Abstract
IV. WHEN, in 1711, the Rhone broke away from its former course to the sea, it more and more adopted the new channel until, in 1724, the older one was definitely closed to navigation; the river, following the course it still maintains, had established its channel to the sea-face, and in 1725 the town of Aries complained of the difficulties of the new mouth, where extensive sand-banks had formed. The river, in fact, having reached the open sea, was subject to conditions which are described in reports of the nineteenth century; the deposit of silt, where the current is checked on reaching the sea, combined with the effect of the waves in sorting and casting back the coarser grained material, together with the absence of any tidal scour, led to the formation of low sand-banks, known as they, barely emerging from the water when the sea-level was low, and submerged when it was raised by a river flood or an onshore wind. The main channel of the river was blocked by a well-defined bar, on which the water might reach a depth of a couple of feet, but was mostly under a foot, and through this bar a narrow and constantly changing pass admitted, in favourable circumstances, vessels of up to 6 feet, but usually not more than 41/2 to 5 feet, in draft. Only in fine weather was this narrow channel practicable, and for 120 days in the year the passage was too dangerous to allow of any vessel entering or leaving the river; even when the channel was otherwise clear, vessels might find that it had shoaled too much to admit them, and have to tranship their cargo into lighters of shallow draft.
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OLDHAM, R. Problems of the Rhone Delta1. Nature 116, 100–102 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/116100a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/116100a0