Word Finder - fathoms

definition

Grasp, envelopment, control.

definition

(now usually nautical) An English unit of length for water depth notionally based upon the width of grown man's outstretched arms but standardized as 6 feet (about 1.8 m).

synonyms

• brace
• orguia
• stade

definition

Various similar units in other systems.

definition

Depth of insight, mental reach or scope.

definition

To encircle with outstretched arms, especially to take a measurement; to embrace.

definition

To measure the depth of, take a sounding of.

definition

To get to the bottom of; to manage to comprehend; understand (a problem etc.).

example

I can't for the life of me fathom what this means.

synonyms

• fathom out
• figure out
• puzzle out
• work out

Teredo navalis, it has been found necessary, for depths not exceeding 300 fathoms, to protect the core with a thin layer of brass tape.

The greater part of this trough is over 600 fathoms deep. The profusion of islands and their usually bold elevation give beauty and picturesqueness to the sea, but its navigation is difficult and dangerous, notwithstanding the large number of safe and commodious gulfs and bays.

Below 500 fathoms the western centres of maximum disappear, and higher temperatures occur in the eastern Atlantic off the Iberian peninsula and north-western Africa down to at least 1000 fathoms; at still greater depths temperature gradually becomes more and more uniform.

The communication between the Atlantic and Arctic basins being cut off, as already described, at a depth of about 300 fathoms, the temperatures in the Norwegian Sea below that level are essentially Arctic, usually below the freezing-point of fresh water, except where the distribution is modified by the surface circulation.

This distribution is most marked at about 300 fathoms, and disappears at soo fathoms, beyond which depth the lines tend to become parallel and to run east and west, the gradient slowly diminishing.

The grappling of the cable and raising it to the surface from a depth of 2000 fathoms seldom occupy less than twenty-four hours, and since any extra strain due to the pitching of the vessel must be avoided, it is clear that the state of the sea and weather is the predominating factor in the time necessary for effecting the long series of operations which, in the most favourable circumstances, are required for a repair.

As to cost, one transatlantic cable repair cost 75,000; the repair of the Aden-Bombay cable, broken in a depth of 1900 fathoms, was effected with the expenditure of 176 miles of new cable, and after a lapse of 251 days, 103 being spent in actual work, which for the remainder of the time was interrupted by the monsoon; a repair of the Lisbon-Porthcurnow cable, broken in the Bay of Biscay in 2700 fathoms, eleven years after the cable was laid, took 215 days, with an expenditure of 300 miles of cable.

A third curve, from the south-easternmost promontory of the Peloponnese through Cerigo, Crete, Carpathos and Rhodes, marks off the outer deeps of the open Mediterranean from the shallow seas of the archipelago, but the Cretan Sea, in which depths occur over 1000 fathoms, intervenes, north of the line, between it and the Aegean proper.

The only part of the sea-bed the configuration of which is at all well known is the zone bordering the coasts where the depth is less than about loo fathoms or 200 metres, i.e.

An elevation of small extent is distinguished as a " dome " when it is more than 100 fathoms from the surface, a " bank " when it is nearer the surface than 100 fathoms but deeper than 6 fathoms, and a " shoal " when it comes within 6 fathoms of the surface and so becomes a serious danger to shipping.

By an invention probably due to Humfray Cole and published in 1 578 by William Bourne in his Inventions and Devices, it was proposed to register a ship's speed by means of a "little small close boat," with a wheel, or wheels, and an axle-tree to turn clockwork in the little boat, with dials and pointers indicating fathoms, leagues, scores of leagues and hundreds of leagues.

The depth of the middle portion of the lake has not yet been measured, but must exceed 500 fathoms. It was expected that an underground ridge would be found connecting Olkhon with Svyatoi Nos; but depths exceeding 622 fathoms have been sounded even along that line.

Generally, while there is a relative poverty of zoological groups, there is a great wealth of species within the group. Of gammarids, there are as many as 300 species, and those living at great depths (33 o to 380 fathoms) tend to assume abyssal characters similar to those displayed by the deep-sea fauna of the ocean.

They live in the mud, which they eat, in comparatively shallow waters up to 50 fathoms.

The greatest depth is 1030 fathoms (1227 Russian fathoms) near the centre, there being only one basin.

The steepest incline outside loo fathoms is to the southeast of the Crimea and at Amastra; the incline to the greater depths is also steep off the Caucasus and between Trebizond and Batum.

The existence of sulphuretted hydrogen in great quantities below loo fathoms, the extensive chemical precipitation of calcium carbonate, the stagnant nature of its deep waters, and the absence of deep-sea life are conditions which make it impossible to discuss it along with the physical and biological conditions of the Mediterranean proper.

The depths of the Black Sea are lifeless, higher organic life not being known to exist below loo fathoms. Fossiliferous remains of Dreissena, Cardium and other molluscs have, however, been dredged up, which help to show that conditions formerly existed in the Black Sea similar to those that exist at the present day in the Caspian Sea.

During summer the surface salinity of the Black Sea is from 1.70 to 2'00% down to 50 fathoms, whereas in the greater depths it attains a salinity of 2.25%.

The temperature is rather remarkable, there being an intermediate cold layer between 25 and 50 fathoms. This is due to the sinking of the cold surface water (which in winter reaches freezing-point) on to the top of the denser more saline water of the greater depths.

The Sea of Azov is exceedingly shallow, being only about 6 fathoms in its deepest part, and it is largely influenced by the river Don.

A submarine ridge, about 300 fathoms deep at its deepest, unites Greenland with Iceland (across Denmark Strait), the Faeroes and Scotland.

These fjords are very deep; the greatest depth found by Ryder in Scoresby Sound was 300 fathoms, but there are certainly still greater depths; like the Norwegian fjords they have, however, probably all of them, a threshold or sill, with shallow water, near their mouths.

Finally, the plankton (and again the vegetable forms in particular) are practically restricted to the upper hundred fathoms or so of the sea.

Daly estimates that the maximum lowering of ocean level due to this cause would only amount to 36 fathoms, but even that would be the cause of very marked geological effects.

William Gilpin, who is so admirable in all that relates to landscapes, and usually so correct, standing at the head of Loch Fyne, in Scotland, which he describes as "a bay of salt water, sixty or seventy fathoms deep, four miles in breadth," and about fifty miles long, surrounded by mountains, observes, "If we could have seen it immediately after the diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of nature occasioned it, before the waters gushed in, what a horrid chasm must it have appeared!

From throwbacks to name brands, the array of toy options seems hundreds of miles wide and many fathoms deep.

The GMT, Fifty Fathoms, 500 Fathoms, Ultra-Slim, Flyback Chronograph, and Tourbillon are featured models of this collection.

Owing to the increased friction produced by a rotator making approximately 900 revolutions per mile, towed at the end of a line varying from 40 fathoms for a 12 -knot FIG.

Finally, Glandiceps abyssicola (Spengelidae) was dredged during the "Challenger" expedition in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa at a depth of 2500 fathoms.

The natural harbour, which, with a depth diminishing from 70 to 30 fathoms, strikes in from the northwest so as to cut the island into two fairly equal portions, with an isthmus not more than 14 m.

Below 150 fathoms they are rare, but a few such as Terebratulina wyvillei are found down to 2000 fathoms. Lingula is essentially a very shallow water form.

It is a widelydistributed species, being found throughout the northern and temperate seas of Europe, Asia and America, extending as far south as Gibraltar, but not entering the Mediterranean, and inhabits water from 25 to 50 fathoms deep, where it always feeds close to the bottom.

The levels are supposed to be I o fathoms (60 ft.) apart.

The extreme depth of the strait approaches 50 fathoms, and it contains two small islands known as the Diomede Islands.

The southern coast in particular is deeply indented; and there two bold peninsulas, extending for several miles into the sea, form two capacious natural harbours, namely, Deep Water Bay, with the village of Stanley to the east, and Tytam Bay, which has a safe, well-protected entrance showing a depth of 10 to 16 fathoms. An in-shore island on the west coast, called Aberdeen, or Taplishan, affords protection to the Shekpywan or Aberdeen harbour, an inlet provided with a granite graving dock, the caisson gate of which is 60 ft.

There is good anchorage throughout the entire channel separating the island from the mainland, except in the Ly-ee-mun Pass, where the water is deep; the best anchorage is in Hong-Kong roads, in front of Victoria, where, over good holding ground, the depth is 5 to 9 fathoms. The inner anchorage of Victoria Bay, about a m.

There the bottom slopes very abruptly, descending precipitously at a point not far from the north-east coast of the main island, where soundings have shown 4655 fathoms. This, the deepest sea-bed in the world, is called the Tuscarora Deep, after the name of the United States man-of-war which made the survey.

On the other hand, the average depth of the Japan Sea is only 1200 fathoms, and its maximum depth is 3200.

These last have not been found anywhere except at the entrance of the Bay of Tokyo at a depth of some 200 fathoms.

Dr Livingstone obtained a depth of 326 fathoms opposite Mount Kabogo, south of Ujiji.

Mr Hore often failed to find bottom with a line of 168 fathoms. The French explorer, Victor Giraud, reported 647 metres (about 350 fathoms) off Mrumbi on the west coast, and Moore depths of 200 fathoms and upwards near the south end.

It has a depth of 6 to io fathoms, with a good bottom, and large ships can anchor at a cable's length from the shore.

During Nansen's expedition on the " Fram " in 1894-1895, Scott Hansen made observations with a Sterneck's half-seconds pendulum on the ice where the sea was more than 1600 fathoms deep and found only an insignificant deviation from the number of swings corresponding to a normal ellipsoid.

This epoch-making great discoverers of the modern period were only familiar with expedition lasted from Christmas 1872 to the end of May 1876, the hand-lead, and the lines in use did not exceed 200 fathoms and gave the first wide and general view of the physical and in length.

He spliced together all the sounding-lines on board, rightly said that since the days of Columbus and Magellan no and with a weight of 1501b attached he found bottom in 683 such revelation regarding the surface of our planet had been fathoms and secured a sample of fine soft blue mud.

Polar explorers making sections across the great expanses of water with everfrequently repeated those experiments in deep-sea soundings, increasing accuracy, and in that work the government surveying both William Scoresby and Sir John Ross obtaining notable ships have also been engaged, vast stretches of the Indian and results, though not reaching depths of more than 1200 fathoms. Pacific Oceans having been opened up to knowledge by H.M.SS.

All attempts to dispense with a lead and line and to measure the depth by determining the pressure at the bottom have hitherto failed when applied to depths greater than 200 fathoms; a new hydraulic manometer has been tried on board the German surveying ship " Planet."

It is improbable, however, that the smooth and slender wire is much influenced by currents, and the best deep-sea soundings may be taken as accurate to within 5 fathoms.

Kriimmel has calculated the mean depth to be 2010 fathoms (12,060 ft.), while the mean elevation of the surface of the continents above sea-level is only 2300 ft.