Page:Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology.djvu/89

Rh borders. Of all storms, the hurricanes of the West Indies and the typhoons of the China seas cause the most ships to founder. The stoutest men-of-war go down before them, and seldom, indeed, is any one of the crew left to tell the tale. Of this the Hornet, the Albany, and the Grampus, armed cruisers in the American navy, all are memorable and melancholy examples. Our nautical works tell us of a West India hurricane so violent that it forced the Gulf Stream back to its sources, and piled up the water in the Gulf to the height of thirty feet. The Ledbury Snow attempted to ride it out. When it abated, she found herself high up on the dry land, and discovered that she had let go her anchor among the tree-tops on Elliott's Key. The Florida-Keys were inundated many feet, and, it is said, the scene presented in the Gulf Stream was never surpassed in awful sublimity on the ocean. The water thus dammed up rushed out with frightful velocity against the fury of the gale, producing a sea that beggared description. The "great hurricane" of 1780 commenced in Barbados. In it the bark was blown from the trees, and the fruits of the earth destroyed; the very bottom and depths of the sea were uprooted, and the waves rose to such a height that forts and castles were washed away, and their great guns carried about in the air like chaff; houses were razed; ships wrecked; and the bodies of men and beasts lifted up in the air and dashed to pieces in the storm. At the different islands, not less than twenty thousand persons lost their lives on shore, while farther to the north, the "Stirling Castle" and the "Dover Castle," British men-of-war, went down at sea, and fifty sail were driven on shore at the Bermudas.

167. Inquiries instituted by the Admiralty.—Several years ago the British Admiralty set on foot inquiries as to the cause of the storms in certain parts of the Atlantic, which so often rage with disastrous effects to navigation. The result may be summed up in the conclusion to which the investigation led: that they are occasioned by the irregularity between the temperature of the Gulf Stream and of the neighbouring regions, both in the air and water.

168. The most stormy sea.—The southern points of South America and Africa have won for themselves, among seamen, the name of "the stormy capes;" but investigations carried on in that mine of sea-lore contained in the log-books at the National Observatory at Washington, have shown that there is not a