Biographical Memoir of William C. Redfield. 435 



indebted to him for many valuable suggestions relating to its 

 construction/'' 



But we turn from these noble enterprises in which the philoso- 

 pher and the engineer were happily united in the same individual, 

 to the consideration of the great subject which, from this time, 

 formed the leading object of his life, namely, to perfect his theory 

 of storms. Nor do we turn away from great practical subjects to 

 such as are merely speculative. The lives and property which 

 Redfield's desinterested labors in behalf of steam navigation 

 contributed to save, would, we believe, be of small amount com- 

 pared with the sailors and ships which the rules founded on his 

 theory of storms, when fully applied to practice, will save from 

 shipwreck. 



We have already seen that the attention of Mr. Redfield was 

 first drawn to the subject of storms in the year 1811, by exam- 

 ining the position of trees prostrated by the great September gale, 

 which passed over Connecticut and the western part of Massa- 

 chussetts that year. Although he had never lost sight of the 

 theory of storms, yet the multifarious business concerns which 

 engrossed the greater part of his time for a number of years 

 afterwards, prevented his bringing it distinctly before* the public 

 until the year 1831. I chanced at that period to meet him for 

 the first time on board a steamboat on the way from New York 

 to New Haven. A stranger accosted me, and modestly asked 

 leave to make a few inquiries respecting some observations I had 

 recently published in the American Journal of Science on the 

 subject of Hailstorms. I was soon made sensible that the humble 

 inquirer was himself a proficient in meteorology. In the course 

 of the conversation, he incidentally brought out his theory of the 

 laws of our Atlantic gales, at the same time stating the leading 

 facts on which his conclusions were founded. This doctrine was 

 quite new to me, but it impressed me so favorably, that I urged 

 him to communicate it to the world through the medium of the 

 American Journal ot Science. He manifested much diflBdence at 



* From the outset Mr. Redfield maintained that the low rate of fares 

 at first adopted would prove inadequate to sustain the road, and pub- 

 lished in the papers of that day series of articles to show that the road 

 could not be supported at a less rate than two cents per mile. These 

 views met with much opposition at the time, not only from residents on 

 the line of the road, but from members of the board of directors. But 

 the result has proved the soundness of his judgment on that point. 



