Sullivan republican. [volume] (Laporte, Pa.) 1883-1896, 1893-04-28
i WATERSPOuT AT SEA
THE GREATEST OF MARINE PIE.
NoMENA SEEN AT IT'S BEST.
How the Captains of Vessels Prepare
for Waterspout and How They
Encounter It.

" best VIC could the suffocat-
ing heat that prevailed
through the day, and long into the night.
One afternoon was standing by the biz
nacle watching the compass when OBJ
served that the vessels course changed
about four points in as many minutes.
My curiosity was aroused to know the
cause of the change, and as the Captain
was then descending from the bridge,
asked the reason for the sudden diyc-.
gence.
.'Don't say anything about it to thu
rest of the passengers, he answered..
"but just come to the bridge with me-"
accompanied him, and when we
reached that point of observation he di-
rected my attention to a series of dark
clouds in the direction whence we had
turned. The nearest of them was not
more than four or five miles away; it was
tall pillar of cloud extending from the
sea to the sky, and as l looked at it
with glass it was easy to observe that
the sea at the base of the pillar was
violently agitated. All around was a
calm; there was hardly breath of air
stirring, so that the appearance of the
sea at the base of the pillar of cloud was
rendered more noticeable than if u storm
had been raging or even strong wind
blowing.
"a waterspout" l exclaimed, as my
eye took in the scene; "there's no mis-
taking that"
"No," answered the Captain, "and
there's more of them to keep that big
fellow company. We want to steer
clear of 'em, and that's why I've changed
our course"
Then / asked the Captain as to his
theory of waterspouts and their origin.
srve had good many theories" he
replied, 'but some Of 'em have been
knocked in the head and I'm not alto
gether sure about the rest. One thing
I'm pretty certain Of, though, and that
is that the waterspout at sea is Just the
same as the whirlwind on land; there
is whirling wind or perhaps there are
two winds blowing in opposite or nearly
opposite directions coming together, and
these make up the whirls and eddies
that raise clouds of dust on land and
sometimes do vast deal of damage.
A waterspout is caused py a whirlwind
and that's why the sea at the base of that
pillar of cloud is agitated, as you see 1t.
"There is a popular belief" he con.
tinued, 'tthat the sea is sucked up by
the cloud and great masses of it go hun
dreds of feet into the air. used to be-
lieve so and my belief was confirmed by
the stories of sailors who declared that
large fishes had dropped from the clouds
where they had been carried by the
waterspouts. They had seen them with
their own eyes, and one sailor that
knew told me of being on whale ship
which was close to waterspout when
a whale dropped from the clouds into
the ocean. The creature was so stunned
and astonished that he lay motionless
on the water after he struck; they got out
the boats and secured him, and he
yielded eighty nine barrels of OIL"
"What led you to doubt the truth of
the story that the sea is sucked up by
the waterspouta" | asked.
''My own observations" he answered,
"added to what l learned from scientific
works on the subject. The water that
falls from the sky, or from the cloud at
the top of the waterspout, is always
fresh, which would not be the case if
the sea was drawn upon in the way the
sailors describe.
"The whale that was taken up, accord
ing to the story of my old friend, could
not live in fresh water; neither could the
other fishes that they tell about. A lit
tie of the spray from the broken waves
may be taken up, and that is all. l
haven't much fear of a waterspout as
long as Pm in a steamer, but in a sailing
ship the case is different. I've been be.
calmed with waterspouts all around us,
and sometimes you'll see them coming
directly towards tou, and there's no
chance of getting out of the way such as
you have in a steamer. The old idea OF
getting rid of dangerous waterspout
was to fire cannon at it aud break it,
but this isn't much thought of at pres-
ent, though / suppose that it is done now
and then. 1t takes skillful gunner to
send shot through the centre of a
waterspo1t, and it's just possible that
tuc tuiuS UIcdhS u VI It's own noClOu
without any regard to the shooting at it.
The idea is that if anything touches the
spout it breaks up and deluge of water
comes down; for that reason a ship that
is touched by one is in danger of being
swamped by the downpour of water,
which is the same as cloudburst on
land.
"Several times in my life I have been
dangerously near to fellows like those
we're looking at, aud once was
swamped by one of them. Perhaps you
don't know" he added, "that cyclones,
typhoons and hurricanes are practically
the same sort of thing and that they
blow in circles. When Captain finds
himself in one of them and has plenty of
sea room he tries to get as far as possible
from the centre, where the wind is great
est, and to do this he turns aud runs at
right angles to the wind. In the south
ern hemisphere the course of rotation is
like that of the hands of watch, from
left to right, but in the northern hemi-
sphere it is in the other direction. st.
Louis Star-Sayings.
A Sea Captains Recipe For Plum Duff.