The Jungle Fugitives: A Tale of Life and Adventure in India
Page 32
A WATERSPOUT.
Doubtless many of my readers have heard of the dreadful encounters ofvessels with waterspouts, when the ship escaped destruction by firing acannon-ball into the waterspout, thus causing it to break apart.
Now these things are by no means such terrible objects as many believe.No doubt the vessels of the present day are larger and stronger thanformerly, and perhaps waterspouts have become smaller. Be as it may,the people who go down to the sea in ships need give themselves nouneasiness about them, for really they amount to little.
The _Slavonia_, of the Hamburg line left Brunshausen, on the Elbe, onFebruary 26 last, under the command of Capt. H. Schmidt. She had onlytwo passengers. The weather was squally and the air full of mist whenshe reached the outer Banks, 900 miles from New York, shortly aftersunrise on Sunday, March 16. The big vessel was heading west by north,when, at 7 o'clock, Second Mate Erichsen, who was on the bridge, sawemerge through the mist on the starboard side of the ship, at thedistance of about a thousand feet, a towering column which united seaand sky. The column was in front of the ship to starboard, and wasmoving in a southeasterly direction, apparently at the rate of eightknots an hour.
Although the Slavonia was running 9 1/2 knots, the column seemed likelyto pass in front of the steamship when their paths crossed.Accordingly Erichsen did not try to alter the course of the Slavonia;indeed, he would not have altered it had he known ship and spout weresure to meet, for he had encountered waterspouts before and wasn'tafraid of them. All he did--in fact, all he had time to do--was tocall Third Mate Lorentzen, also an expert in waterspouts.
On rushed the _Slavonia_, heading west by north: nearer came thewaterspout, heading south by east. It soon became evident that thespout could not get by before the _Slavonia_ reached it, and it was nowtoo late to slow up--indeed, a collision was manifestly unavoidablefrom the start. Lorentzen had scarcely reached the bridge when thewatery Philistine was upon the Samson. It just hit the steamer's bowson the starboard side, as depicted in the second cut. A rushing noiseaccompanied the column, and the water foamed in its wake. Immediatelyabove was a great black cloud from which clouds less dark descended toform a funnel, or inverted cone. The middle of the column was white,apparently because it contained snow.
The column's narrowest diameter was about twelve feet, while it wasthree times as broad as its base, which reproduced in water andinverted the cloud-formed funnel above. The whole column rotated witha spiral motion.
The waterspout, when it approached, took all the wind out of thefore-staysail of the steamship, which went blind, but the schooner-sailstill kept full, and presently the fore-staysail filled again.
The Slavonia shook under the shock caused by contact with the column ofwater, but kept on her course none the worse for the collision. A fewflakes of snow on her bow were the only evidence of the collision afterthe pillar of water had passed off to port.
While the vessel was uninjured, the waterspout soon showed signs thatit had received its death-blow. As it sailed off to the southeast itparted in the middle, and the cone of water which formed its base andthe cone of cloud which formed its top began to grow smaller bydegrees. The waterspout was slowly but surely ceasing to be awaterspout when it disappeared from view in the misty distance somefifteen minutes or more from the time it was sighted.
The _Slavonia's_ encounter with the waterspout took place in latitude42 degrees 22 minutes north and longitude 52 degrees 35 minutes west.This is rather far north for waterspouts so early in the year. Thewaterspout crop is generally more plentiful when thunder and lightningare on top, which is in warmer weather. The temperature of the air atthe time of the encounter was 37 degrees; water 54 degrees. It hadbeen cold during the night, but grew warmer in the morning. The cloudswhich overspread the firmament were of the cumulus pattern.
Erichsen and Lorentzen have not only seen other waterspouts, but thefirst, when on a sailing vessel in the tropics, ran into the verymiddle of one with no worse result than to deluge the deck of the shipwith water as a heavy shower would have done. He thinks an unusuallylarge waterspout might possibly sink a very small vessel, say a pilotboat, but with a ship of ordinary size he considers bombarding awaterspout with cannon a waste of powder.