Wegener at Sea

Immediately after their departure in 1906, looking out from the deck over at the whalers’ sloops, First Lieutenant Johann Peter Koch, a haggard cartographer, had attempted to explain to him how a ship behaves in waves: “What is known as swell is composed of two independent motions.” Before Wegener could call to them that they were winding in different directions, the boat had already slipped out of its harnesses and plummeted onto the water like a sea swallow on the attack. Wegener saw his comrades now letting down the other lifeboats, their faces contorted as though the cold water had already reached them and frozen them in one blow.

Source: www.laphamsquarterly.org