Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Is the Firth of Tay a natural waterway?
The River Tay emerges from Loch Tay at Kenmore, and flows from there to Perth which, in historical times, was its lowest bridging point. Below Perth the river becomes tidal and enters the Firth of Tay. The largest city on the river, Dundee, lies on the north bank of the Firth. On reaching the North Sea, the River Tay has flowed from west to east across central Scotland.
On 30 January 1902 the Board was informed that the construction to Tongwynlais was substantially completed, and at this time the company put details of its proposed junction with the Taff Vale Railway at Treforest to that company for approval.
The terrain at the point chosen by the Cardiff Railway for its junction with the Taff Vale was extremely awkward. The Taff Vale Railway run down the west bank of the River Taff and was closely hemmed in by the hills to the west. Immediately to the east was the River Taff and the Glamorganshire Canal, and then the Pontypridd, Caerphilly and Newport Railway, and then more hills.
It is internationally recognised that the United Kingdom has a higher incidence of tornadoes, measured by unit area of land, than any other country in the world. Dr T. Theodore Fujita (inventor of the Fujita scale), an American meteorologist, was the first to recognise the UK as the top site for tornadoes in 1973. The United Kingdom has at least 33 tornadoes per year, more than any other country in the world relative to its land area. Although most tornadoes are weak, there are occasional destructive events, for example, the Birmingham tornado of 2005 and the London tornado of 2006. Both registered F2 on the Fujita scale and both caused significant damage and injury. The largest ever recorded was thought to have been an F4, again in London in 1091. The most deadly occurred on 28 December 1879. All 74 lives were lost when a passenger train plunged from the Tay Bridge (Tayside) into the Tay Estuary, when the middle section of the bridge collapsed. Although the bridge was poorly constructed and had already been weakened in earlier gales (including the pre-existing winds at the time of the tragedy), the ultimate failure is believed to have been caused by two or three waterspouts which were sighted close to the bridge immediately before the accident. A tornado also developed in London on 3 July 2007.
The UK also holds the title for the highest known 'outbreak' of tornadoes outside of the United States. The largest tornado outbreak in Britain is also the largest tornado outbreak known anywhere in Europe. On 23 November 1981, 105 tornadoes were spawned by a cold front in the space of 5.25 hours. Excepting Derbyshire, every county in a triangular area from Gwynedd to Humberside to Essex was hit by at least one tornado, while Norfolk was hit by at least 13. Very fortunately most tornadoes were short-lived and also weak (the strongest was around T5 on the TORRO Tornado Scale) and no deaths occurred.
The River Orwell flows through the county of Suffolk in England. Its source river, above the tidal limit at Stoke Bridge, is known as the River Gipping. It broadens into an estuary at Ipswich where the Ipswich dock has operated since the 7th century and then flows into the North Sea at Felixstowe the UK's largest container port after joining with the River Stour at Shotley forming Harwich harbour.
The two most important locations of the story are Bath and Whitby. Bath is described as a rather peaceful and idyllic place for wealthy people. Conversely, Whitby, fishing port and famous tourist destination, represents the rough life on the Yorkshire coast. And the landfall for Count Alucard's undead cargo, according to Bram Stoker. Since this was the home town of "England's first poet" Cædmon, who is the eponym for the book, Whitby plays an important role within the story. Other towns and villages on the north-east coast of England like Staithes, Robin Hood's Bay and Scarborough are mentioned when Kirsten visits them to look for her attacker. Another place mentioned in the text is Brierley Coombe, the fictitious home town of Kirsten. Brierley Coombe is assumed to be a suburb of Bath, therefore it has similar features.
The Tennessee River has historically been a major highway for riverboats through the south and today they are still found along the river in abundance. Major ports include Guntersville, Chattanooga, Decatur, and Yellow Creek, and Muscle Shoals. Navigation has contributed greatly to the economic and industrial development of the Tennessee Valley as a whole. The economies of cities like Decatur and Chattanooga would not be as dynamic as they are today, were it not for the Tennessee River. Many companies still rely on the river as a means of transportation for their materials. In Chattanooga, for example, steel is exported on boats, as it is much more efficient than moving it on land. Locks along the Tennessee River waterway provide passage between reservoirs for more than 13,000 recreational craft each year. The Chickamauga Dam, located just upstream from Chattanooga, is currently planned to have a new lock built. However, the project has been delayed due to a lack of funding. The river not only has many economic functions, such as the boat building industry and transportation, but it also provides water and natural resources to those who live near the river. Many of the major ports on the river are connected to a settlement that was started because of its proximity to the river.
Facilities at Giant's Grave improved, and included jetties to enable ships' ballast to be landed and dumped, rather than being thrown overboard. This latter approach had caused problems at Newport for the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal, where ballast had been thrown into the river, and at Cardiff for the Glamorganshire Canal, where it had been thrown into the canal basin. Efforts were also made to improve the facilities at Neath. From 1818, a Harbour Board was established, and banks of copper slag, marked with buoys, were used to confine the channel. This enabled ships of over 300 tons to reach Neath quays on spring tides, although on neap tides Giant's Grave still had to be used. From 1824, when the connection to the Tennant Canal opened, much of the trade crossed the river and passed down the western bank to the port of Swansea.
The southernmost post in Georgia was Fort Howe (previously known as Fort Barrington), on the banks of the Altamaha River, and the northernmost Florida outpost was at Fort Tonyn, in present-day Nassau County, Florida. East Florida Governor Patrick Tonyn had under his command a regiment of rangers led by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Brown, and several hundred British Army troops under the command of Major General Augustine Prevost. Tonyn and Prevost squabbled over control of Brown's regiment, and disagreed on how the province should be defended against the recurring forays from Georgia. Prevost was under orders to stay on the defensive, while Tonyn sought a more vigorous defense. To that end Tonyn deployed Brown's force along the St. Marys River, which (then as now) formed the border. Brown and his men, sometimes with support from Creeks and Seminoles, engaged in regular raids into southern Georgia, harassing the defenders and raiding plantations for cattle to supply some of the province's food needs.
In its upper course it runs for along the Finnish–Norwegian border, between the municipalities of Utsjoki, Finland and Karasjok and Tana, Norway. The river is the fifth longest in Norway. The last of the river run through the municipality of Tana in Norway. The river discharges into the Tanafjorden, one of the largest and most unspoiled river deltas in Europe. The delta is protected and is an important home to wetland birds. There are large deposits of sand in the delta that are exposed sandbars at low tide.
Prior to its opening, Tennant estimated that the canal would carry 99,994 tons per year, and generate £7,915 in income. Traffic built up, and by the 1830s, annual tonnage was around 90,000 tons, but revenues were less than anticipated, and produced a profit of about £2,500 per year. Initially, it was known as the Neath and Swansea Junction Canal, but by 1845 it had become known as the Tennant Canal. The water was deep between Red Jacket and Aberdulais, and deep from Red Jacket to Swansea harbour. This provided a large reservoir of water, which was used to scour the tidal basin at Port Tennant. Boats typically carried 25 tons, which allowed them to work on the Neath Canal as well. Several short branches were built, including one to the Vale of Neath Brewery which opened in 1839 and was privately funded by the brewery. In the same year, the Glan-y-wern Canal was dredged and re-opened.
The river runs behind Lodge Park, a National Trust property, and through Larkethill Wood, where it flows under another lane, before passing Kilkenny Farm.
The Leach valley shows as a substantial dip in the B4425 Cirencester-Burford road. The river has an embankment at the bottom of the valley, but has not increased in size. Through all this section the river is often nearly invisible under summer vegetation. It then passes Swyre Farm with another road crossing, then Dean Farm, before reaching a very picturesque winding valley, crossed by the Westwell-Hatherop road. This section is notably a bourn in an unremarkable depression, which normally runs in the winter, but often disappears in the summer. (In recent dry winters - writing at summer 2007 - this section remained dry. Even more unusually, as of July 2007, it was running which has not happened during the summer for many years. The bourn section had been running continuously for long enough to have taken on the appearance of a river, with a scoured bed and water plants.)
Burntisland ( , ) is a royal burgh and parish in Fife, Scotland, on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. According to the 2011 census, the town has a population of 6,269.
In its course the Omo-Bottego has a total fall of about 700 m from the confluence of the Gibe and Wabe rivers at 1060 m to 360 m at lake-level, and is consequently a rapid stream in its upper reaches, being broken by the Kokobi and other falls, and navigable only for a short distance above where it empties into Lake Turkana, one of the lakes of the Gregory Rift. The "Spectrum Guide to Ethiopia" describes it as a popular site for white-water rafting in September and October, when the river is still high from the rainy season. Its most important tributary is the Gibe River; smaller tributaries include the Wabi, Denchya, Gojeb, Mui and Usno rivers.
Hurricane Fay was the first hurricane to make landfall on Bermuda since Emily in 1987. The sixth named storm and fifth hurricane of the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season, Fay evolved from a broad weather disturbance several hundred miles northeast of the Lesser Antilles on October 10. Initially a subtropical cyclone with an expansive wind field and asymmetrical cloud field, the storm gradually attained tropical characteristics as it turned north, transitioning into a tropical storm early on October 11. Despite being plagued by disruptive wind shear for most of its duration, Tropical Storm Fay steadily intensified. Veering toward the east, Fay briefly achieved Category 1 hurricane status while making landfall on Bermuda early on October 12. Wind shear eventually took its toll on Fay, causing the hurricane to weaken to a tropical storm later that day and degenerate into an open trough early on October 13.
The coast of Greenock formed a broad bay with three smaller indentations: the Bay of Quick was known as a safe anchorage as far back as 1164. To its east, a sandy bay ran eastwards from the Old Kirk and the West Burn as far as Wester Greenock castle. The fishing village of Greenock developed along this bay, and around 1635 Sir John Schaw had a jetty built into the bay which became known as Sir John's Bay. In that year he obtained a Charter raising Greenock to a Burgh of Barony with rights to a weekly market. Further east, Saint Laurence Bay curved round past the Crawfurd Barony of Easter Greenock to Garvel (or Gravel) Point. When a pier (or dyke) was built making the bay an important harbour, the fishing village of Cartsburn gained the alternative name of Crawfurdsdyke. In 1642 it was made into the Burgh of Barony of Crawfurdsdyke, and part of the ill-fated Darien Scheme set out from this pier in 1697. This town was later renamed Cartsdyke.
The town's Welsh dialect has several notable features, with one Victorian observer stating that three languages were spoken there: English, Welsh and 'Tywynaeg'. During the 1860s, in the town's British School, a 'Welsh stick' (a version of the Welsh Not) was used to punish children who were caught speaking Welsh. Yet Welsh was the dominant language in Tywyn until the middle of the 20th century. Tywyn is now a very anglicised town, with the majority of its population (52.8%) having been born in England according to the 2011 census. Likewise, slightly more respondents claimed an English-only identity (35.0%) than a Welsh-only identity (33.7%).
The Tennant Canal was a development of the Glan-y-wern Canal, which was built across Crymlyn Bog to transport coal from a colliery on its northern edge to a creek on the River Neath called Red Jacket Pill. It closed after 20 years, but was enlarged and extended by George Tennant in 1818, to provide a navigable link from the River Neath to the River Tawe at Swansea docks. In order to increase trade, he built an extension to Aberdulais basin, where it linked to the Neath Canal. The extension was built without an act of Parliament and there was a long delay while Tennant attempted to resolve a dispute with a landowner over the routing of the canal. Once opened, much of the Neath traffic used the Tennant Canal, as Swansea provided better facilities for transferring cargo to ships.
In early July, the party returned from the Macquarie Marshes to Mt Harris, 48 km (30 miles) N-NW of present-day Warren. Seemingly unable to further follow the course of the Macquarie, Oxley had to change his plans. He decided to send Evans ahead, with a small party, to scout a north-easterly route across the plains, and report back. Beginning on 8 July 1818, Evans would end up traversing a large loop, north-easterly then south-easterly, then westerly and back to his starting point. In the north-easterly direction, he first crossed the Castlereagh River around Combara, between Gulargambone and Coonamble. The party then continued on a shallower east-north-easterly direction until reaching the foothills of the Warrumbungle Mountains. From here, Evans turned south-westerly to head back to Oxley's encampment at Mt. Harris, travelling across ‘an open plain, over which was rather better travelling than we had latterly experienced’. This route brought his party back to the Castlereagh River at a point south of his first crossing, in an area between the future villages of Armatree and Curban (10 miles apart). As he approached the Castlereagh River he described the country as
‘low and wet’, with the journey being ‘dreadfully bad and marshy’. The country he was crossing over is today considered rich pasture and farming land, covering the areas known as Tonderbrine, the western side of Tooraweenah, the Yarrandale area and Hillside.
Its course is generally to the south, however with a major bend to the west at about 7° N 37° 30' E to about 36° E where it turns south until 5° 30' N where it makes a large S- bend then resumes its southerly course to Lake Turkana. According to materials published by the Ethiopian Central Statistical Agency, the Omo-Bottego River is 760 kilometers long.
The Taff Vale set about obtaining Parliamentary authorisation in 1885 to acquire the Bute Docks, but this was refused by the Lords Committee when the Taff Vale would not agree to running powers requested by the Barry Railway northward from the Trehafod and Treforest connections. The Taff Vale also supported a nominally independent Cardiff, Penarth and Barry Junction Railway which would be a spoiler to the Barry company's development plans at Barry itself, but this was refused, the Barry being granted a corresponding railway from Barry to a junction at Cogan with the Taff Vale's Penarth lines, by Act of 31 July 1885. The Taff Vale was granted a circuitous coastal route from Penarth to Cadoxton.
The Humber Wetlands Project which took place between 1992 and 2001 identified numerous prehistoric wetland sites in Holderness, the Hull Valley, the Humberhead Levels and the Vale of York.
A boat found at North Ferriby, near Kingston upon Hull, has been dated as 2030 BC, which makes it the oldest of its kind in western Europe. New scientific research carried out on the remains shows it is at least 4,000 years old. The boat was one of three discovered by amateur archaeologist Ted Wright on the banks of the Humber. Historians knew that the boats were old, but only now do they know how old. New scientific techniques suggest the boat Mr Wright found in 1963 is 500 years older than everyone thought. That means it date backs more than 4,000 years to the early Bronze Age. The Ferriby site was an ideal point of departure for east/west travel along the Humber or as a crossing-point to the south bank. The Ferriby Boats were a means by which ideas, such as the decorative design of pottery, and goods such as Baltic amber and metals could arrive on the Humber shore. It has also been suggested that it may have been used to carry stones to Stonehenge.
The Firth of Tay is outstanding for its extensive sand and mudflats, its population of common seals and for its wintering birds such as oystercatcher, bar-tailed godwit, shelduck and velvet scoter. There is good access to much of the shoreline and many good wildlife watching opportunities.
Tay Sound is an uninhabited natural waterway within Qikiqtaaluk Region, Nunavut, Canada. It is located at the northern end of Baffin Island, south of Oliver Sound. Its mouth opens to Eclipse Sound. Pond Inlet is the nearest community.
The Eden Estuary is a Local Nature Reserve (LNR) and, along with the Firth of Tay was designated a Ramsar site on 28 July 2000.
Firth of Tay () is a sound or firth, long and wide, extending in a northwest–southeast direction between the northeast side of Dundee Island and the east portion of Joinville Island. It merges to the northwest with Active Sound with which it completes the separation of Dundee and Joinville Islands. It was discovered in 1892–93 by Captain Thomas Robertson of the Dundee whaling expedition and named by him after the Firth of Tay of Scotland.