1842.] A Sixth Memoir on the Law of Storms in India. 623 



Now this circumstance of the wind holding steady to the N. W. for 

 seventeen hours, and then veering rapidly, or within about eight hours, 

 the remaining eight points, or a point an hour, till it reached the S.W. 

 is worthy of note ; particularly if we look at the drift of the vessels to 

 the E. S. E. and N. E., according to their logs, (though in these 

 there are some slight discrepancies and omissions, and some apparent as- 

 sumptions,*) and remark the increased violence of the wind before 

 and after noon on this day, shewing either that the storm had been 

 really now forming, or stationary, or curving as I have laid it down. 

 Giving this every consideration I cannot avoid concluding, that the 

 storm, which had apparently come up from the S. E. by E., under the 

 lee of the island of Luconia, having arrived opposite the great opening 

 to the Pacific Ocean curved to the Westward, as I have marked it, in 

 its progress over to the entrance of the Gulf of Tonkin ; influenced 

 perhaps by the prevalence of a N. E. wind from the Pacific. The cir- 

 cumstance of its altering its direction so considerably from that 

 which it had under the lee of the very high land of Luzon, is not 

 more extraordinary than the curves which, we know, occur in 

 the Western hemisphere, and some about the Isle of France in our 

 own. The storm indeed may have been really a Pacific Ocean storm, 

 forcing its way across Luconia, from the coast of which the ships were 

 but little more than 200 miles distant? If this was the case, we may 

 suppose the anomaly easily accounted for. I have then, on these con- 

 siderations, marked the centre for the 22d, as in latitude 17° 20', 

 longitude 115° 16' E. and bearing N.W. by W. i W. from the Ganges 

 and Coutts, (which had the wind from S. W. by S. and S. S. W.) 

 and N. W. from the Camden and Bombay, which had the wind 

 S. W. by W. and S. W. by S. We have still the anomaly, that the 

 Coutts and Ganges, seem, by the expressions used in the logs, to have 

 had the wind more violent than the Camden and Bombay, but I sus- 

 pect that these latter ships were really much farther to the S. E. than 

 their positions shew, for the wind was from W. N. W. and West the 



* Such as longitude marked " by chronometer" on the noon of the 22d. In weather 

 like that then prevailing very little dependence can be placed on sights for chrono- 

 meter or double altitudes, for it is said, " at noon blowing a violent hurricane, weather 

 so thick with the haze and drift cannot see a ship's length a head. What is meant is 

 probably the chronometer brought on by dead reckoning, but this should be noticed. 



