1848.] Fifteenth Memoir on the Law of Storms. 55 



And it is impossible, I think, for any seaman who knows what an 

 Indian tyfoon or hurricane is, to look to the cobweb rigging of any of 

 the sea-going steamers, and the entire absence of all pendants, or eye- 

 bolts to which a preventive shroud or tackle can be attached, and to 

 believe that, when laid down with their lee gunwales in the water, and in 

 a hurricane, in which, to quote the words of Capt. Doutty of the Run- 

 nimede, an experienced old West India commander (Journal, Vol. XIV. 

 p. 365,) the severity of the wind is beyond description, there is nothing 

 to compare it to, for unless present, no one can conceive the destructive 

 power and weight of wind, crushing every thing before it as if it were 

 a metallic body* these iron towers can stand half an hour 1 



I do not forget that a steamer has not the heavy masts and yards of 

 a sailing vessel to lay her over in a hurricane, but on the other hand, her 

 light spars would at most be equivalent to jurymasts in the wind and 

 sea of a tyfoon ; and she would labour as heavily as a ship without 

 masts for the want of top weight to steady her. This difference is 

 well known and calculated upon by ship-sailors, who, while it will 

 stand, I fancy always prefer a close-reefed maintopsail to lie to under, 

 " to keep her steady ?" 



And there is a farther danger, which evidently has never been 

 thought of, which is that at the very height of these terrific tempests 

 the funnel must stand as it can, by its own strength, for it has no sup- 

 port from the rigging, till it has laid far enough over to wrench it- 

 self out of the deck ! This will startle many, but is easily shown. In 

 harbour the iron shrouds are all slack, to allow of the expansion and 

 lengthening of the funnel by the heat. In practice also the funnel, I am 

 informed, is fitted slightly loose in its socketting to allow of the lateral 

 expansion : Now if it contracts while the vessel is laid down in a hurri- 

 cane the whole weight of it must hang on the shrouds or depend on 

 the strength of the materials. 



Now when the spray and " rain as cold as ice,"f is beating upon it, 

 the temperature must be much lowered, but if the fires are put out by 

 the sheer impossibility of keeping them in, or by the water in the en- 

 gine room ; it is clear that the funnel then must contract a little and the 



* There is no exaggeration in this. It has occurred again and again in our tyfoons 

 and hurricanes. The late Mr. Greenlaw, in the letter alluded to at page 36, says of the 

 hurricane of the H. C. S. Essex, that he felt that if he had fallen down he should have 

 remained as if nailed to the deck when the ship rolled to windward ! 



t Capt. Rundle's Log, Journal A. S. Vol. XIV. p. 33. 



