734 Thirteenth Memoir on the Law of Storms in India. [No. 166. 



At present it is of course a mere theory, but the fact on which it is 

 based, viz., the average incurving tendency of the winds in the Charles 

 Heddle's storm seems fairly enough elicited, and to call for close 

 attention. 



Like all theories it will serve us as a torch and a partial guide for 

 the present, and we must wait for more facts, to show if it be well 

 founded.* 



If (for the sake of hypothesis only) we admit this incurving of the 

 winds, it follows that there may be also, not a single incurving of the 

 same rate throughout the whole breadth of the storm, but that the in- 

 curving may be much more excessive, and amount to two or three points 

 when the centre is nearly approached, and even be so violent at the centre 

 as to prevent ships drifting out of it ? just like the vortex of a whirlpool 

 or a tide-eddy, which last we know will often give a boat's crew a heavy 

 pull, or a ship much trouble, before they get out of them. Does it not 

 seem that we have here the explanation of how some ships, as in the 

 case of the Runnimede and Briton in my last memoir, may be blown and 

 drifted round and round, without drifting out of the fatal centre, which 

 we should look for them, nautically, to do, and which other ships there is 

 no doubt really do. An excessive incurving of the winds towards the 

 centre, like the wind- arrows at the centres of Fig. III. and IV. is 

 one, and one very likely method of accounting for vessels remaining in 

 this hopeless state, and moreover it may assist us in supposing how 

 some dismal losses have occurred whilst other ships in company have 

 escaped. It adds also a most powerful argument, if any were want- 

 ing, for every precaution to avoid the centres — and for every one who 

 can contribute to these researches to do so. 



It is possible that at some periods of a storm, the state of it may 

 be such that there is a centrifugal tendency at the circumference, 

 and an incurving or centripetal tendency near the centre, and that 

 at some point in the whole zone of the storm the winds are blow- 

 ing in a true circle ? All this is matter of high interest to us, and for 

 future careful research. I have perhaps been prolix in this section, 

 but if I have been so, I trust it will be attributed to my anxious desire 



* I may notice here, that in my Third Memoir, Journal As. Society, vol. ix. p. 1047, 

 in noticing the anomaly of the George and Mary's log, 1 have suggested theoretically 

 that the storm might have divided. We have since abundant proof, that this frequently 

 occurs in the Bay of Bengal, as seen in succeeding memoirs. 



