1834.] 



Remarks on (he Marine Barometer, 



172 



upon the promptness as well as the wisdom of his decision, will al- 

 low himself to be influenced by any such precedents to brave the 

 storm, in order to evince his couraG:e, or through any fastidious fear 

 of committing a blunder, but that, taking the Barometer for his 

 safest, if not his only guide, he will, from the moment of any extraor- 

 dinary fall, bring his ship to the wind, and make every possible pre- 

 paration to meet it. Nor will he be diverted from his purpose by 

 any flattering appearances in the heavens. 



Even if, at the moment, the sky should be cloudless, the atmos- 

 phere motionless, and no other indication of a storm throughout the 

 whole visible horizon, than that which this invaluable instrument 

 affords him, still he will take his measures with the same degree of 

 promptitude and energy, as though the danger had already com- 

 menced ; and when the flattering gale springs up to favor his course, 

 he will not be tempted to pursue it through any fallacious notion of 

 shortening the period of his voyage ; for if my theory be correct, 

 he may rest assured that, the farther he advances, the greater will 

 be the fury of the tempest ; that it is a principle of every hurricane, 

 to narrow its sphere in proportion to its duration ; and that wher- 

 ever the storm commences, there will it soonest terminate ; and 

 consequently that his easiest way to escape from its fury is to remain 

 as stationary as possible. I should not have dwelt on some of these 

 points, had I not been aware that a notion is but too prevalent 

 among seamen, that scudding before the gale is the shortest way 

 to get out of it, an error which is attended with this additional evil, 

 that those precious moments which intervene between the fall of 

 the quicksilver and the rising of the storm, are expended (perhaps 

 never to be retrieved,) in a proceeding which, in my opinion, is 

 fraught with nothing but mischief. 



Neither should I have ventured thus boldly to advance a theory 

 of so much importance to the interests of navigation, were I not 

 prepared to support it by the result of many years experience, while 

 traversing those seas to which it is more immediately applicable. 



The following particulars of one of those awful hurricanes which 

 are known to prevail in certain parts of the Indian Ocean at particular 

 seasons of the year, and which it was on this occasion my lot to 

 encounter, will be found to embrace all the most material points on 

 which I have ventured to ground this theory of storms, and I trust 

 that the relation of them will not excite needless apprehensions in 

 the breasts of those, among the fair sex in particular, whose destiny 

 it may be to follow in the tract of my adventures, but rather that 



