1845.] Eleventh Memoir on the Law of Storms in India. J 3 



riment, in which a vessel called the Charles Heddle was fully proving 

 for us there, the truth of the researches we were making here. The 

 following is the newspaper notice of it, written by myself, which will 

 fully explain enough of this remarkable, or rather wonderful, fact and 

 coincidence of actual experiments with theory and with resurches 

 going on at thousands of miles distant. 



" I have just received from Capt. Royer, the Master Attendant at i 

 Mauritius, who, like every one else, was much staggered by the report 

 of the Charles Reddle's circular sailings for so many days in a hurri- 

 cane, a number of logs, and with them her's, which he has taken the 

 trouble to copy himself that there might be no mistake about it, and 

 you will learn with pleasure that I have fortunately just completed 

 a Memoir now printing, of which the evidence leaves no manner of 

 doubt as to the possibility of a fast sailing ship, that could scud well, 

 having really done what the Charles Heddle has; and it teaches us 

 moreover, by two perfectly independent storms, at more than a year's 

 distance of time, and in quite different parts of the Southern Indian 

 Occean, that there are storms of great intensity, lasting for long periods 

 (in both cases five whole days) and which have yet so slow a progres- 

 sive motion that one might, comparatively speaking, almost term 

 them stationary storms. If you like to print this, for it is advan- 

 tageous now and then to draw attention to the subject, and to show 

 how much yet remains to be learnt, particularly with respect to the 

 storms of the Southern Hemisphere, here are some of the data as 

 briefly as I can give them. 



First, from the accompanying chart (of this Memoir) you will see 

 that between the 26th of Nov. and 1st Dec. 1843, and between lati- 

 tudes 5° 30' and 1 1° South and longitudes 83. to 89° East, there was a 

 hurricane raging for the whole five days, which, traced by the logs of 

 many ships, appears only to have travelled in that time, from point to 

 point of its centre, about 255 miles, or allowing for the curves about 

 a degree a day only. 



The Charles Heddle, by her log now before me, appears to have 

 scudded from the 25th to the 28th February, 1845, for five whole days 

 round and round in a Hurricane circle! during which time she ran 

 upwards of thirteen hundred miles ; the wind made with her five 

 complete revolutions, and from calculations derived from the dis- 

 tances and shifts of wind and the positions of the vessel, to have been 

 on an average about 50 miles from its centre ; which was slowly mov- 

 ing on, like the one of which I send you the chart, to the southwest- 

 ward, at not more than three miles an hour; and the direct distance 



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