Page:The National geographic magazine, volume 1.djvu/65

 at sea, aboard scores of vessels, from the little fishing-schooner and pilot-boat to the great transatlantic liner, a life-or-death struggle with the elements is being waged, with heroism none the less real because it is in self-defence, and none the less admirable because it cannot always avert disaster.

The accompanying Track Chart gives the tracks of as many vessels as can be shown without confusion, and illustrates very clearly where data for this discussion are most complete, as well as where additional information is specially needed. Thus it is here plainly evident that vessels are always most numerous to the eastward of New York (along the transatlantic route), and to the southward, off the coast. To the southeastward, however, about the Bermudas, there is a large area from which comparatively few reports have been received, although additional data will doubtless be obtained from outward-bound sailing vessels, upon their return. Of all the days in the week, Saturday, in particular, is the day on which the greatest number of vessels sail from New York. The 10th of March, for instance, as many as eight transatlantic liners got under way. Out in mid-ocean there were plowing their way toward our coast, to encounter the storm west of the 50th meridian, one steamship bound for Halifax, five for Boston, nineteen for New York, one for Philadelphia, one for Baltimore, and two for New Orleans. Northward bound, off the coast, were six more, not to mention here the many sailing vessels engaged in the coasting or foreign trade, whose sails whiten the waters of our coasts.

Of all the steamships that sailed from New York on the 10th, those bound south, with hardly a single exception, encountered the storm in all its fury, off the coast. Eastward-bound vessels escaped its greatest violence, although all met with strong head winds and heavy seas, and, had the storm not delayed between Block Island and Nantucket on the 12th and 13th, would have been overtaken by it off the Grand banks. Without quoting in detail the reports received, let us see what they indicate regarding the general character of the storm during the night, preparatory to our consideration of the weather chart for 7 March 12th. To do so, be it remembered, is a very different task from that which is involved in the study and comparison of observations taken with standard instruments at fixed stations ashore. Here our stations are constantly changing their positions; different observers read the instruments at different hours;