The Tonkin Tides Revisited

Notes and Records of the Royal Society

Volumn 57, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 135-142

  Cartwright, David E ^a  

^a 3 Borough House ^*  (United Kingdom)

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EID: 0141924603     PISSN: 00359149     EISSN: 17430178     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2003.0201     Document Type: Review

References (18)

1. 'An account of the course of the tides at Tonqueen in a letter from Mr. Francis Davenport, July 15.1678. with the theory of them, at the Barr of Tonqueen, by the learned Edmond Halley, Fellow of the Royal Society', Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. 13, 677-688 (1684). (Halley's own paper, with the spelling Tunking, is on pp. 685-688.)
2. Sir Alan Cook, Edmond Halley-charting the heavens and the seas (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998). I am indebted to Mr Paul Hughes of Airmyn, Yorkshire, for detailed information based on manuscripts about the movements of ships and personnel of the East India Company of the period, and for the relevance of Capt. Dampier's account of his voyage to Tonkin (see note 9).
3. Op. cit., note 1, p. 687, line 8 (third symbol misprinted).
4. Isaac Newton, The Principia: mathematical principles of natural philosophy (new translation by I.B. Cohen and A. Whitman, assisted by J. Budenz), Book 3, Proposition 24 (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1999).
5. L. Euler, 'Inquisitio physica causam fluxus ac refluxus maris', (1740). In Receuil des pièces qui ont remporté le prix de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, vol. 4 (Paris, 1752). (The prize of 1740 was shared by Euler with D. Bernoulli, A. Cavalleri and C. MacLaurin, whose papers are in the same volume. Euler's study of the Gulf of Tonkin regime is in his paragraphs 139 and 140.)
6. J.J. de Lalande, Astronomie (Paris, 1781), vol. 4, pp. 274-276. Volume 4 has a long section (pp. 1-348) devoted to Le flux et le réflux de la mer, including a historical survey that was reprinted in the edition of 1784, but much abridged in later editions.
7. Op. cit., note 1.
8. Op. cit., note 6.
9. William Dampier, Collection of voyages (London (1699), vol. 2, part 1, ch. 1. Dampier's account of his voyage to Tonkin is not included in his better-known A new voyage round the world, which occupies vol. 1 of the four-volume set, also published separately. In a separate essay on tides in general (ibid., vol. 2, p. 97), Dampier comments, 'The most irregular [tides] that I did ever see are at Tonqueen in about 20° North, and on the coast of New Holland [Australia]. In both places the neap tides are scarce discernible. Those at Tonqueen are described at large by Mr. Davenport, who was engaged by Mr. James, chief of the English factors there, to observe them.'
10. William Dampier, Collection of voyages (London (1699), vol. 2, part 1, ch. 1. Dampier's account of his voyage to Tonkin is not included in his better-known A new voyage round the world, which occupies vol. 1 of the four-volume set, also published separately. In a separate essay on tides in general (ibid., vol. 2, p. 97), Dampier comments, 'The most irregular [tides] that I did ever see are at Tonqueen in about 20° North, and on the coast of New Holland [Australia]. In both places the neap tides are scarce discernible. Those at Tonqueen are described at large by Mr. Davenport, who was engaged by Mr. James, chief of the English factors there, to observe them.'
11. Admiralty Sailing Directions - China Sea, 5th edn (HMSO, London, 2001), vol. 1, especially pp. 201-207.
12. D.E. Cartwright, Tides - a scientific history (Cambridge University Press, 1998), ch. 5-7.
13. G. Héraud, 'Onde diurne des marées observée en Cochinchine et au Tong-King', Congrés International des Sciences Géographiques (Pans, 1877), vol. 1, pp. 111-115. See also A. Courtier, 'Note on a method for a rough prediction of diurnal tides', Hydrogr. Rev. 10 (2), 116-123 (1933).
14. G. Héraud, 'Onde diurne des marées observée en Cochinchine et au Tong-King', Congrés International des Sciences Géographiques (Pans, 1877), vol. 1, pp. 111-115. See also A. Courtier, 'Note on a method for a rough prediction of diurnal tides', Hydrogr. Rev. 10 (2), 116-123 (1933).
15. P.S. Laplace, Traité de mécanique céleste (Paris, 1799), especially vol. 2, Livre 4. See also Cartwright, op. cit., note 11, ch. 7.
16. P.S. Laplace, Traité de mécanique céleste (Paris, 1799), especially vol. 2, Livre 4. See also Cartwright, op. cit., note 11, ch. 7.
17. Ye Anle and I.S. Robinson, 'Tidal dynamics in the South China Sea', Geophys. J. R. Astr. Soc. 72, 691-707 (1983). (The authors also review some other, less successful, models of the same sea area.)
18. Some such oceanic response is suggested by the form of the normal modes at 28.7 and 21.2 hours calculated by Platzman and others: G.W. Platzman, G.A. Curtis, K.S. Hansen and R. Slater, 'Normal modes of the world ocean-2', J. Phys. Oceanogr. 11, 579-603 (1981), and subsequent papers on the same subject.