1845.] Twelfth Memoir on the Law of Storms in India. 379 



pp. 363 and 364 of their falling Barometers and increasing bad weather, 

 to be clearly satisfied that this was clearly a case in which the last two 

 ships in a narrow sea, with a hurricane crossing their track, and in the 

 face of every indication ran headlong into it ; being tempted no doubt 

 by the fair Westerly and S. Westerly winds, heaving or broaching to 

 only when they could run no longer. Both commanders, indeed, when I 

 had, by means of the transparent horn cards in my little publication, 

 " The Horn Book of Storms," shewn them upon their own charts that 

 they did so, fully agreed with me that had they better understood 

 their position between the 9th and 10th they should not have run on as 

 they did, but have hove to. 



Now when we recollect what the value of the two wrecked ships 

 with two-thirds of a European regiment on board might have been in 

 India, had they been totally lost in time of war, — if there is any money 

 value to be set on human life — it is impossible I think to rate too 

 highly the lesson it conveys, severe as it must have been to the 

 sufferers. 



And finally when we bear in mind that this same predicament may 

 yet occur to a whole fleet, either in the East or the West Indies,* or 

 in any part of the world, and that a defeat from the elements may 

 be as disastrous as one from the enemy, and by the failure of suc- 

 cours, involve even farther losses, I shall not I trust be thought over- 

 earnest when I urge again on every man the intense importance of this 

 science to Englishmen, above all other nations of the globe; and this 

 storm is also in another light an undoubted proof of it; occurring as 

 it has done in a sea where such hurricanes were before unknown ! 



* It did occur in the West Indies to the fleet under Admiral Rowley, and to that 

 under the Spanish Admiral, Solano, in 1788. See Col. lieid's Work, 2nd Edition. 



