The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-10-03 00:00:00

A TERRIBLE STORM IN CHINA.

We learn from Hong Kong that a typhoon of extra
ordinary violence has caused great lose of life and pro-
perty in that city. It is estimated that 1,000 persons
have perished. The damage to the shipping andhousee
is very great. At Macao, also, a large amount of
property was destroyed.

Referring to this terrible loss of life and property, the
Daily News, of Tuesdsy, writes :

We shall look with some anxiety for the full details
of the typhoon at Hong-Kong. The experience we
have had of these tremendous cyclonic storms renders
it probable that in the account we publish to-day the
half has not been told. It seems to have burst over the
island at midnight on Tuesday last, and raged in the
early hours of Wednesday morning. Numbers of houses
were blown down, two steamers and eight other vessels
were sunk or wrecked, and many others are missing.
The lives lost are estimated at a thousand, and
the damage *1 to tropeity' was, of course, at
the time thh telegrams were despatched, beyond
the possibility of estimate. The destructiveness
of the storm, so far as human life is concerned, is
probably almost without a paralleL The total
area of the island, including the peninsula of
Kow-Loon on the mainland, is only 29 square miles,
and the population in 1871 consisted of 6,967 families
and 120,124 persons. The estimate that a thousand
lives are lost in such a population and on such an
area conveys a most vivid picture of the violence of the
storm. Probably the Chinese custom of living in boats
accounts in some degree for the great loss of life; and it
certainly gives terrible significance to the state-
ment that many boats are missing. The floating
population of Hong Kong is about a fifth of the
whole, and consists of 23,709 persons, living in
3,605 boats ; an average of more than six to each
vessel. There is but slight probability that these
people had made any preparation for the storm.
It seems to have burst upon them at midnight
when they were in their beds. The sLamers,
however, shoo!,:t have been to some extent Pre-
pared for it These cyclonic storms are invariably
preceede'A by a rapid and sudden fall in the barometert
and in a tropical climate, indeed even in our own seas,
such a fall invariably presages a hurricane. We are not
told whether the late tornado had been foreseen in
this way ; but it is quite certain that when the sun
went down last Tuesday night a glance at a barometer
must have shown at once that a great storm was near.
The laws of the movement of these great atmospheric
disturbances are now so far ascertained that the approxi-
mate distance of the coming storm may be calculated
by the rapidity of the mercurial fall ; and the quarter
from which it is approaching may be known by the
changes of the wind. In this way Captain Watson
saved the Clarence in 1864 by steering out of the track
of the great Calcutta cyclone of that year; and
instances have occurred since of observant captains
being able to keep their ships in that region of calm
which lies in the centre of all these revolving gales.
We know nothing as yet of the extent or direction
,d last week's typhoon. The telegram states that it
was fearfully destructive at Macao, which is forty
miles west of Hong Kong, on the opposite side of
the Canton river. This would seem to indicate
that the typhoon travelled along the coast, and
suggests the probability that it did not touch the
great Chinese port which lies up the river. The
ordinary course of these typhoons is, however, north-
ward, and it is impossible to say whether Hong Kong
and Macao may not have been in the two sides ot a
whirling. sweeping from the sea up the great
river to = lAnd. If so, Canton itself would lie in its
course, and the vast population which swarms upon
the river must have suffered severely. But whatever
the an-a or course of the storm may have been, it is
starcely poilible to hope that even the terrible
summary in the telegram to-day gives the whole story
of the destruction it has wrought.