272 Seventeenth Memoir on the Law of Storms. [March, 



I shall now give a brief summary of the Logs of the second division 

 of the fleet, the body of which was on the 2nd at noon about 300 miles 

 distant from the first division, but I do not give them in tables, for there 

 are not sufficient differences to render this worth while ; I note merely 

 any remarkable circumstance. This second division consisted of ten 

 ships, of which the logs of seven, viz. the H. C. Ships Thames, Royal 

 Charlotte, Alfred, Woodford, Henry Addington, Carnatic and True 

 Briton,* are, by the attention of the Hon'ble the Court of Directors, as 

 before acknowledged, before me ; and I have very carefully compared 

 them so as to detect any discrepancies or any particular notes which may 

 appear in those which are the fullest and most attentively kept, and in 

 this respect I must remark that we shall be specially indebted to the 

 able log of Capt. W. Stanley Clarke of the True Briton, which is the 

 model of them, and which while it affords us perhaps the earliest in- 

 stance on record of a careful registry of the Barometer, gives us also in 

 this case, through that care, the means of connecting to a great degree 

 of accuracy the Cyclone of this division of the fleet with that of the 

 first division, by measuring the distance of the centre by the rate of 

 fall, in addition to the other evidence derived from the positions of the 

 ships and the wind. At the distance of more than half a century it 

 is not unpleasing to find that the principles of a new application of 

 this valuable instrument are here available to aid us in researches of 

 great interest, in a tract of ocean where our new science has been so 

 little applied. 



Summary of the Logs of the Hon'ble Company's Ships Thames, Royal 

 Charlotte, Alfred, Woodford, Henry Addington, Carna- 

 tic and True Briton, forming the second division of the China 

 fleet of July 1797.— Civil Time. 



On the 1st July, 1797 ', the fleet had the Botel Tobago Xima Islands bearing 

 N. 18° East to N. 5' W. in 21° 47' N. ; with light N. E. breezes and fair 

 weather. The True Briton's Barometer, 29.63, Ther. 86| at 6 p. m. by the 

 bearing from the Commodore (the Henry Addington, Capt. Farquharson,) the 

 fleet was in Lat. 21° 45' N. ; Long. 122° 5' East ; steering to the S. Eastward 5| 

 and 6 knots with the wind variable from N. b. E. to N. E. b. N., from 8 p. m. 

 variable N. E. to North, an increasing breeze; 2nd reefs taken in ; midnight wind 



* There were some Botany Bay sbips (as traders to New South Wales were then 

 called,) and others with the fleet. 



