  The surface gravity wave pattern that forms behind a steadily moving
disturbance is well known to comprise divergent waves and transverse waves,
contained within a distinctive V-shaped wake. In this paper, we are concerned
with a theoretical study of the limit of a slow-moving disturbance (small
Froude numbers), for which the wake is dominated by transverse waves. We
consider three configurations: flow past a submerged source singularity, a
submerged doublet, and a pressure distribution applied to the surface. We treat
the linearised version of these problems and use the method of stationary phase
and exponential asymptotics to demonstrate that the apparent wake angle is less
than the classical Kelvin angle and to quantify the decrease in apparent wake
angle as the Froude number decreases. These results complement a number of
recent studies for sufficiently fast-moving disturbances (large Froude numbers)
where the apparent wake angle has been also less than the classical Kelvin
angle. As well as shedding light on the wake angle, we also study the fully
nonlinear problems for our three configurations under various limits to
demonstrate the unique and interesting features of Kelvin wake patterns at
small Froude numbers.
