1869.] 



Iron-built Sailing-ship ' Glenorchy. 1 



409 



The case the circumstances of which I now propose to lay before the 

 Royal Society, is one in which it appears to me that a positive answer to the 

 question can be given. It will, I hope, be found to have some interest as 

 an example of the manner in which such an answer can be elicited from 

 the data. It may have some scientific interest as the first case in which 

 any information as to the magnetic character of an English merchant-ship 

 has been published since the publication of the Third Report of the 

 Liverpool Compass Committee in 1861; and I think it will be found to 

 have much practical interest, as bringing into prominence a particular 

 error of great importance, not as yet, I believe, ascertained or corrected in 

 the usual course of adjustment of compasses in merchant-ships, even by 

 the most experienced and skilful compass-adjusters, but which, ever since 

 the mode of ascertaining and correcting it without heeling the ship was 

 given in the * Admiralty Manual for the Deviation of the Compass ' in 

 1862, has been ascertained, and when necessary corrected, in the ships of 

 the Royal Navy, viz. the Heeling Error. The case to which I refer is 

 the loss of the ship 'Glenorchy' of Glasgow, on the Kish Bank, in 

 Dublin Bay, on the 1st of January 1869, on which a court of inquiry was 

 held under the direction of the Board of Trade in pursuance of the 

 Merchant Shipping Act. In examining this case I have had the advan- 

 tage, by the permission of the Board of Trade, of perusing the evidence 

 taken before the Court of inquiry, and the report of the Court. I have 

 also had the advantage of discussing the nautical as well as the magnetical 

 circumstances of the case with Captain Evans, F.R.S., the highest authority 

 in all that relates to such an inquiry, and who permits me to state his 

 concurrence in the conclusions at which I have arrived ; and above all, I 

 have to express my obligations to Mr. William Fleming, compass-adjuster, 

 James Watt Street, Glasgow, for the full particulars with which he has 

 kindly furnished me of the deviations and correction of the compasses of 

 the * Glenorchy ' — information without which the results of this inquiry 

 would have been in a great measure conjectural. 



The 'Glenorchy' was an iron-built sailing-ship of 1200 tons, having an 

 iron poop, with a wooden deck laid upon iron beams, with iron bulwarks, 

 except on the poop-deck, above which there was a light rail. She was 

 built at Dumbarton in 1868. Her head in building was about N.N.E. 

 After being launched she was taken to Glasgow, where she lay for some 

 time head N.W. taking in a cargo of about 1100 tons of iron railwaj'- 

 chairs and sleepers. 



She had two compasses on deck — a steering-compass and a standard 

 compass. The card of each had two edge-bar needles 8-f inches long, the 

 ends separated 50°. 



The steering-compass was near the stern, about 32 or 33 inches above 

 the poop-deck, and 2 feet in front of the steering-wheel, which had an iron 

 spindle. The standard compass was on a wooden pillar about 5 feet high, 



