1850.] Nineteenth Memoir on the Law of Storms. 373 



may be, a mean position for the centre of the Cyclone from the imperfect 

 data given in the logs I should place it at this time in Lat. 9° 5' S. ; 

 Long. 81° 55' East ; and as it passed a little after midnight close to the 

 Northward of the Sir Howard Douglas, when she was upset, its rate of 

 travelling may have been not quite 11 miles an hour, on a W. S. W. 

 course. I have also marked the position of the Sir Henry Pottinger, 

 as given by Captain Bay lis, but as he does not say at what time on the 

 14th, nor with what wind she cut away her foremast, we can only infer 

 that the Cyclone certainly came down from the E. N. E. as we have 

 marked its track and that probably she was close to, or at its centre. 



We then find that it passed close to the North of the Polly, and to 

 the South of the Admiral Moorsom between 3 p. m. of the 15th and 

 5 a. m. of the 16th; though the positions of the vessels must be 

 to some extent uncertain, as they were all running at night before a 

 furious gale increasing rapidly to a hurricane ; when all hands in a 

 merchantman have full employment, and the log is usually marked 

 the next day from recollection. We may infer that the Sir Howard 

 Douglas' run is perhaps under-marked, for this direction of the track 

 makes the centre pass at 33 miles distance from her, and from her log 

 and low Barometer she may have been somewhat closer to it ; judging 

 also from the rapid veering of the wind with her after she went over. 



After the track is carried past this group of vessels we have no 

 farther data than the Log of the Strabane, which ship no doubt expe- 

 rienced the same Cyclone, for we see from Captain Anderson's well 

 kept notes* that he was watching and noting the atmospheric indi- 

 cations on the 16th ; and it is highly instructive to compare his remarks 

 on the sea of the advancing storm with those of Captain Baylis of 

 the Isabella Blyth in its rear, to see how perfectly good observers on 

 opposite sides of the same Cyclone are warned of its approach or 

 vicinity by these too-much-neglected signs. 



The Log of the Victoria is so imperfect as regards position that we 



* They are still but notes, and I should have been glad to have had the whole 

 Log with them, for the point at which the track of the Cyclone crosses the ship's 

 track is somewhat uncertain, because we have not her exact run, hour by hour to 

 calculate with, but only the distance from noon to noon, whereas she was no doubt 

 going much faster in the first than in the latter part of this twenty. four hours. 



3 c 



