NARRATIVE OF THE CRUISE 157 



"We never know what will happen next at an ocean- 

 station. The piano wire with the bottom-snapper is 

 used on the davit aft; the smaller aluminum-bronze wire is 

 operated on the port davit; the plankton-pump is lowered 

 on the starboard davit; and the silk two-nets are oper- 

 ated from the forecastle head forward. So we have a 

 four-ring circus going on all the time." 



It was even worse when we had towed the three silk-nets from 

 the quarter-deck; by placing them forward the difficulties from 

 fouling were greatly reduced. 



Once in the trades, the weather was perfect for pilot-balloon 

 flights. The new equipment, supplied by the United States Navy, 

 worked well and observations were made daily. With strong 

 winds we were able to follow the balloon for only fifteen to twenty 

 minutes, but sometimes it would be visible for an hour. By 

 tying two together we could often follow them long after a single 

 one would have been lost to view. In this way we traced the 

 direction and force of the wind in the atmosphere up to heights 

 of from two to six miles. 



Three men take part in a balloon flight — usually Captain Ault, 

 Torreson, and Scott. A pure-rubber balloon is inflated until 

 it is about three feet in diameter with hydrogen from a tank. 

 By "weighing" it we are able to calculate its rate of ascension. 

 The scales operate upside down, of course, for the balloon pulls 

 the pan upwards. At a signal from Scott, the recorder, the glis- 

 tening globe is released. At one-minute intervals Torreson reads 

 the azimuth, or horizontal position of the balloon with respect to 

 the ship's heading; and Captain Ault checks the altitude by 

 using an ordinary sextant. It was of course possil)le for Torre- 

 son to read off both altitude and azimuth from his theodolite; but 

 the rolling of the ship often caused him to lose track of the object, 

 while it was still clearly visible to the sextant-observer. By 

 reading the altitude from the sextant, it was possible for Torreson 

 to sweep the sky at that level until he had again picked up the 

 elusive sphere. 



As a result of a multitude of observations on wind and weather 

 conditions at sea, we have today fairly accurate "pilot-charts" 



