372 Nineteenth Memoir on the Law of Storms. [No. 5. 



PART III. 



I now proceed to state briefly the grounds upon which the tracks of 

 these Cyclones are laid down on the Chart, beginning with that of the 

 Sir Howard Douglas. 



I have first given the logs of two vessels to the Eastward, the Isabella 

 Blyth and Wellesley * of which the first certainly had the rearward 

 swellf of the advancing Cyclone on the 15th, when the outer circum- 

 ference of its S. E. quadrant might have been at about 120 miles from 

 her position ; and Captain Baylis very truly conjectures from the 

 "confused heavy swell from the Westward" which was that of the 

 Cyclone, and the lesser swell from the Eastward which was occasioned 

 by the Trade wind, that " it must have been blowing hard somewhere to 

 the Westward" of his position. 



The Wellesley it will be recollected, was also a homeward bound 

 ship, but she was on the 12th in 10° 43' South and had then had the 

 commencement of her gale since the 1 1th. As on the 12th she had the 

 wind at N. N. W. which makes the centre bear from her W. S. W. 

 it is difficult to suppose, without any intermediate evidence, that her 

 Cyclone, if it was one, was the same as that of the Sir Howard Douglas 

 on the 15th. I have therefore marked her track on the Chart rather 

 as giving another laudable instance of the caution necessary in this dan- 

 gerous tract of the Ocean. 



We now come to the three ships near to which the centre must have 

 passed between the 15th and 16th which are the Sir Howard Douglas 

 Admiral Moorsom, and Polly, all of which had, by noon on the 15th, the 

 Cyclone evidently commencing with strong gales from the S. E. and were 

 running up to the Northward to cross in front of it, in entire ignorance of 

 their danger in so doing. But of these three ships the position of the 

 Polly is as we shall see altogether uncertain, and that of the Admiral 

 Moorsom also, on the next day, is a mere estimation. Taking as nearly as 



* A statement, from memory, by the master of the Barque Iris was also forwarded 

 to me by Captain Twynham ; but this vessel was on the 10th, in 12° South and 90° 

 East when the weather became so suspicious as to induce Captain Twynham to be- 

 lieve he was passing near a Cyclone to the Westward of him, which indeed may have 

 been the case, but it was not that of the Sir Howard Douglas ,• and as no Barome- 

 trical observations were made it is not certain even that it was a Cyclone. It might 

 have been the Wellesley's. 



f See Col. Reid's new work on Storms and the Variable Winds. 



