PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 25 



house landing, the fog-signal was to sound for a given time, and to 

 commence when the steamer had reached a given point, half a mile 

 distant. When that point was reached, we could see by the steam- 

 puffs coming from the 'scape pipe, that the signal was being blown ; 

 but we could not hear its sound ; nor did we, as we continued on 

 our course, running away from the light station for the next five 

 minutes. When near to Whale Rock, less than a mile and a half 

 distant from the signal, the steamer was stopped, silence was ordered 

 fore and aft, and we all listened intently. The expert naval officers 

 thought they heard a trace of the fog-signal, but my untrained ears 

 failed to differentiate it from the moan of the whistling buoy close 

 to us. Yet the blasts of the ten-inch steam whistle, for which we 

 were listening, can often be heard at a distance of ten miles. 



Soon after, I had another opportunity to further observe the 

 operations of this signal. We left Narragansett Pier, R. I., on 

 Aug. 6, 1881, at 4 P. M., in a dense fog, with a strong breeze from 

 the W. S. W., and a heavy chop sea. We wished to ascertain how 

 far the Beaver Tail fog-signal could be heard dead to windward 

 and in the heaviest of fogs. At Whale Rock, one and one-third 

 miles from it, we did not hear a trace of it. Then the steamer was 

 headed directly for Beaver Tail Point, and we ran slowly for it by 

 compass, until the pilot stopped the steamer, declaring we were 

 almost aboard of the signal itself. Every one strained his ears to 

 hear the signal but without success ; and we had begun to doubt of 

 our position when, the fog lifting slightly, we saw the breakers in 

 altogether too close proximity for comfort. We passed the point as 

 closely as was safe ; and, when abreast of it and at right angles 

 with the direction of the wind, the sound of the fog-signal broke on 

 us suddenly and with its full power. We then ran down the wind 

 to Newport, and carried the sound with us all the way. The fog 

 continuing during the next day, the signal kept up its sound, and 

 we heard it distinctly and continuously at our wharf, though five 

 miles distant. 



On the night of May 12, 1881, about midnight, the Galatea, a 

 propeller of over 1500 tons burden, with a full load of passengers 

 and freight, bound through Long Island Sound from Providence 

 to New York, grounded in a dead calm and a dense fog on Little 

 Gull Island, about one-eighth of a mile from and behind the fog- 

 signal, and got off two days later without damage to herself or loss 



