416 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



described by a hurricane in its outward progress, the storm tracks previously 

 referred to constituting merely the axial line of the belt. The first was a 

 hurricane of August, 1837, and a graphic account was quoted, with illus- 

 trations, of a thrilling experience of the ship Calypso, typical of hundreds 

 of similar cases in hurricanes in the West Indies and off our own coast in 

 the past, and repeated every year almost before our very eyes. The Calypso 

 was in about latitude 27° north, longitude 75° west, when a rolling swell, 

 freshening northeasterly squalls, and other signs of a hurricane, would 

 have warned a captain posted in the law of storms to square away and 

 make the best of his way to an anchorage at Nassau or run around along 

 the southern edge of the approaching cyclone. But this was before sailors 

 knew anything about circular storms, and before the Hydrographic Office 

 had spread broadcast over the world the marvelous results obtained by 

 using oil to prevent heavy seas from breaking on board. The ship's decks 

 were swept by the seas, her close-reefed topsail blown from its bolt ropes, 

 hatches stove in, the vessel thrown on her beam ends, with yard arms in 

 the water. With her crew of fifteen men clinging to the weather rigging, 

 mastheads in the water, a furious hurricane dashing the waves over them 

 in sheets of foam, and the vessel sinking beneath their feet, it seems hard to 

 believe that any epitaph but "missing — lost at sea" would ever have been 

 inscribed against their names. But truth is always strange, stranger than 

 fiction. Upon cutting away the lanyards of the lower rigging the masts 

 went by the board and the vessel slowly righted. As the gale moderated, 

 jury masts and sails were rigged, and in two weeks' time, after the hard- 

 ships and sufferings incident to such a condition, the gallant ship (what 

 was left of her) came to anchor in the harbor of Smithville, North Carolina. 



Another of Reid's diagrams gave the paths of two of the memorable 

 hurricanes of October, 1780, as indicated by extracts from the logs of the 

 many British frigates cruising in those waters at that time. The one that 

 destroyed the town of Savanna la Mar, Jamaica, was particularly severe, 

 and in the vicinity of that island four frigates were lost, three of them with 

 all on board. The Phoenix, wrecked on the south coast of Cuba, had a 

 terrible experience, and the long account of it by Lieutenant Archer, R. N., 

 published in Reid's book, should be read in full, as no quotations could do 

 it justice. One's feelings relative to the loss of this fine frigate, however, are 

 somewhat tempered by the cool way in which Lieutenant Archer speaks 

 of having chased a Yankee man-of-war a short time previously, which, 

 "unfortunately," escaped in the darkness. 



Two years later (1782) occurred one of the greatest naval disasters on 

 record, and the lecturer said that — after referring to it very briefly in order 

 to emphasize the vast importance to navigators of a knowledge of the law of 

 storms, rather than with any desire to appall the audience with statistics — 

 he would be obliged to omit all further reference to the accumulated 

 records of the succeeding hundred years and devote to the immediate 

 present what little time remained. The disaster referred to he quoted from 

 Piddington's "Sailor's Horn Book," another of those classic manuals that 

 have translated and made intelligible to rough practical men the great and 

 important truths of pure science, whose lofty reasoning and diction would 

 in themselves be as unintelligible as so much Sanscrit. Rodney's fleet and 

 prizes, together with an immense convoy of merchantmen, in all ninety-two 

 vessels, were overtaken by a hurricane off the Grand Banks in September, 

 1782; all preparations for bad weather were made and the fleet hove-to, but 

 on the wrong tack. Frigates, prizes, and convoy were dismasted, sunk, 

 scattered, abandoned; every man-of-war but one foundered, and upward of 

 three thousand lives lost. Hove-to on the wrong tack. What an epitaph, 



