890 Eighteenth Memoir on the Law of Storms, [Sept. 



1. Ships inward bound from the Southward. 



2. Ships inward bound from Madras or from the Eastward. 



3. Outward bound ships. 



4. Ships standing to sea from the Pilot station. 



Now of these four classes the ships of which the positions are the 

 most certain are those from Madras, as having had good observations 

 but a day or two before. 



Next to these are the ships inward bound, from the Southward and 

 those from the Eastward, though both were subjected to considerable 

 chances of error, as some of the ships from Europe had run up from 

 7° North in continued gloomy weather, and those from the Eastward 

 had had two or three days of bad weather from the Preparis passage. 



The ships standing to sea, whether as outward bound or as standing 

 off by orders from the station vessel, or under charge of their pilots, 

 were enveloped in the strong current which I have elsewhere announced, 

 and which we see here from the logs of several ships,* and especially 

 the Camperdown, sets at a rapid rate across the Sand Heads to the 

 Westward at the approach of a Cyclone ; and it is probable also that 

 the ships in the vicinity of the coast about Point Palmiras, and to the 

 Southward, were much affected by the sweep of this current, which 

 no doubt curves round within Balasore Bay and past the Point : at least 

 we cannot reasonably suppose any other direction for it. 



On the 9 th of October we cannot fairly assign any position for the 

 centre, though as the Teak and Enigma in the Andaman Sea about the 

 latitude of Narcondam, were running up with a strong S. S. W. breeze, 

 while the Joven Corinna, outside in the Bay of Bengal, had a strong 

 Easterly breeze ; these might at first have been thought part of a 

 Cyclone circle, of which the centre in that case would fall in about 12° 

 30' North ; and 92° 00' East : or about 1° West of the body of the 

 Great Andaman, and Captain Connew, it will be seen, thinks they 

 " brought it up from the Sayer Islands ;" but at the close of the 

 monsoons smart blowing weather is often experienced on the Eastern 

 side of the Bay, and the next day was fine again, for — 



* At the trial of a Branch Pilot before a Marine Court for failing to take a pilot 

 out of an outward bound ship, it was proved on oath that the Westerly set at the 

 station vessel was not less than from three to four knots per hour on the 11th 

 October. 



