Admiralty Manual of Tides

Abstract

THE numerous and important developments in our knowledge of the tides that have been made in recent years are largely hidden away in technical journals. There has been but little written for those who wish to know something of the tides and their causes without working through the heavy mathematics which usually surrounds the subject. G. H. Darwin, in his “Tides and Kindred Phenomena”, published in 1898, gave a clear non-mathematical account of the subject as it was then. Public interest in the theory of the tides was shown by the demand for further editions in Great Britain and by its translation into several foreign languages. Warburg's “Tides and Tidal Streams” (1922) was intended for seamen and for those who require a professional knowledge of the tides ; but it contains a description of the chief tidal features in a form suitable for the general reader. Mariner's “The Tide” (1926) is a simple and readable account of the subject and includes references to the more recent work. In. addition, many text-books of geography and allied subjects have devoted a chapter to a more or less sketchy account of the tides and their causes. But there is clearly room for a book, which, while it does not avoid mathematics altogether, yet steers a middle course between the formal treatise and the popular account for the non-scientific reader, and also incorporates the developments of the last thirty years Such a book is the “Admiralty Manual of Tides”, Admiralty Manual of Tides By Dr. A. T. Doodson Comdr. H. D. Warburg. Pp. xii + 270. (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1941.) 12s. 6d. net.