Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/265

 attention had been forcibly called to the subject while at sea, by the ship he commanded being dismasted in a storm, and saved only by the fortunate veering of the wind; and the publication in 1838 of Colonel (afterwards Sir) William Reid's ‘Law of Storms’ gave him the clue for which he had been seeking [see ]. He immediately began collecting logs and information from different ship-captains, who, as yet unable to understand his aims, were not always complaisant or even civil. His labours, however, received a semi-official recognition from the government of India, which, on 11 Sept. 1839, issued a formal notice inviting observations on ‘any hurricane, gale, or other storm of more violence than usual.’ ‘A scientific gentleman in Calcutta,’ it continued, ‘has obligingly undertaken to combine all reports that may be so received into a synopsis for exhibition of the results;’ and such reports, marked ‘Storm Report,’ might be sent, post free, to the secretary of the government.

Piddington accumulated a vast amount of detailed information, the discussion of which was from time to time published in the ‘Journal of the Asiatic Society.’ In 1844 he collected the results in a small book, little more than a pamphlet, entitled ‘The Horn-book for the Law of Storms for the Indian and China Seas.’ Written by a seaman for seamen, it dealt with the subject in a thoroughly practical way, which won the confidence of the shipping world, and probably obtained for its author the appointment of president of the marine court of inquiry at Calcutta. In 1848 he published ‘The Sailor's Horn-Book for the Law of Storms,’ on essentially the same lines as the preceding pamphlet, but much enlarged, and with fuller details. As a practical manual it had a great and deserved success, ran through six editions, and continued to be, within its limitations, the recognised text-book on the subject for over thirty years. It was in the first edition of this book (1848) that Piddington proposed the word ‘cyclone’ as a name for whirling storms; not, he said, ‘as affirming the circle to be a true one, though the circuit may be complete, yet expressing sufficiently the tendency to circular motion in these meteors’ (p. 8). The name was accepted by meteorologists. Piddington received an appointment as coroner, which he held till his death, at Calcutta, on 7 April 1858, aged 61.

[Gent. Mag. 1858, ii. 89; Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1839 pp. 559, 563, 564, 1859 p. 64; Royal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers; British Museum Catalogue.] 

PIDGEON, HENRY CLARK (1807–1880), painter in water-colours and antiquary, was born in 1807. Intended originally for the church, he eventually adopted art as a profession, practising as an artist and teacher of drawing in London. In 1847 he removed to Liverpool, where he was for a time professor of the school of drawing at the Liverpool Institute, gave private lessons, and drew numerous local scenes and antiquities. He became a member of the Liverpool Academy in 1847, and was secretary of that body during 1850. He was a non-resident member from that date till the reconstruction of the academy in 1865. Some fifty works by him were hung at the academy's annual exhibitions. Pidgeon joined Joseph Mayer [q. v.] and Abraham Hume (1814–1884) [q. v.], in 1848, in founding the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. He and Hume were joint-secretaries till January 1851, when Pidgeon removed to London. To the society's publications he contributed many etchings and lithographs.

Pidgeon, on resettling in London, continued his practice as a painter and a teacher of art. He had been elected an associate of the Institute of Painters in Water-colours in 1846, and a full member in 1861. He was also president of the Sketching Club. From 1838 he exhibited in London four pictures at the Royal Academy, two at the British Institute, fifteen at the Suffolk Street Gallery, besides some twenty works at the Royal Manchester Institution, between 1841 and 1856.

He died at 39 Fitzroy Road, Regent's Park, on 6 Aug. 1880, in his seventy-fourth year. The only known portrait of Pidgeon appears in a group of the three founders of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.

Pidgeon's work is broad in treatment and good in colour, and has much of the depth and tone of Varley. He was an excellent draughtsman. Many of his drawings are in the writer's possession. He contributed papers and drawings to the journals of the Archæological Institute, the British Archæological Association, and the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society.

[Proceedings Hist. Soc. of Lanc. and Chesh. v. 1, 2, 3, 4; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1884, p. 185; Catalogues of Liverpool Academy and Royal Manchester Institution.] 

PIERCE or PEARCE, EDWARD (d. 1698), sculptor and mason, practised in London during the latter half of the seventeenth century, and was son of Edward Pierce, a decorative painter of some repute