1842.] A Sixth Memoir on the Law of Storms in India. 689 



The ArieVs position is fortunately well ascertained on the 16th 

 by observation, and on the 18th by working back her run from 

 3h. 10m. p. m. when she sighted the Scarborough Shoal. Her drift 

 made good, then, during this 48 hours is S. 75° E. 62 miles, which agrees 

 as nearly as possible with what appears from careful projection to have 

 been, up to this time, the track of the storm, i. e. about on a line S. 75° 

 E. to N. 75° W. Another instance in addition to those before quoted of 

 ships being sometimes drifted round the quadrant of a storm, so as to 

 arrive, at the conclusion of it, at a point in the first storm circle, 

 opposite to that at which it commenced with them. The Ariel ap- 

 pears also from the terrific violence of the wind, the pyramidal sea, and 

 the rapid veering of the wind from North at day-light of the 17th to 

 about South, at midnight of the same day, or 16 points in 18 hours, 

 to have been drifting close past the centre. 



From this time, however, it appears, that the storm must have curved 

 away to the W.S.W. and S.W., so as to bring the ship upon its North 

 Eastern quadrant, and the wind consequently to S.E., at which it re- 

 mained from 10 a. m. on the 18th till 3 p. m., when the sight of the 

 breakers on the Scarborough obliged them to bear up. By 6 p. m., 

 they had again severe gales from the N.N.E., the wind having hauled 

 round by the East. I consider that this was the beginning of a second 

 storm, but that it was, as will be shewn in the log of the Vansittart, 

 a storm occasioned by the N. E. monsoon setting in with the force 

 of a gale, and not a rotatory one, for the ship though suffering very 

 severe weather, had the winds constantly between N. N. W. and N. 

 E. only, till they obtained fine weather, though running to the West- 

 ward. Had this second gale been a circular storm, it must have 

 overtaken and passed them when hove to, when it would have veered 

 either by the East or West, but this vibrating of the winds, as above, 

 is like that of a strong monsoon gale, disturbed on its course by the Van- 

 sittart's and Ariel's storms, and we have I consider, no data whatso- 

 ever from which to consider it a circular storm ; I have thus not 

 marked it on the chart. 



We now come to consider the Vansittarfs storms. These it is evi- 

 dent could not be the same as the ArieVs, for the ships were at least 

 170 miles apart, the Vansittart, bearing N. E. by E. J E. from the 

 Ariel at noon on the 16th, when this last had an awful tyfoon at 



