little fish, and flung it into the tub, and it darted off and hid
itself under the seaweed. Then she put in the other flounder, and it
also hid under the seaweed, where it couldn’t be seen.
“I think they must be sleepy, and be going to bed,” Peggy said.
And then, quite tired out with her exertions, she rubbed her eyes and
yawned, till Janet told her it was time for her to go to bed like the
flounders; and Peggy agreed that it was.
 CHAPTER XI.
THE LAST DAY AT SEAFIELD.

N
ow, if Peggy had taken time to think about it, she was only
going to make herself unhappy by collecting all these
delightful creatures in the tub; for her visit to Seafield was to
come to an end on Wednesday, and this was Monday
evening. The whole of Tuesday morning Peggy thought of nothing
but her dear sea beasts. She stood beside the tub and watched
them; she crumbled a bit of bread very fine, and flung it into the
water, and actually saw one of the flounders eat a crumb; she
chased the hermit crab into its shell a dozen times, and watched the
whelks move slowly along the side of the tub. It was the nicest
amusement she had ever had. But in the afternoon Aunt Euphemia
said that they were going to drive to the station.
“Your father is coming for you, Peggy, you know; he is going to
take you home to-morrow.”
Peggy was very fond of her father—so fond that she had cried
when she said good-bye to him last week. It surprised Aunt
Euphemia extremely that, instead of being glad to hear of his
coming, Peggy seemed sorry, for she burst into tears.
“Why, Peggy, are you not glad to see your father?” said Aunt
Euphemia.
“I don’t want to go home!” Peggy sobbed.
Aunt Euphemia was rather pleased. “Do you want to stay with me
then, dear?” she asked.
“No; it’s my sea beasts. Oh, oh, oh!” sobbed Peggy. “Do you think
father will take the tub of sea beasts back in the train with us?”
No wonder Aunt Euphemia was hurt. It was nasty of Peggy to say
that she only wanted to stay because of the sea beasts.
 “Of course, he will do nothing of the kind,” said Aunt Euphemia.
“All the beasts must be put back into the sea to-night.”
She walked away and left Peggy to cry alone. But after she had
cried for some time, Peggy remembered that father was different
from Aunt Euphemia, and perhaps would not distress her by making
her part from the dear sea beasts. So she dried her eyes, and
thought perhaps it was as well that he was coming.
The drive to the station was quite dull. Nothing happened, for
Peggy wasn’t allowed to sit on the box-seat with the driver as she
wanted to, but had to sit beside her aunt in the carriage. At the
station, too, there was very little to notice—only some sheep in a
truck, looking very unhappy. Peggy gathered some blades of grass,
and held them to the sheep, and they nibbled them up. Then the
train came puffing in, and the next minute she saw her father jump
out of a carriage, and come along the platform to where she was.
Peggy was so delighted to see him that she ran right at him, and
caught hold of his knees so that she nearly made him fall. Then she
took his hand, and began telling him everything at once, in such a
hurry that it was impossible for him to understand anything she said.
“Not so fast, Peggy. Wait till we are in the carriage,” he said,
laughing.
It seemed a very long time till they were all packed in, and then
Peggy had to climb on to her father’s knee and put her arm round his
neck. “Now may I begin?” she asked.
“Yes, sweetest; tell me all about everything now,” her father said.
And Peggy began her story, of course, at the wrong end.
“I’ve got a tub full of such dear sea beasts, father,” she said.
“There are two flounders, and a lot of whelks, and a hermit crab, and
two anemones fixed on a stone, and a big one stuck on to the foot of
the tub, and I watch them all day; and, please, how am I to take them
home?”
“Well, I must come and see them first,” her father said.
“And please, father, I got lost one day, and had my frock stolen—
the new one—and the bees stung me, and a crab nipped my finger,
and I was very naughty once—only once—and I went on to a green
ship, and—and—”
“Why, Peggy, you seem to have had a week of the most
extraordinary adventures; it will be quite dull to come home.”
Peggy wasn’t quite sure about this. She had so many things she
was fond of at home, that if only she might take her sea beasts back
with her, she thought she would be quite happy to return. She sat still
for a few minutes thinking about this, while Aunt Euphemia spoke to
her father. But the moment the carriage stopped at the door, she
seized her father’s hand, and begged him to come and see her tub
of sea beasts.
“Not till after tea, Peggy; I’ll come then,” he said.
Peggy would have liked him to come there and then, but she
knew she must wait.
Tea seemed longer than usual. Her father told her to be quiet, so
she ate away without uttering a word, and listened to all the dull
things Aunt Euphemia was saying. At last, when tea was over, she
came round to where her father sat, and took hold of his hand, and
gave it a little squeeze, which she knew he would understand.
“Yes, dearest!” he said,
but waited to hear the end of
what Aunt Euphemia was
saying. “Now, Peggy,” he
said at last, “come along;”
and together they went out
to the garden, and came to
the tub. Peggy looked in.
“Why, father,” she cried,
“my crab is floating on his
back! Isn’t it funny of him?”
Colonel Roberts examined the crab for a minute.
“I’m afraid he’s dead, Peggy,” he said. “They don’t turn up their
toes that way unless they’re dead.”