A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean , a lake , or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf , sea , sound , or bight . A cove is a small, circular bay with a narrow entrance. A fjord is an elongated bay formed by glacial action. The term embayment is also used for related features , such as extinct bays or freshwater environments.
17-852: Mallows Bay is a small bay on the Maryland side of the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland , United States. The bay is the location of what is regarded as the "largest shipwreck fleet in the Western Hemisphere " and is described as a "ship graveyard." Mallows Bay is in the northeast corner of the Mallows Bay–Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary , which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration designated on September 3, 2019. The bay lies in
34-545: A bight . There are various ways in which bays can form. The largest bays have developed through plate tectonics . As the super-continent Pangaea broke up along curved and indented fault lines, the continents moved apart and left large bays; these include the Gulf of Guinea , the Gulf of Mexico , and the Bay of Bengal , which is the world's largest bay. Bays also form through coastal erosion by rivers and glaciers . A bay formed by
51-422: A half-turn ). It only has one line of symmetry ( reflection symmetry ). In non-technical usage, the term "semicircle" is sometimes used to refer to either a closed curve that also includes the diameter segment from one end of the arc to the other or to the half- disk , which is a two-dimensional geometric region that further includes all the interior points. By Thales' theorem , any triangle inscribed in
68-496: A broad, flat fronting terrace". Bays were significant in the history of human settlement because they provided easy access to marine resources like fisheries . Later they were important in the development of sea trade as the safe anchorage they provide encouraged their selection as ports . The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea defines a bay as a well-marked indentation in
85-567: A fleet built to cross the Atlantic during World War I . Because they were built of wood due to a lack of available steel, most of these ships were obsolete upon completion after the end of the war. The U.S. Navy did not want the ships, which were stored in the James River – at the cost of $ 50,000 a month – so they were sold to the Western Marine & Salvage Company. The company moved
102-453: A glacier is a fjord . Rias are created by rivers and are characterised by more gradual slopes. Deposits of softer rocks erode more rapidly, forming bays, while harder rocks erode less quickly, leaving headlands . Semi-circle In mathematics (and more specifically geometry ), a semicircle is a one-dimensional locus of points that forms half of a circle . It is a circular arc that measures 180° (equivalently, π radians , or
119-486: A rectangle. The side length of the square is the geometric mean of the side lengths of the rectangle. More generally, it is used as a lemma in a general method for transforming any polygonal shape into a similar copy of itself with the area of any other given polygonal shape. The Farey sequence of order n is the sequence of completely reduced fractions which when in lowest terms have denominators less than or equal to n , arranged in order of increasing size. With
136-401: A restricted definition, each Farey sequence starts with the value 0, denoted by the fraction 0 / 1 , and ends with the fraction 1 / 1 . Ford circles can be constructed tangent to their neighbours, and to the x-axis at these points. Semicircles joining adjacent points on the x-axis pass through the points of contact at right angles. The equation of
153-454: A semicircle with a vertex at each of the endpoints of the semicircle and the third vertex elsewhere on the semicircle is a right triangle , with a right angle at the third vertex. All lines intersecting the semicircle perpendicularly are concurrent at the center of the circle containing the given semicircle. A semicircle can be used to construct the arithmetic and geometric means of two lengths using straight-edge and compass. For
170-399: A semicircle with a diameter of a + b , the length of its radius is the arithmetic mean of a and b (since the radius is half of the diameter). The geometric mean can be found by dividing the diameter into two segments of lengths a and b , and then connecting their common endpoint to the semicircle with a segment perpendicular to the diameter. The length of the resulting segment is
187-413: Is an arm of Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada . Some large bays, such as the Bay of Bengal and Hudson Bay, have varied marine geology . The land surrounding a bay often reduces the strength of winds and blocks waves . Bays may have as wide a variety of shoreline characteristics as other shorelines. In some cases, bays have beaches , which "are usually characterized by a steep upper foreshore with
SECTION 10
#1732851079243204-643: The National Register of Historic Places on April 24, 2015, and was included in the Mallows Bay–Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary on September 3, 2019. Among the most prominent ships seen at Mallows Bay is the S.S. Accomac . Notes Further reading Bay A bay can be the estuary of a river, such as the Chesapeake Bay , an estuary of the Susquehanna River . Bays may also be nested within each other; for example, James Bay
221-408: The coastline, whose penetration is in such proportion to the width of its mouth as to contain land-locked waters and constitute more than a mere curvature of the coast. An indentation, however, shall not be regarded as a bay unless its area is as large as (or larger than) that of the semi-circle whose diameter is a line drawn across the mouth of that indentation — otherwise it would be referred to as
238-543: The county, located at 1440 Wilson Landing Road in Nanjemoy, Maryland . A 0.8-mile (1.3 km) trail loops around the park and the salvage basin. In 2010, a boat ramp and pier for recreational use was constructed to provide access to the Potomac River. It is popular to canoe or kayak among the ship ruins; the ships form a reef that hosts an array of wildlife. The bay was listed as an archaeological and historic district on
255-466: The geometric mean. This can be proven by applying the Pythagorean theorem to three similar right triangles, each having as vertices the point where the perpendicular touches the semicircle and two of the three endpoints of the segments of lengths a and b . The construction of the geometric mean can be used to transform any rectangle into a square of the same area, a problem called the quadrature of
272-406: The northeast corner of the 18 square miles (47 km) of Potomac River waters included in the sanctuary. The "Ghost Fleet" of Mallows Bay is a reference to the hundreds of ships whose remains still rest in its relatively shallow waters. In total, 230 United States Shipping Board Merchant Fleet Corporation ships are sunken in the river. More than 100 of the vessels are wooden steamships , part of
289-416: The ships to the Potomac River at Widewater, Virginia and in 1925, they were towed to Mallows Bay. Western Marine went bankrupt and the ships were burned and remained where they lay. During World War II, Bethlehem Steel built a salvage basin to recover metal from the abandoned ships. Wrecks of various civilian boats are also present at the site. Access to the ships is through Mallows Bay Park, operated by
#242757