CHAPTER III.

THE LAW OF STORMS.

It is but yesterday, as it were, that we have built ships fit for southern navigation; for navigation in those seas where the long, strong, _rollers_, pile themselves, each upon each, into absolutely mountainous masses of storm-lashed waves. What, then, shall we say of the early navigators who ventured into such seas with their clumsy leewards, heavy, and yet scarcely sea-worthy cock-boats?

Especially for the polar seas, whether arctic or antarctic, we need ships expressly built for such rude service. They were bold men, those who, like a Cabot, a Brentz, a Willoughby, ventured in their clumsy, ill-found, badly rigged, and scarcely sea-worthy tubs to navigate the icy seas; to dare Spitzbergen, to make Greenland by that funereal cape _Farewell_, and to coast the thousand giant icebergs in sight of which, men in our own day, a hundred Whalers have gone to pieces.

What chiefly rendered those ancient heroes so sublime was their very ignorance, their blind courage, their desperate resolution. They knew but little of the sea, and of the Heavens they knew still less; the compass, their only instructor and their only reliance, they dared the most alarming phenomena without being able even to guess at their causes. They had none of our instruments which speak to us so plainly and so unmistakably. They went blindfolded towards, and fearlessly into, the uttermost darkness. They, themselves, confess that they feared, but also, they would not yield. The sea's tempests, the air's whirlwinds and water spouts, the tragic dialogues of those two Oceans, of air and water, the striking, and, not so long since, ominous phenomena of the Aurora Borealis, all this strange and wild phantasmagoria seemed to them the fury of irritated Nature, a veritable strife of Demons against which man could _dare_ all--as they did--but could _do_ what they also did--nothing.

During three centuries but little progress was made. Read Cook, read Peron, and you will readily comprehend how difficult, uncertain, and perilous was navigation, even up to an hour so near our own.

Cook, that man of immense courage, but also, of most lively imagination, himself confesses, as his Journal testifies, that he knew how uncertain and perilous was the profession of the seaman even so lately as his day. In his Journal, we read; "The dangers are so great, that I venture to say, that no one will dare to go farther than I have gone."

Now it is precisely since then that voyages have become, at once, more distant, more regular, and less dangerous.

A great age, a Titanic age, the 19th century, has coolly, intelligently, and sternly noted all those phenomena which the old navigators braved, but did not examine. In this century it is that we, for the first time, have dared to look the Tempest squarely, and fearlessly, and scrutinizingly, in the eyes. Its premonitory symptoms, its characteristics, its results;--each and all have been calmly watched, and carefully and systematically registered; and, then, from that registration, necessarily come explanation and generalization, and thence, the grand, bold--and, as our not very distant ancestors would have said, impious system--the _Law of Storms_.

So! What we took, what we in the old, bold, but blind day, took for matter of caprice, is really, after all, reducible to a system, obedient to a Law! So! then, those terrible facts, that made the brain swim, the boldest quail, because they _fought shadows_ and _walked in the darkness_, so! then, those terrible facts have a certain regularity of recurrence, and the seaman, resolute and strong, calmly considers whether he cannot oppose to those regular attacks a defence no less regular. In brief, if the Tempest has its _science_, can we not create and use an _art_? An art not merely to survive the Tempest but even to make it useful?

But our science and our art cannot be called into life and activity until we shall have laid aside our old and ill founded notion that Tempests are caused by "the caprice of the winds." Attentive observation has taught us that the winds are _not_ capricious, that they are the accident, sometimes, also, the agent of the Tempest, but that, generally speaking, the Tempest is an _electrical phenomenon_, and often occurs in the absence of gales.

Romme (brother of the Conventionalist, principal author of the Calendar) laid the foundations of our very important science. English seamen had remarked that in the tempests in the Indian Seas, they sailed for days together, and yet made no headway. Romme collected and systematized all their observations, and pointed out the important fact that the same occurred in the tempests of China, Africa, and the Antilles. He also first pointed out that rectilinear winds are of rare occurrence, and that, usually, tempests have a circular character,--are, literally, a _whirl_ wind. The great _whirling_ tempests of the United States in 1815, and that of 1821 (the year of the great eruption of Hecla) when the winds blew from all points to a common centre, aroused philosophical attention, both in America and Europe. Brande, in Germany, and at the same time, Redfield in New York, were the next after Romme in profiting by these facts to lay down the law that, generally, the tempest is a _Whirl_-wind, advancing, and at the same time _revolving on its own base_. In 1838, the English engineer, Reid, being sent to Barbadoes after the too celebrated tempest which killed fifteen hundred people, ascertained, with mathematical precision, this double movement of advance and rotation. But his still more important discovery was that _in our northern hemisphere the tempest turns from right to left_, that is to say from East to North, and round the compass, back to East; while in _southern tempests it turns from left to right_. A most important fact to regulate the seaman's course.

Reid very rightfully gave his book the bold title of--"On the Law of Storms."

But it was the law of their _Motion_, not the explanation of their _cause_; it told nothing, either, of what Storms do, or of what they are.

Here France came to the rescue. In 1840, Peltier published his _Causes of Whirlwinds_, and his ingenious and numerous experiments established the fact that whirlwinds, whether at sea or on shore, were _electrical phenomena_, in which the winds play only a secondary part. Beccaria, a full century earlier, had suspected that fact, but it was reserved for Peltier to establish the fact, by making miniature storms.

Electrical whirlwinds readily take their rise in the neighborhood of volcanoes,--those ventilating pipes of the subterranean world, and therefore they are more common in the subterranean world, than in ours.

The Atlantic, open at both ends, and swept in all directions by the winds, should necessarily, have more rectilinear, and fewer circular tempests; but Piddington quotes a great number of the latter.

From 1840 to 1850, the immense compilations of Piddington and Maury were made, at Calcutta and New York. Maury is rendered illustrious for his charts, his _Directions_, and his _Geography of the Sea_. Piddington, less artistical, but not less learned, in his _Seaman's Guide_, that Encyclopedia of storms, gives the results of an infinite experience, the minutest and most precise means of calculating the distance of the whirlwind, its rate of speed, and the nature of its various waves. He confirmed the ideas of Peltier, as to the electric theory, and showed that those who had dwelt on the caprice of the whirlwind, had, in truth, completely mistaken the effect for the cause.

The old art of auguries, and science of presages, never contemptible, was most happily revived by that excellent book.

The setting of the Sun, is by no means an indifferent augury. If he set red, and if the sea retain the reflection of his blood-red rays, rely upon it, a storm is brewing, in that other Ocean--the air; if around him you see a lurid red within a white circle, and the stars are flickering, and seeming to fall, be sure that the upper regions of the atmosphere are threatening.

Still worse, it is, if, upon a dirty sky, you see small clouds marshalling, like so many purple arrows, flying from all quarters to one common point, and if, at the same time, the larger masses assume the shape of strange buildings, ruined bridges, broken rainbows, and a hundred other eccentricities; then rely upon it, the storm has already commenced in the upper region. At present, all is calm, here below, but, on the horizon, you may discern the faintly flashing, and silent lightnings. Listen attentively, and, from time to time, you shall hear the low mutterings of the distant thunder; and the waves, as they break upon the beach, seem to sob. Look out! The sea tells you, plaintively, of the coming storm. "What are those wild waves saying?" They are warning you, I repeat, of the coming storm. The wild, free birds have already taken warning, and hasten to their secure shelter in the clefts of the rocks. If they are far from land when they see, and feel, and hear, the first threatenings of the rising storm, they settle down upon your masts, and yards, and shrouds. And first among them comes that bird of evil omen, the "Mother Carey's Chicken," the Stormy Petrel. Look out, my brothers; I assure you the tempest approaches.

Does it thunder? Be very glad of that, brother seaman; the electric discharge is taking place far above us, and we shall have the less of the tempest. It is an old popular observation, but confirmed by the science of Peltier and by the experience of Piddington and others.

If the electricity, accumulated on high, discharges itself here below, it will create circular currents, and we shall have whirlwind, fierce tempest, and, probably water spout.

This last sort of storm not uncommonly attacks you when you are seemingly quite safe in harbor. In 1698, Captain Langford, in port and well anchored, saw that he was about to be thus assailed, slipped his cable, and found safety on the open sea. Other craft, whose commanders had less freight or less daring, remained at anchor and were destroyed.

At Madras and at Barbadoes, warning signals are given to the ships at anchor. In Canada, the electric Telegraph, swifter than Nature's own electricity, sends warning of the coming storm from port to port.

To the sailor when on the broad Ocean, the great friend and adviser is the Barometer; its perfect sensitiveness gives you the most exact information of the weight with which the storm-laden atmosphere oppresses it. Usually, it tells you of nothing but fine weather; it almost seems to sleep. But at the first and most distant note of the rising storm, it suddenly awakens, is agitated, and its mercury descends, ascends, redescends. The barometer has its own tempest. Peron when at the Mauritius observed that flashes of pale light escaped from the mercury, and filled the whole tube. During gales, the sensitive instrument seems actually to breathe. "In its fluctuations," say Daniel and Barlow, "the water barometer breathed, blew, like some wild animal."

But the Tempest advances and occasionally illuminates the horizon all around with its electric lightnings. In 1772, during the great storm in the West Indies, when the sea rose seventy feet above ordinary high water mark, the dense darkness of the night was dissipated by balls of lurid fires that lighted up every shore.

The approach of the storm may be more or less rapid. In the Indian Ocean, thickly studded with islands and obstacles, the whirlwind and the water-spout approach you only at the rate of some two miles an hour; while when they come along the course of the warm current, that comes to us from the Antilles, they travel at the rate of from forty to fifty. Their speed would, in fact, be incalculably great but for their oscillation, beaten as they are by the winds, both internally and externally.

Slow or rapid, the fury of the tempest is the same. In 1789, in a single instant and with a single rush, the tempest dashed to pieces every vessel in the port of Ceringa; at a second rush the town was flooded; at the third it was in ruins, and twenty thousand of its inhabitants were dead. In 1822, off Bengal, a water spout was for twenty-four hours sucking up air and water, and, when it burst, fifty thousand people perished.

In different localities, different aspects of the Tempest. In Africa you have the _upas_, the fierce compound of _simoom_ and _tornado_. The atmosphere seems calm and clear, and yet you feel a strange oppression of the lungs and a general anxiety as terrible as it is strange. Then a black cloud, "no bigger than a man's hand," appears on the horizon, approaches with lightning speed, lengthening, widening, and deepening as it approaches (_vires acquirit eundo_) the storm descends, and in a quarter of an hour all around is devastated, utterly ruined, and ships have utterly disappeared. Nature takes no heed of such small matters. About Sumatra and Bengal, you see in the evening or night (never in the morning) a dark arched cloud in the sky. It rapidly increases, and presently, from that dark cloud, come down flashes and sheets of pale and ghastly lights. Woe to the mariner who shall encounter the first wind that rushes from that sinister cloud; he will pretty certainly go down.

But the ordinary form is that of a huge funnel. A sailor, who was caught in one of these terrible storms, says: "I found myself, as it were, at the bottom of an enormous crater of a volcano; all around was darkness, above a glimmering of lurid lights." That light is what is technically termed "_the eye of the Tempest_."

When the Water spout, the horrible Typhoon, empties itself, human science and human daring are of no avail. Roaring, howling, shrieking, hissing, the storm fiends are at work above, below, around the luckless vessel. Suddenly there is a dead, a quite horrible silence, and there comes forth, seemingly, from the very centre of the water spout, a blinding flash, and a deafening report, and when you, at length, recover power to look aloft, you find that mast and spars have been shivered.

Seymour tells us that, sometimes, after being caught in one of those horrible Typhoons the sailors, for a long time, have blackened nails and weakened sight. Sometimes, too, this terrible Typhoon sucks up not only air and water, but also the luckless ship, holds it suspended in the air, and then dashes it rudely down into the watery abyss. From this terrible action and pitiless power of the Typhoon, the Chinese derived their notion of the terrible mother _Typhon_, who, hovering in the sky, picks out her victims and is ever conceiving and bearing the _Ken Woo_, whirlwinds of fire and iron. To that terrible _Typhon_ they have erected temples and altars, adoring her and praying to her in the vain hope of humanising her.

The brave Piddington had no adoration to spare for her; on the contrary, he gives her a marvellously ill name. He calls her an only too strong corsair, a pirate so strong and so tricky that there is no dishonor in getting out of her way.

That perfidious enemy sometimes sets a snare for you; tempts you with _a good wind_. Avoid that same _good wind_, turn your back to it if you possibly can. Give that dangerous companion the widest possible berth. Steer very clear of the storm cloud or it will suddenly sink you; ship, crew and cargo.

Such is the advice of the brave and skillful Piddington, and, assuredly, one would gladly take such advice. But how? It would be utterly useless if the storm cloud and the ship were brought together within narrow and land locked waters. But, in general, this enormous compound of whirlwind and water spout embraces a circle of ten, twenty, or even thirty leagues, and this gives every ship, on which a constant and intelligent look out is kept, a fair chance of keeping at a respectful distance from so redoubtable a foe. The great point to be ascertained is, _where is the centre_, the nucleus, the terrible home, of this terrible _Typhon_. And then to ascertain its rate of progression and its line of approach.

The sailor of the present day has two excellent lights to steer by; his Maury and his Piddington. On the one hand, Maury teaches him the general laws of the air and sea, and the art of selecting and using the currents, directing him, as it were, along the streets and highways of the Ocean. On the other hand, Piddington in his small, but instructive volume, sums up for him, and places in his hands, the _Experience of Tempests_; not only how to avoid them, when possible, but sometimes when to make them useful.

And this it is that at once explains and justifies the fine sentence of the Dutch Captain Jansen. "At sea," says he, "the first impression is that of the power of nature, the profundity of the depths--and our own nothingness. On board of the largest ship, we still feel that we are constantly in danger. But when the mind's eye has penetrated the depths and surveyed the expanse, man no longer fears the danger. He rises to the true sense of the situation. Guided by Astronomy, shown by Maury along the highways and byways of the Ocean, he steers his course safely and _confidently_."

This is truly sublime. The Tempest is not abolished, it is true; but ignorance, bewilderment, that terrible bewilderment which is born of danger and darkness, are abolished. At least if the seaman of the present day perish, he will know the why and wherefore. Great, oh, very great is the safeguard of having the calm, clear presence of mind, with our soul and intellect unruffled and resigned to whatever may be the effect of the great divine laws of the world which, at the expense of a few shipwrecks, produce Equilibrium and Safety.