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Applied Underwater
Acoustics
Leif Bjørnø
UltraTech Holding, Taastrup, Denmark
Edited by
Thomas H. Neighbors III
David Bradley
Elsevier
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©Kongsberg Maritime AS and Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI).
Reprinted with permission.
Notices
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experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional
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Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in
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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
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
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
M. Prior
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
J.-P. Sessarego
LMA-CNRS, Marseille and DGA Naval Systems, Toulon, France
C.C. Tsimenidis
Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
M. Zampolli
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
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,
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
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
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
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,
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.

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
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.

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
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.
Ewing, together with J.L. Worzel and several other colleagues at Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute studied long-range sound propagation in shallow and
deep water by using underwater explosions [6,7]. Based on their data, Chaim Pekeris
improved his normal mode propagation theory [5,8] and was able to interpret the
shape of the mean dispersion curves measured by Ewing and Worzel. Geometrical
dispersion was also described by Tolstoy [9] in a fluidesolid layer. The concept of
elastic wave propagation has allowed underwater acousticians to model and under-
stand complex shallow water acoustics. Ewing and Worzel’s research also formed
the basis for a series of seabed geological structure studies performed mostly in
shallow water off the East Coast of the USA. The cooperation established between
Ewing’s group at Columbia University and the scientists at Woods Hole Oceano-
graphic Institute turned out to be most fruitful for underwater seismology investiga-
tions. The “refraction method” and the “continuous seismic profiler” were results of
this cooperation.
A group around C.F. Eyring in San Diego, USA, had observed that diffuse echoes
were received from the volume of a water column. These echoes were arranged
roughly in horizontal layers whose depths were of the order of 400 m at noon, but
they migrated to the surface during the twilight and the early evening. At dawn,
they migrated downward to complete a daily cycle. Based on help from marine
biologists it was possible to show that the responsible scatterers were small plank-
tonic fish that have a swim bladder and live in the deep ocean water regions. The
research into the “deep scattering layers” peaked during the 1949e1957 period.
Important contributions to marine bioacoustics were made during the subsequent
years.
These years also brought important research results related to sound absorption
mechanisms in the sea and sources and spectra of ambient noise. The anomalous
absorption in seawater below 1 MHz, where the viscous absorption predicted by
Stokes in 1845 [10] gave values too low compared with measurements was
explained. Liebermann [11] explained the deviation from the Stokes-based viscous
absorption dependence on the square of the frequency by the presence of a dilata-
tional viscosity and the influence of relaxational effects, as discussed in Chapter
4. In the 1950s it was shown that the relaxational effects were caused by the presence
of magnesium sulfate (MgSO4) [12,13] with a relaxation time below 1 ms, and even
lower frequency, <10 kHz, relaxation-caused absorption was discovered in the
1970s to be due to boric acid (B(OH)3) [14,15].
The comprehensive research and development efforts in underwater acoustics
after World War II and the development in computer technology after 1960 formed
the basis for the nearly explosive development in underwater acoustics from 1960.
Among the main trends in underwater acoustics research and development
are underwater sound propagation modeling involving mode theory, parabolic
equations [16], and finite element methods to include realistic range dependence
and surface and bottom effects, reverberation studies, and ambient noise source
and directivity studies [17], as also underwater acoustical tomography including
1.3 International Standard Units 15
the international acoustic thermometry of the ocean climate (ATOC) studies [18],
and the coupling between acoustics, oceanography, and meteorology to lead to
long term reliable weather forecasts, acoustical studies of biomass in the sea
including detection of sea mammals [19], and extensive bottom and subbottom
studies for exploitation of minerals, oil, and gas, as well as for cable and tube
laying. Also the “Cold War” gave inspiration to a substantial research effort in un-
derwater acoustics and to a considerable development effort in relation to equip-
ment for acoustic studies of “the underwater world.” Advanced fixed-positioned
warning and surveillance networks such as SOSUS (SOund SUrveillance System)
in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and ship-towed passive arrays such as SUR-
TASS (Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System), as discussed in Chapter 10,
were results of Cold War developments.
The developments in underwater acoustics over the last 20 years are, for
instance, reflected in the increasing number of R&D results published in the pro-
ceedings of international conferences like the European Conference on Underwater
Acoustics (ECUA) from 1991 through 2012 and the Underwater Acoustic Measure-
ments: Technologies and Results (UAM) from 2005 through 2011. From 2013, these
conferences are merged into the International Conference and Exhibition on Under-
water Acoustics (UA) [20,21].
1.3 INTERNATIONAL STANDARD UNITS

The units used throughout this book are based on the International System of Units,
(Syste´me Internationale, SI). The SI includes seven base units and several derived
units. Table 1.1 gives the SI base units and Table 1.2 gives the SI derived units
and other units used in this book. More units, their magnitude, and relations used
in underwater acoustics are given in Table 1.3.
Table 1.1 SI Base Units

Quantity Name Symbol
Length Meter m
Mass Kilogram kg
Time Second s
Electric current Ampere A
Thermodynamic Kelvin K
temperature
Amount of substance Mole mol
Luminous intensity Candela cd
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organ pealed sweetly), and saw Miss Kilman at the end of the row,
praying, praying, and, being still on the threshold of their underworld,
thought of her sympathetically as a soul haunting the same territory;
a soul cut out of immaterial substance; not a woman, a soul.
But Mr. Fletcher had to go. He had to pass her, and being himself
neat as a new pin, could not help being a little distressed by the poor
lady’s disorder; her hair down; her parcel on the floor. She did not at
once let him pass. But, as he stood gazing about him, at the white
marbles, grey window panes, and accumulated treasures (for he was
extremely proud of the Abbey), her largeness, robustness, and
power as she sat there shifting her knees from time to time (it was so
rough the approach to her God—so tough her desires) impressed
him, as they had impressed Mrs. Dalloway (she could not get the
thought of her out of her mind that afternoon), the Rev. Edward
Whittaker, and Elizabeth too.
And Elizabeth waited in Victoria Street for an omnibus. It was so nice
to be out of doors. She thought perhaps she need not go home just
yet. It was so nice to be out in the air. So she would get on to an
omnibus. And already, even as she stood there, in her very well cut
clothes, it was beginning.... People were beginning to compare her
to poplar trees, early dawn, hyacinths, fawns, running water, and
garden lilies; and it made her life a burden to her, for she so much
preferred being left alone to do what she liked in the country, but
they would compare her to lilies, and she had to go to parties, and
London was so dreary compared with being alone in the country with
her father and the dogs.
Buses swooped, settled, were off—garish caravans, glistening with
red and yellow varnish. But which should she get on to? She had no
preferences. Of course, she would not push her way. She inclined to
be passive. It was expression she needed, but her eyes were fine,
Chinese, oriental, and, as her mother said, with such nice shoulders
and holding herself so straight, she was always charming to look at;
and lately, in the evening especially, when she was interested, for
she never seemed excited, she looked almost beautiful, very stately,
very serene. What could she be thinking? Every man fell in love with
her, and she was really awfully bored. For it was beginning. Her
mother could see that—the compliments were beginning. That she
did not care more about it—for instance for her clothes—sometimes
worried Clarissa, but perhaps it was as well with all those puppies
and guinea pigs about having distemper, and it gave her a charm.
And now there was this odd friendship with Miss Kilman. Well,
thought Clarissa about three o’clock in the morning, reading Baron
Marbot for she could not sleep, it proves she has a heart.
Suddenly Elizabeth stepped forward and most competently boarded
the omnibus, in front of everybody. She took a seat on top. The
impetuous creature—a pirate—started forward, sprang away; she
had to hold the rail to steady herself, for a pirate it was, reckless,
unscrupulous, bearing down ruthlessly, circumventing dangerously,
boldly snatching a passenger, or ignoring a passenger, squeezing
eel-like and arrogant in between, and then rushing insolently all sails
spread up Whitehall. And did Elizabeth give one thought to poor
Miss Kilman who loved her without jealousy, to whom she had been
a fawn in the open, a moon in a glade? She was delighted to be free.
The fresh air was so delicious. It had been so stuffy in the Army and
Navy Stores. And now it was like riding, to be rushing up Whitehall;
and to each movement of the omnibus the beautiful body in the
fawn-coloured coat responded freely like a rider, like the figurehead
of a ship, for the breeze slightly disarrayed her; the heat gave her
cheeks the pallor of white painted wood; and her fine eyes, having
no eyes to meet, gazed ahead, blank, bright, with the staring
incredible innocence of sculpture.
It was always talking about her own sufferings that made Miss
Kilman so difficult. And was she right? If it was being on committees
and giving up hours and hours every day (she hardly ever saw him in
London) that helped the poor, her father did that, goodness knows,—
if that was what Miss Kilman meant about being a Christian; but it
was so difficult to say. Oh, she would like to go a little further.
Another penny was it to the Strand? Here was another penny then.
She would go up the Strand.
She liked people who were ill. And every profession is open to the
women of your generation, said Miss Kilman. So she might be a
doctor. She might be a farmer. Animals are often ill. She might own a
thousand acres and have people under her. She would go and see
them in their cottages. This was Somerset House. One might be a
very good farmer—and that, strangely enough though Miss Kilman
had her share in it, was almost entirely due to Somerset House. It
looked so splendid, so serious, that great grey building. And she
liked the feeling of people working. She liked those churches, like
shapes of grey paper, breasting the stream of the Strand. It was
quite different here from Westminster, she thought, getting off at
Chancery Lane. It was so serious; it was so busy. In short, she would
like to have a profession. She would become a doctor, a farmer,
possibly go into Parliament, if she found it necessary, all because of
the Strand.
The feet of those people busy about their activities, hands putting
stone to stone, minds eternally occupied not with trivial chatterings
(comparing women to poplars—which was rather exciting, of course,
but very silly), but with thoughts of ships, of business, of law, of
administration, and with it all so stately (she was in the Temple), gay
(there was the river), pious (there was the Church), made her quite
determined, whatever her mother might say, to become either a
farmer or a doctor. But she was, of course, rather lazy.
And it was much better to say nothing about it. It seemed so silly. It
was the sort of thing that did sometimes happen, when one was
alone—buildings without architects’ names, crowds of people coming
back from the city having more power than single clergymen in
Kensington, than any of the books Miss Kilman had lent her, to
stimulate what lay slumbrous, clumsy, and shy on the mind’s sandy
floor to break surface, as a child suddenly stretches its arms; it was
just that, perhaps, a sigh, a stretch of the arms, an impulse, a
revelation, which has its effects for ever, and then down again it went
to the sandy floor. She must go home. She must dress for dinner.
But what was the time?—where was a clock?
She looked up Fleet Street. She walked just a little way towards St.
Paul’s, shyly, like some one penetrating on tiptoe, exploring a
strange house by night with a candle, on edge lest the owner should
suddenly fling wide his bedroom door and ask her business, nor did
she dare wander off into queer alleys, tempting bye-streets, any
more than in a strange house open doors which might be bedroom
doors, or sitting-room doors, or lead straight to the larder. For no
Dalloways came down the Strand daily; she was a pioneer, a stray,
venturing, trusting.
In many ways, her mother felt, she was extremely immature, like a
child still, attached to dolls, to old slippers; a perfect baby; and that
was charming. But then, of course, there was in the Dalloway family
the tradition of public service. Abbesses, principals, head mistresses,
dignitaries, in the republic of women—without being brilliant, any of
them, they were that. She penetrated a little further in the direction of
St. Paul’s. She liked the geniality, sisterhood, motherhood,
brotherhood of this uproar. It seemed to her good. The noise was
tremendous; and suddenly there were trumpets (the unemployed)
blaring, rattling about in the uproar; military music; as if people were
marching; yet had they been dying—had some woman breathed her
last and whoever was watching, opening the window of the room
where she had just brought off that act of supreme dignity, looked
down on Fleet Street, that uproar, that military music would have
come triumphing up to him, consolatory, indifferent.
It was not conscious. There was no recognition in it of one fortune, or
fate, and for that very reason even to those dazed with watching for
the last shivers of consciousness on the faces of the dying,
consoling. Forgetfulness in people might wound, their ingratitude
corrode, but this voice, pouring endlessly, year in year out, would
take whatever it might be; this vow; this van; this life; this procession,
would wrap them all about and carry them on, as in the rough stream
of a glacier the ice holds a splinter of bone, a blue petal, some oak
trees, and rolls them on.
But it was later than she thought. Her mother would not like her to be
wandering off alone like this. She turned back down the Strand.
A puff of wind (in spite of the heat, there was quite a wind) blew a
thin black veil over the sun and over the Strand. The faces faded; the
omnibuses suddenly lost their glow. For although the clouds were of
mountainous white so that one could fancy hacking hard chips off
with a hatchet, with broad golden slopes, lawns of celestial pleasure
gardens, on their flanks, and had all the appearance of settled
habitations assembled for the conference of gods above the world,
there was a perpetual movement among them. Signs were
interchanged, when, as if to fulfil some scheme arranged already,
now a summit dwindled, now a whole block of pyramidal size which
had kept its station inalterably advanced into the midst or gravely led
the procession to fresh anchorage. Fixed though they seemed at
their posts, at rest in perfect unanimity, nothing could be fresher,
freer, more sensitive superficially than the snow-white or gold-kindled
surface; to change, to go, to dismantle the solemn assemblage was
immediately possible; and in spite of the grave fixity, the
accumulated robustness and solidity, now they struck light to the
earth, now darkness.
Calmly and competently, Elizabeth Dalloway mounted the
Westminster omnibus.
Going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow
which now made the wall grey, now the bananas bright yellow, now
made the Strand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow,
seemed to Septimus Warren Smith lying on the sofa in the sitting-
room; watching the watery gold glow and fade with the astonishing
sensibility of some live creature on the roses, on the wall-paper.
Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths
of the air; the sound of water was in the room and through the waves
came the voices of birds singing. Every power poured its treasures
on his head, and his hand lay there on the back of the sofa, as he
had seen his hand lie when he was bathing, floating, on the top of
the waves, while far away on shore he heard dogs barking and
barking far away. Fear no more, says the heart in the body; fear no
more.
He was not afraid. At every moment Nature signified by some
laughing hint like that gold spot which went round the wall—there,
there, there—her determination to show, by brandishing her plumes,
shaking her tresses, flinging her mantle this way and that, beautifully,
always beautifully, and standing close up to breathe through her
hollowed hands Shakespeare’s words, her meaning.
Rezia, sitting at the table twisting a hat in her hands, watched him;
saw him smiling. He was happy then. But she could not bear to see
him smiling. It was not marriage; it was not being one’s husband to
look strange like that, always to be starting, laughing, sitting hour
after hour silent, or clutching her and telling her to write. The table
drawer was full of those writings; about war; about Shakespeare;
about great discoveries; how there is no death. Lately he had
become excited suddenly for no reason (and both Dr. Holmes and
Sir William Bradshaw said excitement was the worst thing for him),
and waved his hands and cried out that he knew the truth! He knew
everything! That man, his friend who was killed, Evans, had come,
he said. He was singing behind the screen. She wrote it down just as
he spoke it. Some things were very beautiful; others sheer
nonsense. And he was always stopping in the middle, changing his
mind; wanting to add something; hearing something new; listening
with his hand up.
But she heard nothing.
And once they found the girl who did the room reading one of these
papers in fits of laughter. It was a dreadful pity. For that made
Septimus cry out about human cruelty—how they tear each other to
pieces. The fallen, he said, they tear to pieces. “Holmes is on us,” he
would say, and he would invent stories about Holmes; Holmes eating
porridge; Holmes reading Shakespeare—making himself roar with
laughter or rage, for Dr. Holmes seemed to stand for something
horrible to him. “Human nature,” he called him. Then there were the
visions. He was drowned, he used to say, and lying on a cliff with the
gulls screaming over him. He would look over the edge of the sofa
down into the sea. Or he was hearing music. Really it was only a
barrel organ or some man crying in the street. But “Lovely!” he used
to cry, and the tears would run down his cheeks, which was to her
the most dreadful thing of all, to see a man like Septimus, who had
fought, who was brave, crying. And he would lie listening until
suddenly he would cry that he was falling down, down into the
flames! Actually she would look for flames, it was so vivid. But there
was nothing. They were alone in the room. It was a dream, she
would tell him and so quiet him at last, but sometimes she was
frightened too. She sighed as she sat sewing.
Her sigh was tender and enchanting, like the wind outside a wood in
the evening. Now she put down her scissors; now she turned to take
something from the table. A little stir, a little crinkling, a little tapping
built up something on the table there, where she sat sewing.
Through his eyelashes he could see her blurred outline; her little
black body; her face and hands; her turning movements at the table,
as she took up a reel, or looked (she was apt to lose things) for her
silk. She was making a hat for Mrs. Filmer’s married daughter,
whose name was—he had forgotten her name.
“What is the name of Mrs. Filmer’s married daughter?” he asked.
“Mrs. Peters,” said Rezia. She was afraid it was too small, she said,
holding it before her. Mrs. Peters was a big woman; but she did not
like her. It was only because Mrs. Filmer had been so good to them.
“She gave me grapes this morning,” she said—that Rezia wanted to
do something to show that they were grateful. She had come into the
room the other evening and found Mrs. Peters, who thought they
were out, playing the gramophone.
“Was it true?” he asked. She was playing the gramophone? Yes; she
had told him about it at the time; she had found Mrs. Peters playing
the gramophone.
He began, very cautiously, to open his eyes, to see whether a
gramophone was really there. But real things—real things were too
exciting. He must be cautious. He would not go mad. First he looked
at the fashion papers on the lower shelf, then, gradually at the
gramophone with the green trumpet. Nothing could be more exact.
And so, gathering courage, he looked at the sideboard; the plate of
bananas; the engraving of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort; at
the mantelpiece, with the jar of roses. None of these things moved.
All were still; all were real.
“She is a woman with a spiteful tongue,” said Rezia.
“What does Mr. Peters do?” Septimus asked.
“Ah,” said Rezia, trying to remember. She thought Mrs. Filmer had
said that he travelled for some company. “Just now he is in Hull,” she
said.
“Just now!” She said that with her Italian accent. She said that
herself. He shaded his eyes so that he might see only a little of her
face at a time, first the chin, then the nose, then the forehead, in
case it were deformed, or had some terrible mark on it. But no, there
she was, perfectly natural, sewing, with the pursed lips that women
have, the set, the melancholy expression, when sewing. But there
was nothing terrible about it, he assured himself, looking a second
time, a third time at her face, her hands, for what was frightening or
disgusting in her as she sat there in broad daylight, sewing? Mrs.
Peters had a spiteful tongue. Mr. Peters was in Hull. Why then rage
and prophesy? Why fly scourged and outcast? Why be made to
tremble and sob by the clouds? Why seek truths and deliver
messages when Rezia sat sticking pins into the front of her dress,
and Mr. Peters was in Hull? Miracles, revelations, agonies,
loneliness, falling through the sea, down, down into the flames, all
were burnt out, for he had a sense, as he watched Rezia trimming
the straw hat for Mrs. Peters, of a coverlet of flowers.
“It’s too small for Mrs. Peters,” said Septimus.
For the first time for days he was speaking as he used to do! Of
course it was—absurdly small, she said. But Mrs. Peters had chosen
it.
He took it out of her hands. He said it was an organ grinder’s
monkey’s hat.
How it rejoiced her that! Not for weeks had they laughed like this
together, poking fun privately like married people. What she meant
was that if Mrs. Filmer had come in, or Mrs. Peters or anybody they
would not have understood what she and Septimus were laughing
at.
“There,” she said, pinning a rose to one side of the hat. Never had
she felt so happy! Never in her life!
But that was still more ridiculous, Septimus said. Now the poor
woman looked like a pig at a fair. (Nobody ever made her laugh as
Septimus did.)
What had she got in her work-box? She had ribbons and beads,
tassels, artificial flowers. She tumbled them out on the table. He
began putting odd colours together—for though he had no fingers,
could not even do up a parcel, he had a wonderful eye, and often he
was right, sometimes absurd, of course, but sometimes wonderfully
right.
“She shall have a beautiful hat!” he murmured, taking up this and
that, Rezia kneeling by his side, looking over his shoulder. Now it
was finished—that is to say the design; she must stitch it together.
But she must be very, very careful, he said, to keep it just as he had
made it.
So she sewed. When she sewed, he thought, she made a sound like
a kettle on the hob; bubbling, murmuring, always busy, her strong
little pointed fingers pinching and poking; her needle flashing
straight. The sun might go in and out, on the tassels, on the wall-
paper, but he would wait, he thought, stretching out his feet, looking
at his ringed sock at the end of the sofa; he would wait in this warm
place, this pocket of still air, which one comes on at the edge of a
wood sometimes in the evening, when, because of a fall in the
ground, or some arrangement of the trees (one must be scientific
above all, scientific), warmth lingers, and the air buffets the cheek
like the wing of a bird.
“There it is,” said Rezia, twirling Mrs. Peters’ hat on the tips of her
fingers. “That’ll do for the moment. Later ...” her sentence bubbled
away drip, drip, drip, like a contented tap left running.
It was wonderful. Never had he done anything which made him feel
so proud. It was so real, it was so substantial, Mrs. Peters’ hat.
“Just look at it,” he said.
Yes, it would always make her happy to see that hat. He had
become himself then, he had laughed then. They had been alone
together. Always she would like that hat.
He told her to try it on.
“But I must look so queer!” she cried, running over to the glass and
looking first this side then that. Then she snatched it off again, for
there was a tap at the door. Could it be Sir William Bradshaw? Had
he sent already?
No! it was only the small girl with the evening paper.
What always happened, then happened—what happened every
night of their lives. The small girl sucked her thumb at the door;
Rezia went down on her knees; Rezia cooed and kissed; Rezia got a
bag of sweets out of the table drawer. For so it always happened.
First one thing, then another. So she built it up, first one thing and
then another. Dancing, skipping, round and round the room they
went. He took the paper. Surrey was all out, he read. There was a
heat wave. Rezia repeated: Surrey was all out. There was a heat
wave, making it part of the game she was playing with Mrs. Filmer’s
grandchild, both of them laughing, chattering at the same time, at
their game. He was very tired. He was very happy. He would sleep.
He shut his eyes. But directly he saw nothing the sounds of the
game became fainter and stranger and sounded like the cries of
people seeking and not finding, and passing further and further
away. They had lost him!
He started up in terror. What did he see? The plate of bananas on
the sideboard. Nobody was there (Rezia had taken the child to its
mother. It was bedtime). That was it: to be alone forever. That was
the doom pronounced in Milan when he came into the room and saw
them cutting out buckram shapes with their scissors; to be alone
forever.
He was alone with the sideboard and the bananas. He was alone,
exposed on this bleak eminence, stretched out—but not on a hill-top;
not on a crag; on Mrs. Filmer’s sitting-room sofa. As for the visions,
the faces, the voices of the dead, where were they? There was a
screen in front of him, with black bulrushes and blue swallows.
Where he had once seen mountains, where he had seen faces,
where he had seen beauty, there was a screen.
“Evans!” he cried. There was no answer. A mouse had squeaked, or
a curtain rustled. Those were the voices of the dead. The screen, the
coal-scuttle, the sideboard remained to him. Let him then face the
screen, the coal-scuttle and the sideboard ... but Rezia burst into the
room chattering.
Some letter had come. Everybody’s plans were changed. Mrs.
Filmer would not be able to go to Brighton after all. There was no
time to let Mrs. Williams know, and really Rezia thought it very, very
annoying, when she caught sight of the hat and thought ... perhaps
... she ... might just make a little.... Her voice died out in contented
melody.
“Ah, damn!” she cried (it was a joke of theirs, her swearing), the
needle had broken. Hat, child, Brighton, needle. She built it up; first
one thing, then another, she built it up, sewing.
She wanted him to say whether by moving the rose she had
improved the hat. She sat on the end of the sofa.
They were perfectly happy now, she said, suddenly, putting the hat
down. For she could say anything to him now. She could say
whatever came into her head. That was almost the first thing she
had felt about him, that night in the café when he had come in with
his English friends. He had come in, rather shyly, looking round him,
and his hat had fallen when he hung it up. That she could remember.
She knew he was English, though not one of the large Englishmen
her sister admired, for he was always thin; but he had a beautiful
fresh colour; and with his big nose, his bright eyes, his way of sitting
a little hunched made her think, she had often told him, of a young
hawk, that first evening she saw him, when they were playing
dominoes, and he had come in—of a young hawk; but with her he
was always very gentle. She had never seen him wild or drunk, only
suffering sometimes through this terrible war, but even so, when she
came in, he would put it all away. Anything, anything in the whole
world, any little bother with her work, anything that struck her to say
she would tell him, and he understood at once. Her own family even
were not the same. Being older than she was and being so clever—
how serious he was, wanting her to read Shakespeare before she
could even read a child’s story in English!—being so much more
experienced, he could help her. And she too could help him.
But this hat now. And then (it was getting late) Sir William Bradshaw.
She held her hands to her head, waiting for him to say did he like the
hat or not, and as she sat there, waiting, looking down, he could feel
her mind, like a bird, falling from branch to branch, and always
alighting, quite rightly; he could follow her mind, as she sat there in
one of those loose lax poses that came to her naturally and, if he
should say anything, at once she smiled, like a bird alighting with all
its claws firm upon the bough.
But he remembered Bradshaw said, “The people we are most fond
of are not good for us when we are ill.” Bradshaw said, he must be
taught to rest. Bradshaw said they must be separated.
“Must,” “must,” why “must”? What power had Bradshaw over him?
“What right has Bradshaw to say ‘must’ to me?” he demanded.
“It is because you talked of killing yourself,” said Rezia. (Mercifully,
she could now say anything to Septimus.)
So he was in their power! Holmes and Bradshaw were on him! The
brute with the red nostrils was snuffing into every secret place!
“Must” it could say! Where were his papers? the things he had
written?
She brought him his papers, the things he had written, things she
had written for him. She tumbled them out on to the sofa. They
looked at them together. Diagrams, designs, little men and women
brandishing sticks for arms, with wings—were they?—on their backs;
circles traced round shillings and sixpences—the suns and stars;
zigzagging precipices with mountaineers ascending roped together,
exactly like knives and forks; sea pieces with little faces laughing out
of what might perhaps be waves: the map of the world. Burn them!
he cried. Now for his writings; how the dead sing behind
rhododendron bushes; odes to Time; conversations with
Shakespeare; Evans, Evans, Evans—his messages from the dead;
do not cut down trees; tell the Prime Minister. Universal love: the
meaning of the world. Burn them! he cried.
But Rezia laid her hands on them. Some were very beautiful, she
thought. She would tie them up (for she had no envelope) with a
piece of silk.
Even if they took him, she said, she would go with him. They could
not separate them against their wills, she said.
Shuffling the edges straight, she did up the papers, and tied the
parcel almost without looking, sitting beside him, he thought, as if all
her petals were about her. She was a flowering tree; and through her
branches looked out the face of a lawgiver, who had reached a
sanctuary where she feared no one; not Holmes; not Bradshaw; a
miracle, a triumph, the last and greatest. Staggering he saw her
mount the appalling staircase, laden with Holmes and Bradshaw,
men who never weighed less than eleven stone six, who sent their
wives to Court, men who made ten thousand a year and talked of
proportion; who different in their verdicts (for Holmes said one thing,
Bradshaw another), yet judges they were; who mixed the vision and
the sideboard; saw nothing clear, yet ruled, yet inflicted. “Must” they
said. Over them she triumphed.
“There!” she said. The papers were tied up. No one should get at
them. She would put them away.
And, she said, nothing should separate them. She sat down beside
him and called him by the name of that hawk or crow which being
malicious and a great destroyer of crops was precisely like him. No
one could separate them, she said.
Then she got up to go into the bedroom to pack their things, but
hearing voices downstairs and thinking that Dr. Holmes had perhaps
called, ran down to prevent him coming up.
Septimus could hear her talking to Holmes on the staircase.
“My dear lady, I have come as a friend,” Holmes was saying.
“No. I will not allow you to see my husband,” she said.
He could see her, like a little hen, with her wings spread barring his
passage. But Holmes persevered.
“My dear lady, allow me....” Holmes said, putting her aside (Holmes
was a powerfully built man).
Holmes was coming upstairs. Holmes would burst open the door.
Holmes would say “In a funk, eh?” Holmes would get him. But no;
not Holmes; not Bradshaw. Getting up rather unsteadily, hopping
indeed from foot to foot, he considered Mrs. Filmer’s nice clean
bread knife with “Bread” carved on the handle. Ah, but one mustn’t
spoil that. The gas fire? But it was too late now. Holmes was coming.
Razors he might have got, but Rezia, who always did that sort of
thing, had packed them. There remained only the window, the large
Bloomsbury-lodging house window, the tiresome, the troublesome,
and rather melodramatic business of opening the window and
throwing himself out. It was their idea of tragedy, not his or Rezia’s
(for she was with him). Holmes and Bradshaw like that sort of thing.
(He sat on the sill.) But he would wait till the very last moment. He
did not want to die. Life was good. The sun hot. Only human beings
—what did they want? Coming down the staircase opposite an old
man stopped and stared at him. Holmes was at the door. “I’ll give it
you!” he cried, and flung himself vigorously, violently down on to Mrs.
Filmer’s area railings.
“The coward!” cried Dr. Holmes, bursting the door open. Rezia ran to
the window, she saw; she understood. Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Filmer
collided with each other. Mrs. Filmer flapped her apron and made her
hide her eyes in the bedroom. There was a great deal of running up
and down stairs. Dr. Holmes came in—white as a sheet, shaking all
over, with a glass in his hand. She must be brave and drink
something, he said (What was it? Something sweet), for her
husband was horribly mangled, would not recover consciousness,
she must not see him, must be spared as much as possible, would
have the inquest to go through, poor young woman. Who could have
foretold it? A sudden impulse, no one was in the least to blame (he
told Mrs. Filmer). And why the devil he did it, Dr. Holmes could not
conceive.
It seemed to her as she drank the sweet stuff that she was opening
long windows, stepping out into some garden. But where? The clock
was striking—one, two, three: how sensible the sound was;
compared with all this thumping and whispering; like Septimus
himself. She was falling asleep. But the clock went on striking, four,
five, six and Mrs. Filmer waving her apron (they wouldn’t bring the
body in here, would they?) seemed part of that garden; or a flag. She
had once seen a flag slowly rippling out from a mast when she
stayed with her aunt at Venice. Men killed in battle were thus
saluted, and Septimus had been through the War. Of her memories,
most were happy.
She put on her hat, and ran through cornfields—where could it have
been?—on to some hill, somewhere near the sea, for there were
ships, gulls, butterflies; they sat on a cliff. In London too, there they
sat, and, half dreaming, came to her through the bedroom door, rain
falling, whisperings, stirrings among dry corn, the caress of the sea,
as it seemed to her, hollowing them in its arched shell and
murmuring to her laid on shore, strewn she felt, like flying flowers
over some tomb.
“He is dead,” she said, smiling at the poor old woman who guarded
her with her honest light-blue eyes fixed on the door. (They wouldn’t
bring him in here, would they?) But Mrs. Filmer pooh-poohed. Oh no,
oh no! They were carrying him away now. Ought she not to be told?
Married people ought to be together, Mrs. Filmer thought. But they
must do as the doctor said.
“Let her sleep,” said Dr. Holmes, feeling her pulse. She saw the large
outline of his body standing dark against the window. So that was Dr.
Holmes.
One of the triumphs of civilisation, Peter Walsh thought. It is one of
the triumphs of civilisation, as the light high bell of the ambulance
sounded. Swiftly, cleanly the ambulance sped to the hospital, having
picked up instantly, humanely, some poor devil; some one hit on the
head, struck down by disease, knocked over perhaps a minute or so
ago at one of these crossings, as might happen to oneself. That was
civilisation. It struck him coming back from the East—the efficiency,
the organisation, the communal spirit of London. Every cart or
carriage of its own accord drew aside to let the ambulance pass.
Perhaps it was morbid; or was it not touching rather, the respect
which they showed this ambulance with its victim inside—busy men
hurrying home yet instantly bethinking them as it passed of some
wife; or presumably how easily it might have been them there,
stretched on a shelf with a doctor and a nurse.... Ah, but thinking
became morbid, sentimental, directly one began conjuring up
doctors, dead bodies; a little glow of pleasure, a sort of lust too over
the visual impression warned one not to go on with that sort of thing
any more—fatal to art, fatal to friendship. True. And yet, thought
Peter Walsh, as the ambulance turned the corner though the light
high bell could be heard down the next street and still farther as it
crossed the Tottenham Court Road, chiming constantly, it is the
privilege of loneliness; in privacy one may do as one chooses. One
might weep if no one saw. It had been his undoing—this
susceptibility—in Anglo-Indian society; not weeping at the right time,
or laughing either. I have that in me, he thought standing by the
pillar-box, which could now dissolve in tears. Why, Heaven knows.
Beauty of some sort probably, and the weight of the day, which
beginning with that visit to Clarissa had exhausted him with its heat,
its intensity, and the drip, drip, of one impression after another down
into that cellar where they stood, deep, dark, and no one would ever
know. Partly for that reason, its secrecy, complete and inviolable, he
had found life like an unknown garden, full of turns and corners,
surprising, yes; really it took one’s breath away, these moments;
there coming to him by the pillar-box opposite the British Museum
one of them, a moment, in which things came together; this
ambulance; and life and death. It was as if he were sucked up to
some very high roof by that rush of emotion and the rest of him, like
a white shell-sprinkled beach, left bare. It had been his undoing in
Anglo-Indian society—this susceptibility.
Clarissa once, going on top of an omnibus with him somewhere,
Clarissa superficially at least, so easily moved, now in despair, now
in the best of spirits, all aquiver in those days and such good
company, spotting queer little scenes, names, people from the top of
a bus, for they used to explore London and bring back bags full of
treasures from the Caledonian market—Clarissa had a theory in
those days—they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young
people have. It was to explain the feeling they had of dissatisfaction;
not knowing people; not being known. For how could they know each
other? You met every day; then not for six months, or years. It was
unsatisfactory, they agreed, how little one knew people. But she
said, sitting on the bus going up Shaftesbury Avenue, she felt herself
everywhere; not “here, here, here”; and she tapped the back of the
seat; but everywhere. She waved her hand, going up Shaftesbury
Avenue. She was all that. So that to know her, or any one, one must
seek out the people who completed them; even the places. Odd
affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some
woman in the street, some man behind a counter—even trees, or
barns. It ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of
death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her
scepticism), that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears,
are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us,
which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered
somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain
places after death ... perhaps—perhaps.
Looking back over that long friendship of almost thirty years her
theory worked to this extent. Brief, broken, often painful as their
actual meetings had been what with his absences and interruptions
(this morning, for instance, in came Elizabeth, like a long-legged colt,
handsome, dumb, just as he was beginning to talk to Clarissa) the
effect of them on his life was immeasurable. There was a mystery
about it. You were given a sharp, acute, uncomfortable grain—the
actual meeting; horribly painful as often as not; yet in absence, in the
most unlikely places, it would flower out, open, shed its scent, let you
touch, taste, look about you, get the whole feel of it and
understanding, after years of lying lost. Thus she had come to him;
on board ship; in the Himalayas; suggested by the oddest things (so
Sally Seton, generous, enthusiastic goose! thought of him when she
saw blue hydrangeas). She had influenced him more than any
person he had ever known. And always in this way coming before
him without his wishing it, cool, lady-like, critical; or ravishing,
romantic, recalling some field or English harvest. He saw her most
often in the country, not in London. One scene after another at
Bourton....
He had reached his hotel. He crossed the hall, with its mounds of
reddish chairs and sofas, its spike-leaved, withered-looking plants.
He got his key off the hook. The young lady handed him some
letters. He went upstairs—he saw her most often at Bourton, in the
late summer, when he stayed there for a week, or fortnight even, as
people did in those days. First on top of some hill there she would
stand, hands clapped to her hair, her cloak blowing out, pointing,
crying to them—she saw the Severn beneath. Or in a wood, making
the kettle boil—very ineffective with her fingers; the smoke
curtseying, blowing in their faces; her little pink face showing
through; begging water from an old woman in a cottage, who came
to the door to watch them go. They walked always; the others drove.
She was bored driving, disliked all animals, except that dog. They
tramped miles along roads. She would break off to get her bearings,
pilot him back across country; and all the time they argued,
discussed poetry, discussed people, discussed politics (she was a
Radical then); never noticing a thing except when she stopped, cried
out at a view or a tree, and made him look with her; and so on again,
through stubble fields, she walking ahead, with a flower for her aunt,
never tired of walking for all her delicacy; to drop down on Bourton in
the dusk. Then, after dinner, old Breitkopf would open the piano and
sing without any voice, and they would lie sunk in arm-chairs, trying
not to laugh, but always breaking down and laughing, laughing—
laughing at nothing. Breitkopf was supposed not to see. And then in
the morning, flirting up and down like a wagtail in front of the
house....
Oh it was a letter from her! This blue envelope; that was her hand.
And he would have to read it. Here was another of those meetings,
bound to be painful! To read her letter needed the devil of an effort.
“How heavenly it was to see him. She must tell him that.” That was
all.
But it upset him. It annoyed him. He wished she hadn’t written it.
Coming on top of his thoughts, it was like a nudge in the ribs. Why
couldn’t she let him be? After all, she had married Dalloway, and
lived with him in perfect happiness all these years.
These hotels are not consoling places. Far from it. Any number of
people had hung up their hats on those pegs. Even the flies, if you
thought of it, had settled on other people’s noses. As for the
cleanliness which hit him in the face, it wasn’t cleanliness, so much
as bareness, frigidity; a thing that had to be. Some arid matron made
her rounds at dawn sniffing, peering, causing blue-nosed maids to
scour, for all the world as if the next visitor were a joint of meat to be
served on a perfectly clean platter. For sleep, one bed; for sitting in,
one arm-chair; for cleaning one’s teeth and shaving one’s chin, one
tumbler, one looking-glass. Books, letters, dressing-gown, slipped
about on the impersonality of the horsehair like incongruous
impertinences. And it was Clarissa’s letter that made him see all this.
“Heavenly to see you. She must say so!” He folded the paper;
pushed it away; nothing would induce him to read it again!
To get that letter to him by six o’clock she must have sat down and
written it directly he left her; stamped it; sent somebody to the post. It
was, as people say, very like her. She was upset by his visit. She
had felt a great deal; had for a moment, when she kissed his hand,
regretted, envied him even, remembered possibly (for he saw her
look it) something he had said—how they would change the world if
she married him perhaps; whereas, it was this; it was middle age; it
was mediocrity; then forced herself with her indomitable vitality to put
all that aside, there being in her a thread of life which for toughness,
endurance, power to overcome obstacles, and carry her triumphantly
through he had never known the like of. Yes; but there would come a
reaction directly he left the room. She would be frightfully sorry for
him; she would think what in the world she could do to give him
pleasure (short always of the one thing) and he could see her with
the tears running down her cheeks going to her writing-table and
dashing off that one line which he was to find greeting him....
“Heavenly to see you!” And she meant it.
Peter Walsh had now unlaced his boots.
But it would not have been a success, their marriage. The other
thing, after all, came so much more naturally.
It was odd; it was true; lots of people felt it. Peter Walsh, who had
done just respectably, filled the usual posts adequately, was liked,
but thought a little cranky, gave himself airs—it was odd that he
should have had, especially now that his hair was grey, a contented
look; a look of having reserves. It was this that made him attractive
to women who liked the sense that he was not altogether manly.
There was something unusual about him, or something behind him.
It might be that he was bookish—never came to see you without
taking up the book on the table (he was now reading, with his
bootlaces trailing on the floor); or that he was a gentleman, which
showed itself in the way he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and in
his manners of course to women. For it was very charming and quite
ridiculous how easily some girl without a grain of sense could twist
him round her finger. But at her own risk. That is to say, though he
might be ever so easy, and indeed with his gaiety and good-breeding
fascinating to be with, it was only up to a point. She said something
—no, no; he saw through that. He wouldn’t stand that—no, no. Then
he could shout and rock and hold his sides together over some joke
with men. He was the best judge of cooking in India. He was a man.
But not the sort of man one had to respect—which was a mercy; not
like Major Simmons, for instance; not in the least like that, Daisy
thought, when, in spite of her two small children, she used to
compare them.
He pulled off his boots. He emptied his pockets. Out came with his
pocket-knife a snapshot of Daisy on the verandah; Daisy all in white,
with a fox-terrier on her knee; very charming, very dark; the best he
had ever seen of her. It did come, after all so naturally; so much
more naturally than Clarissa. No fuss. No bother. No finicking and
fidgeting. All plain sailing. And the dark, adorably pretty girl on the
verandah exclaimed (he could hear her). Of course, of course she
would give him everything! she cried (she had no sense of
discretion) everything he wanted! she cried, running to meet him,
whoever might be looking. And she was only twenty-four. And she
had two children. Well, well!
Well indeed he had got himself into a mess at his age. And it came
over him when he woke in the night pretty forcibly. Suppose they did

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Applied Underwater Acoustics.

Thomas H. Neighbors III

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

For information on all Elsevier publications

Publisher: John Fedor

Professor Walter G. Mayer

1.2 A BRIEF EXPOSITION OF THE HISTORY OF UNDERWATER

1.2.1 UNDERWATER ACOUSTICS BEFORE 1912

1.2.2 THE YEARS 1912 THROUGH 1918

1.2.3 THE YEARS 1919 THROUGH 1939

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

1.2.4 THE YEARS 1940 THROUGH 1946

1.2.5 THE YEARS AFTER 1946

1.3 INTERNATIONAL STANDARD UNITS

Table 1.1 SI Base Units

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