The dual nature of the dead-water phenomenology: Nansen versus Ekman wave-making drags

A ship evolving in a stratified fluid is sometimes slowed down in comparison to a homogeneous case. This dead-water phenomenon was reported by the Norwegian explorer Fridtjöf Nansen during his North polar expedition in 1893. The physicist and oceanographer Vagn Walfrid Ekman was the first to study in the laboratory the physical origin of dead-water phenomenon in 1904: at the interface between saline water and freshwater, internal gravity waves appear, propagate, and generate a wave-making drag. Here we show that the velocity oscillations of pulled ships models à la Ekman caught in dead water are due to a transient internal dispersive undulating depression produced during the initial acceleration of the ship that we predict with a linear analytical model.