No steady water waves of small amplitude are supported by a shear flow with a still free surface

The two-dimensional free-boundary problem describing steady gravity waves with vorticity on water of finite depth is considered. It is proved that no small-amplitude waves are supported by a horizontal shear flow whose free surface is still, that is, it is stagnant in a coordinate frame such that the flow is time-independent in it. The class of vorticity distributions for which such flows exist includes all positive constant distributions, as well as linear and quadratic ones with arbitrary positive coefficients.