Whirlpool

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Whirlpool

A whirlpool is a swirling body of water

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A whirlpool is a swirling body of water

Water

Water is a common chemical substance that is essential for the survival of all known forms of life. In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or States of matter, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam....
usually produced by ocean tides. The vast majority of whirlpools are not very powerful. More powerful ones are more properly termed maelstrom
Maelstrom

A maelstrom is a very powerful whirlpool; a large, swirling body of water. A free vortex, it has considerable downdraft. The Nordic word was introduced into English by Edgar Allan Poe in his story "A Descent into the Maelstr?m" ....
s. Vortex
Vortex

A vortex is a Rotation, often Turbulence,flow of fluid. Any spiral motion with closed Streamlines, streaklines and pathlines is vortex flow....
is the proper term for any whirlpool that has a downdraft. (Technically, these approximate to a 'free vortex', in which the tangential velocity (v) increases as the centre line is approached, so that the angular momentum (rv) is constant). Very small whirlpools can easily be seen when a bath or a sink is draining, but these are produced in a very different manner from those in nature. Smaller whirlpools also appear at the base of many waterfall

Waterfall

A waterfall is usually a geology geologic formation resulting from water, often in the form of a stream, flowing over an erosion-resistant rock formation that forms a nickpoint, or sudden break in elevation....
s. In the case of powerful waterfalls, like Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls

The Niagara Falls are massive waterfalls on the Niagara River, straddling the Canada?United States border between the Provinces and territories of Canada of Ontario and the U.S....
, these whirlpools can be quite strong. The most powerful whirlpools are created in narrow shallow straits with fast flowing water.

The five strongest whirlpools in the world are the Saltstraumen

Saltstraumen

Saltstraumen is a Sound with a strong Tide located in Nordland 30 km east of the city of Bod?, Norway. The narrow channel connects the outer Saltfjord with its extension, the large Skjerstadfjord....
outside Bodø

Bodø

is a List of cities in Norway and a Municipalities of Norway in Nordland Counties of Norway, Norway. It is part of the Salten Districts of Norway....
in Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe that occupies the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula....
, which reaches speeds of 37 km/h; the Moskstraumen

Moskstraumen

The Moskstraumen is a system of tide Eddy and whirlpools, one of the strongest in the world, that forms in a strait adjacent to the Lofoten archipelago, Norway....
off the Lofoten

Lofoten

Lofoten is an archipelago and a Districts of Norway in the county of Nordland, Norway. Though lying within the Arctic Circle, the archipelago experiences one of the world's largest elevated temperature anomalies relative to its high latitude....
islands in Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe that occupies the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula....
(the original maelstrom), which reaches speeds of 27.8 km/h; the Old Sow

Old Sow

Old Sow is the name of the largest tidal whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere located off the southwestern shore of Deer Island, New Brunswick, New Brunswick, Canada between that island and Moose Island, the principal island of Eastport, Maine, Maine....
in New Brunswick

New Brunswick

New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only Constitution of Canada bilingual province in the federation. The provincial capital is Fredericton....
, Canada

Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
, which has been measured with a speed of up to 27.6 km/h; the Naruto whirlpool

Naruto whirlpool

The is a tidal whirlpool in the Naruto strait, a channel between Naruto, Tokushima in Tokushima prefecture and Awaji Island in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan....
in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
, which has a speed of 20 km/h; and the Corryvreckan

Gulf of Corryvreckan

The Gulf of Corryvreckan , also called the Strait of Corryvreckan, is a narrow strait between the islands of Jura, Scotland and Scarba, in Argyll and Bute, off the west coast of Scotland....
in Scotland

Scotland

conventional_long_name = ScotlandAlba|common_name= Scotland|image_flag = Flag of Scotland.svg|flag_width = 130px...
, which reaches speeds of 18 km/h.

Powerful whirlpools have killed unlucky seafarers, but their power tends to be exaggerated by laymen. There are virtually no stories of large ships ever being sucked into a whirlpool. Tales like those by Paul the Deacon, Jules Verne

Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne was a France author who helped pioneer the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Journey to the Center of the Earth , From the Earth to the Moon , Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , and Around the World in Eighty Days ....
and Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, Short story writer, Editing and Literary criticism, and is considered part of the American Romanticism. Best known for his tales of Mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the Detective fiction genre....
are entirely fictional. The closest equivalent might have been the short-lived whirlpool that sucked in a portion of Lake Peigneur

Lake Peigneur

Lake Peigneur is located in the United States State of Louisiana north of Delcambre, Louisiana and west of New Iberia, Louisiana, near the northernmost tip of Vermilion Bay....
in New Iberia, Louisiana

New Iberia, Louisiana

New Iberia is a city in and the parish seat of Iberia Parish, Louisiana, Louisiana, United States, 30 miles southeast of Lafayette, Louisiana....
, USA

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
after a drilling mishap in 1980. This was not a naturally-occurring whirlpool, but a man-made disaster caused by breaking through the roof of a salt mine. The lake then behaved like a gigantic bathtub being drained, until the mine filled and the water levels equalized. Although some boats and semi trailers were pulled into it in the classic whirlpool stereotype, no human lives were lost.

In popular imagination, but only rarely in reality, whirlpools can have the dangerous effect of destroying boat

Boat

A boat is a watercraft of modest size designed to float or plane on water, and provide transport over it. Usually this water will be inland or in protected coastal areas....
s. In the 8th century, Paul the Deacon

Paul the Deacon

Paul the Deacon , also known as Paulus Diaconus, Warnefred and Cassinensis, , was a Benedictine monk and historian of the Lombards....
, who had lived among the Belgii, described tidal bore

Tidal bore

A tidal bore is a tide phenomenon in which the leading edge of the incoming tide forms a wave of water that travel up a river or narrow bay against the direction of the current....
s and the maelstrom

Maelstrom

A maelstrom is a very powerful whirlpool; a large, swirling body of water. A free vortex, it has considerable downdraft. The Nordic word was introduced into English by Edgar Allan Poe in his story "A Descent into the Maelstr?m" ....
for a Mediterranean audience unused to such violent tidal surges:

Not very far from this shore... toward the western side, on which the ocean main lies open without end, is that very deep whirlpool of waters which we call by its familiar name "the navel of the sea." This is said to suck in the waves and spew them forth again twice every day...

They say there is another whirlpool of this kind between the island of Britain and the province of Galicia, and with this fact the coasts of the Seine region and of Aquitaine agree, for they are filled twice a day with such sudden inundations that any one who may by chance be found only a little inward from the shore can hardly get away.

I have heard a certain high nobleman of the Gaul
Gaul

Gaul is the name used for the region of Western Europe comprising part of present day northern Italy, France, Belgium, western Switzerland and the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the west bank of the River Rhine....
s relating that a number of ships, shattered at first by a tempest, were afterwards devoured by this same Charybdis
Charybdis

In Greek mythology, Kharybdis or Charybdis was a sea monster, once a beautiful naiad and the daughter of Poseidon and Gaia . She takes form as a huge bladder of a creature whose face was all mouth and whose arms and legs were flippers and swallows huge amounts of water three times a day before belching them back out again, creating whi...
. And when one only out of all the men who had been in these ships, still breathing, swam over the waves, while the rest were dying, he came, swept by the force of the receding waters, up to the edge of that most frightful abyss. And when now he beheld yawning before him the deep chaos whose end he could not see, and half dead from very fear, expected to be hurled into it, suddenly in a way that he could not have hoped he was cast upon a certain rock and sat him down. — Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, i.6

In "Vingt mille lieues sous les mers" (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is a classic science fiction novel by France writer Jules Verne published in 1870 in literature. It tells the story of Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus as seen from the perspective of Professor Pierre Aronnax....
), first published in 1869-1870 in the magazine "Magasin d'Éducation et de Récréation", Jules Verne

Jules Verne

«Maelstrom! Maelstrom!» s'écriait-il! Le Maelstrom! Un nom plus effrayant dans une situation plus effrayante pouvait-il retentir à notre oreille?

Which means "Maelstrom! Maelstrom!" he exclaimed! The Maelstrom! Could a more frightening name in a more frightening situation blare in our ear?

Whirlpool

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