514 History of Luminescence 



Royal Society proposed " The shining of the sea at night " as a sub- 

 ject to be investigated, and an early description was presented in 

 1667 by its first president, Sir Robert Moray,° Observations made by 

 a Curious and Learned Person, sailing from England, to the Carib- 

 Islands. He described burning of the sea at Deal the night before 

 departure: " all the water ran off our Oars, almost like liquid fire; 

 the wind was then South-East and the Sea men told me that at East 

 and South winds it burned most." In the harbor of Jamaica he 

 observed that current affected the burning. 



Samuel Pepys (1633-1703) , elected president in 1681, also noticed 

 " the strange nature of the sea water on a dark night, that it seemed 

 like fire upon every stroke of the oar." 



In 1674 Paulus Biononius,^° residing in Iceland and, " given to 

 some Philosophical Inquiries regarding that Country," wrote to the 

 Society: " Our Sea-iuater, in clear nights, being struck with Oars, 

 shineth like Fire bursting out of a Furnace." 



Frederick Martens (1635-1699) , a German whose Spitzergische 

 oder Groenlandische Reise Beschreibung gethan im Jahr 1761 (Ham- 

 burg, 1675) has been translated into many languages, also men- 

 tioned the light of the sea in northern waters, showing that it is by 

 no means in the tropics that this phenomenon is to be observed. 

 Martens wrote: " 



At night when the sea dasheth very much, it shines like fire; the seamen 

 call it burning. This shining is a very bright glance, like unto the lustre 

 of a diamond. 



But when the sea shines vehemently in a dark night and burns, a south 

 or west wind followeth after it. 



At the stern of the ship where the water is cut through, you see at 

 night, very deep under water, bubbles rise and break, then this shining 

 or lustre is not there. 



Christian Mentzel (1675) in his article on the Bononian stone 

 called attention to the " shining sparks like silver," which appeared 

 when he spit in the sea on a calm night. Like Martens, he merely 

 observed, and added nothing to real knowledge of the origin of the 

 phenomenon. Indeed the views of the time were so extravagant 

 that the simplest experiment would have disproved them. Georg 

 Rumph (1637-1706) , the German botanist, in 1682 explained the 

 phosphorescence of the sea at Amboina in the Dutch East Indies as 

 volcanic in origin, while Pere Guy Tachard (died 1714), in 1685 



" Moray, Phil. Trans. 2: 496, 1667 (No. 27) . 

 "An account in the Phil. Trans. 9: 239, 1674 (No. 111). 

 ^^ From the English account in the Hakliiyt Society Publications, No. 18: 28, 1855. 



