1839] 



Colonel Capper^a Whirlwinds-, 



3S5 



violence for fourteen hours, and with almost equal strength from every 

 point of the compass, it at length ceased; but literally left only wrecks 

 behind. 



" All the vessels at anchor were lost, and almost eveiy person on 

 board perished ; but the men of war and Princess Charlotte returned 

 into the roads on the 21th. The former had felt the gale very severely 

 whilst near the coast ; but without sustaining any material injury: the 

 latter vessel likewise, from staying rather too long at anchor, had lost 

 her fore and main masts, and was otherwise much damaged." 



After accounts of other storms. Colonel Capper continues : — 



" Ships which put to sea in due time, very soon get beyond the in- 

 fluence of the hurricane to the eastward ; and it is very well known that 

 they never extend far inland. All these circumstances, properly con- 

 sidered, clearly manifest the nature of these winds, or rather positively 

 prove them to be whirlvviu ls, whose diameter cannot be more than 120 

 miles; and the vortex seems generally near Madras or Pulicat. Those 

 which happen in the north-east monsoon, generally fall with most 

 violence within a few leagues of this place, and never, I believe, reach 

 south of Porto Novo. 



" But at the commencement of the south-west monsoon, violent gales 

 are sometimes felt on the east side of Ceylon, and the southern extre- 

 mity of the coast." 



After describing a hurricane, encountered in south latitude by the 

 Britannia, Indiaman, on the lOth of March, 1770, and explaining that it 

 did not extend above 30 leagues, since the Britannia fell in with two 

 ships w'hicb were within this distance. Colonel Capper procee Is : — 

 '* Thus then it appears, that these tempests or hurricanes are tornadoes 

 or local whirlwinds, and are felt with at least equal violence on the sea 

 coast and at some little distan je out at sea. But there is a material dif- 

 ference in the situation of the sun when they appear at different places : 

 on the coast of Coromandel, for example, they seldom happen, particu- 

 larly to the northward, except when the sun is in the opposite hemis- 

 phere. On the Malabar coast they rage with most violence during the 

 monsoon, whilst the sun is almost vertical. Near the island of Mauri- 

 tius, they are felt in January, February, and March, whichmay be deemed 

 their summer months ; and in the West Indies, according to Mr. 

 Edwards's ' History of Jamaica,' the hurricane season begins in August 

 and ends in October." 



In Colonel Capper's work, we find Franklin's explanation of what 

 first led him to observe that the north-east storms of America came from 



