: The National Geographic Magazine Vol. II. No. 3 July 1890 by Various - Geography Periodicals

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avail much. And yet this is one of those cases where practice and theory should go hand in hand,--not theory as something vague and unreal, but theory as based upon a firm foundation of observed facts. If a vessel encounter a hurricane, certain conclusions can be drawn from observations of the shifts of wind, the fluctuations of the barometer, the appearance of the clouds, and the direction of the ocean swell; the master of that vessel will undoubtedly draw such conclusions, and store them away in his mind as part of his fund of experience upon which to base action at some future time. But if he can consider his own observations, while fresh in mind, in connection with the observations made on board many other vessels that encountered the same storm, and modify or verify his conclusions by such comparison, there cannot be a doubt but that the lesson will be of far greater value. Sailors lead a rough life, and their training is often acquired by experience alone. Moreover, there are certain things that tend to discourage effort on the part of junior officers, even on board naval vessels: they realize that their duty is not to originate orders but to execute them, and sooner or later they get out of the habit of reflecting upon the action taken to avoid a storm or manoeuver in one, not knowing at the time what considerations lead to the action that was taken, and not always having anything brought forcibly to their attention to indicate with certainty whether the action was well-considered or ill-advised. Upon finally attaining command themselves they are not, therefore, as well posted as they might otherwise have been. I mention these things to explain the undoubted fact that comparatively few masters of vessels are well posted in certain very important additions to the old law of storms, as it was discovered by Redfield and enforced by Reid, Piddington, Thom, and other early writers. In fact, of all the navigators of various nationalities who have charge to-day of the commerce of the world, probably four-fifths are wholly ignorant of the progress that has been made in this direction in the past fifty years. That such is the case is not, in my opinion, wholly their fault: it is owing to the fact that far too little attention has been paid to clear, forcible, and convincing explanation; it is the fault of the teachers, no less than the scholars,--of meteorologists who talk over the heads of their audiences, instead of stating facts and conclusions in a way to command attention and respect from the practical men who furnish the data, and who deserve some tangible results in return for their long years of voluntary observation.

It is difficult to put this matter very clearly to those who are not familiar with the conditions that govern the management of a vessel at sea, and I shall only attempt to do so in a very general way. It should be understood, first of all, that a hurricane is an enormous whirlwind, so large, in fact, that its circular nature was generally recognized only about fifty years ago. At the immediate center of the whirl there is a calm space, from five or ten to thirty or forty miles in diameter, generally with blue sky and bright sunlight. Within a short distance of this central calm the wind blows with frightful violence, and here a vessel is driven along in absolute helplessness, enveloped in midnight darkness, buried in a flying mass of foam and spray, with every sound annihilated by the roar and shrieks of the elements. The core of the hurricane, as this region has been called, is small, relative to the entire area, and it thus happens that a few miles may make all the difference between shipwreck and safety. The question is, then, to avoid getting into the core, or heart, of the hurricane. It is evident enough that if the wind blow in a strictly circular direction around the center, the bearing or direction of the center must be at exactly right angles to the right of the direction of the wind. In other words, in the Northern Hemisphere the center bears eight points to the right of the wind ; in the case of a hurricane off our coast, for instance, if the wind be NE. at Hatteras the center would bear SE. Considering, further, that the entire whirl has a progressive motion along a path, or track, if an observer at Hatteras find that the NE. wind freshens rapidly, without any shift or change of direction, it is equally evident that the center of the storm is approaching directly toward that point. In a similar situation at sea, a shipmaster would naturally see that his vessel was in a position of great danger: evidently the best thing to do would be to run before the wind, thus getting out of the way of the approaching hurricane. This simple case will explain pretty clearly, I think, how rules were at once formulated and adopted, as soon as Redfield had proved the approximately circular character of these storms.

Without going further into this subject, inasmuch as this 8-point rule is perhaps the most important of all the rules--indeed, all of them follow directly from it,--suppose that subsequent research, based upon careful observation and the accurate charting of hundreds of reports from vessels in similar storms in various oceans, proved conclusively that the wind in a hurricane does not blow in strictly circular whirls, but rather spirally inward, so that with a NE. wind off Hatteras the center bears probably S SE., or even South: evidently this is a matter of vital importance to the navigator, and all the old rules should be remodeled to suit the discovery. Such is, indeed, actually the fact, and in most cases nothing could be worse than to run directly before the wind; in any event it would be dangerous, and in the case of a slow-moving cyclone it might readily lead the vessel directly into the core of the hurricane. This is known to have been the case in many instances, and vessels have thus been drawn into the inner whirls of hurricanes and kept there for several days, making one or more complete revolutions around the center before they could extricate themselves. In fact, they might never have gotten out, if the storm itself had not moved off and left them.

The first of the accompanying plates, entitled,

WEST INDIAN HURRICANES, AND OTHER NORTH ATLANTIC STORMS,

The next plate,

THE HURRICANE OF NOVEMBER 25, 1888,

Lack of space does not allow of further details, and I must go on to the next plate,

THE ST. THOMAS-HATTERAS HURRICANE OF SEPT. 3-12, 1889.

This plate is copied exactly from a Supplement issued with the Pilot Chart for October, 1889 , with only the addition of the tracks of the two storms and the tracks of a few vessels . Considering the early date of publication, the wide expanse of ocean covered by the charts, and their essential accuracy , it must be acknowledged, I think, by anyone who is at all acquainted with the difficulties incident to this sort of work, that this supplement to the Pilot Chart hit more closely to the truth in this matter than would probably be possible under similar circumstances in one case out of ten. Had later data materially modified conclusions drawn at such an early date, it could not have been a matter of surprise, although this prompt publication would still have served a most valuable purpose in interesting navigators to contribute data likely to help us in establishing the facts. Indeed, the following quotations from the Pilot Chart and Supplement illustrate exactly what was desired, and what was actually accomplished by this publication: "This preliminary publication, issued two weeks after the storm reached our coast, well illustrates the cordial support this office receives from masters of vessels in its efforts to collect and utilize data regarding marine meteorology. It is desired to collect as complete data as possible regarding this storm, in order to publish a final report, and the present publication will be useful as a good working basis for a more complete detailed study of the hurricane." Also, "Special attention is called to the fact that this preliminary publication is only intended to give a brief outline of the facts as indicated by data received up to date of publication." Moreover, the name, nationality, and rig of every vessel whose report had been received in time to be used was published, and every statement made in the accompanying text was based on an exhaustive study of all the data.

It is impossible, in the space at my disposal, to refer even briefly to the reports of the few vessels whose tracks are plotted on the charts: the stanch steamship "Earnmoor," foundering in the heart of the hurricane on Sept. 5th, eleven of her crew of thirty escaping in an open boat, and of these only seven surviving that fearful drift of twenty-three days; the "S?pet," between the two storms and escaping both; the "Lassell," from the tropics to Block Island, all the way in the grasp of the hurricane, without a sight of sun, moon, or stars, to fix her position; the "Ada Bailey," rolling in the long swell off Hatteras and watching the early indications of the approaching storm for nearly a week before it struck her; the "Hernan Cortes," forced to stand off into fearful danger by the still greater danger of a lee-shore at Hatteras; and the "City of New York," "Teutonic," and "City of Rome," starting on their Titanic race from Liverpool for New York the day after this great hurricane swept past St. Thomas, and reaching their goal with it, and in spite of all its fury. I must dismiss this whole interesting history with the following abstract of the report of Capt. Simmons, of the British brigantine "Victoria," whose original report is brief and to the point, like all the rest :

I passed through the cyclone, resulting in the total loss of the spars, sails, etc., of my vessel. The SE. sea became so heavy that I was obliged to heave-to. The sky was one sheet of dark gray, at times approaching black. The lightning was excessive only during the latter part of the storm; it appeared as a continuous quivering sheet around a great part of the horizon, extending about 10? above it and lasting many seconds, unaccompanied by thunder; the compass could not be read, the card spinning so that the points were indistinguishable. The lowest barometer reading was 27.86 .

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