Halifax, the capital of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. I believe most Chinese have never heard of the name of the city before. But just over 100 years ago, more than 1,500 people died here, including even one of the world's richest men. The tombstones of these victims now stand in this beautiful coastal city.
Canada, the northernmost part of the American continent, has been like a kingdom of ice and snow for most of its time. But this is not the case in Halifax, which, among the many geography and travel magazines, is a city with four seasons and has been voted one of the most livable places in the world all year round.
But people who are familiar with that history have a different feeling about the city.
On April 10, 1912, the Titanic, a luxury cruise ship known as the "unsinkable" ship hailed as a miracle in the history of the world's industry, made its maiden voyage debut. According to the plan, after setting sail from Southampton, England, it will cross the Atlantic Ocean from west to east, and finally arrive at the destination of the voyage, New York, USA.
However, just over halfway through the journey, the Titanic crashed into a huge iceberg in the North Atlantic. After more than two hours of struggle, the huge cruise ship finally sank desperately at 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912. Of the ship's 2,207 passengers and crew, more than 1,500 were tragically killed.
Since then, the wreckage of the Titanic has been lying quietly on the deep seabed of the North Atlantic. Halifax, a small island that looks peaceful and peaceful, was the place where the Titanic sank, and many victims were buried here.
Today, if you walk the streets of Halifax, you can still see the park with the propeller left behind by the Titanic, and the famous Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is also located here, where the relics of the Titanic victims are placed - these permanent traces will be deeply imprinted on the soul of the city along with the poignant story of Jack and Rose in the movie "Titanic".
The Atlantic Ocean, the center of the ambitions and dreams of explorers, scientists and warriors, still influences people's personalities, attitudes and dreams. From kings to poets, from adventurers to sailors, from fishermen to pirates, from merchants to travelers – everything is connected to this vast blue ocean.
A long time ago, due to the influence of many factors, the Atlantic Ocean was both enemy and friend in the eyes of people, and for this endless sea, human beings have always had both awe and fear.
It wasn't until the 7th century, when sailors from Phoenicia, driven by enormous profits, ventured for the first time across the Pillar of Hercules— the legendary "Sea of Eternal Darkness" and the human boundary—and nothing happened, and these brave sailors returned triumphantly with ships full of treasure. Since then, the vast Atlantic Ocean has opened its arms to mankind.
After the Age of Discovery, the Age of Vikings, and the Age of Colonization, the process of human civilization has come to this day, and in the process, the relationship between the Atlantic Ocean and human beings has been constantly evolving.
Inspired by romantic imaginations of the ocean, Simon Winchester, a graduate of Oxford Geology and Britain's most famous explorer, embarked on his journey around the world.
As a contributing author to top media such as The New York Times and National Geographic, Winchester is particularly adept at vividly describing seemingly complex histories through beautiful writing, long charm, and unique perspectives.
In The Tale of the Atlantic, a nearly 400-page book, Winchester tells us about the atlantic's complex geography, its colorful ocean interiors, and the many fascinating historical events that have emanated from it, so that the history and present of the Atlantic, as well as its eternity and future, are slowly unfolded before us, as described on the title page of the book:
It's a human epic of survival and adventure, exploration and discovery, naval warfare and hegemony, wealth and trade, hurricanes and disasters!
Although humans have conquered every mysterious land on land, to this day, only 5% of human beings know about the ocean, and even we know much more about the surface of Mars or the moon than about the ocean.
It is precisely because in the vast sea, there are many secrets that people are full of curiosity and fear about the moody and changeable sea from ancient times to the present, and the ocean has naturally become the source of inspiration for poetry and legend.
In ancient China, there has always been a legend about mermaids, and in the distant Atlantic Ocean, the protagonist of this legend is called "Siren".
The Siren is derived from ancient Greek mythology. According to legend, Siren was the daughter of the river god Ecloas, with a naturally pleasing singing voice and a pair of white and flawless wings. She thought that her singing voice was more beautiful than the muse of the art goddess, so she challenged the muse, and as a result, the Siren was unfortunately defeated. To punish her, the muse pulled out the pair of beautiful wings on Siren's body.
In this way, poor Siren had to inhabit the strait of Messina, and in order to fill her hunger, she would use her own singing voice to seduce the passing navigators, and when the sailors on the ship lost their minds because they listened to this beautiful song, the ship would sink on the reef, and the crew would naturally become the siren's belly meal.
In the story, Siren is a mermaid-like siren with a mermaid image. There are many works about siren, dating back to the 10th century AD, and in the pen of an English poet named Kinewufu, the image of Siren is roughly like this:
You can really see some strange things in Sea World
People say Siren's chest and upper body
Just like a beautiful woman. But not on the lower body
From below the navel it doesn't look like a person at all
Like a fish, it is also decorated with fish scales
These monsters inhabit the path of destruction
The swirling sea is there to engulf human ships
In addition to the famous Siren, there is another legend of female aquatic elves among the vast African tribes east of the Atlantic Ocean and south of the Sahara Desert. This sometimes benevolent and sometimes enchanting water demon is often present in many Voodoo rituals of the Yoruba tribe in Nigeria, as well as in Benin and Ghana, as well as in Liberia, Gabon, and Penanto Island.
The late female writer Sanmao once wrote in the book "Sahara Love": "The wizards in the real African jungle are even more terrifying and evil, and I saw a witch sacrifice to the local goddess 'Water Mommy' in Nigeria. ”
The "water mother" that Sanmao refers to here, also known as "water mother" in some places, is the image of the water spirit that has been circulating in the West African continent for hundreds of years. With the rise of the slave trade, this image also appeared on the west coast of the Atlantic Ocean, secretly circulating among African slaves who were displaced from their homelands.
"Water Mommy" often appears as a pale-skinned, golden-haired woman wearing a string of strange jewels, with mermaid-like fins, and often an extremely plump chest, and a stout python hovering over it — an image that, according to anthropologists, actually originates from a large marine mammal known as the "West African manatee" or "sea cow."
In Africa, some men with ulterior motives will declare to their wives that there will be the soul of "water mommy" attached to girls whose private lives are chaotic, especially prostitutes. So, in a sense, going to a brothel is a sacred act.
Of course, even if his wife believes in "Water Mommy" religiously, I don't think she will really be stupid enough to let her husband run to that kind of ghost place after hearing this strange argument--don't take a big stick to kick him out of the house, even if "Water Mommy" blesses him.
As the saying goes: "Rely on the mountain to eat the mountain, rely on the water to draft water". Well, for those who rely on the sea, of course, they have to eat the sea.
It was once thought that there was an extreme abundance of fish in the Atlantic that could satisfy everyone, and it seemed that for every fish caught, two fish laid new eggs. Fishermen seem to be able to make a fortune from this craft for generations, and people who love fish all over the world seem to be able to enjoy these fish, shrimp, crabs and shells forever, without worrying about scarcity.
Yes, in this vast ocean, there are countless fish: Atlantic cod, Atlantic halibut, Atlantic salmon, Atlantic scallops, Greenland halibut, North Atlantic salmon, red salmon, tropical red silk fish, tropical shrimp, an orange tilapia known to local fishermen as "flint sea bream", and the prestigious Atlantic tuna – the largest and most valuable bluefin tuna can sell for $30,000 a piece at Tokyo's famous Tsukiji Market!
All of these delicious, tender, and expensive fish live somewhere in the deep-sea shoals and warm waters between Greenland and Tierra del Fuego, between Cape Town and the Northern Cape, somewhere in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean for hundreds of thousands of cubic miles.
By the 1950s, however, everything seemed to be different.
Fishermen's fishing techniques have improved considerably, and traditional hand fishing methods are only used for entertainment. Some of the more controversial and efficient fishing methods, such as longlines, floating gillnets, and even large-scale fishing with trawling on the ocean floor. Later, whaling boats and frozen fish technology also appeared, and then there was the fried fish that Europeans loved...
All in all, when fishing technology has developed to this day, people no longer need to transport fish to land and then process it - slice, freeze, carton, label... All of this can be done at sea. All one needs is a big boat, no, it's not a boat, but a floating, steam engine-powered production line that can break down fish 24 hours a day and assemble them into all sorts of convenience foods in your freezer.
But the good times did not last long, and just as the fishermen were proudly rolling up their sleeves and getting ready to use the most advanced tools in their hands to do a big job for their own pockets, there was an unexpectedly grim news coming from the sea: suddenly, no matter how hard they tried, the fishermen could not catch even one-tenth of what they had caught before!
People are horrified to find that a terrible thing has really happened: the fish in the Atlantic, there is no more!
Fishing boats with large nets drive out, scatter them, open their mouths, and tow the nets around the fishing grounds for the allotted time, then pull everything up – only to find the trawls empty! And so, in June 1992, 5 centuries after people discovered that this area was overflowing with the most beautiful edible fish, all the fish were fished away.
At its peak, there were 1.5 million tons of spawning cod in Newfoundland, and now there are only 60,000 tons of cod left here – and the large shoal fishery that was once full of boats and the laughter of fishermen has now become a "former" cod fishery.
Not so long ago, there were abundant products in the northwest of the Atlantic, but human greed and short-sightedness made them disappear, and probably forever.
Standing on the shores of empty seas, we can't help but ask: Is the ocean plotting to resist our endless abuse of it in some way we can't imagine? Will it still fight back against us in some form or at some other beginning? If the Atlantic Ocean, and other oceans, did decide to do that, what would humanity pay?