THE TELEGRAPH AND THE STORM. THE UNITED STATES SIGNAL SERVICE. BY PROFESSOR T. B. MAURY. THE PROFESSOR HOUGH'S NEW PRINTING BAROMETER. HE attempt to presage great weather phe- | the London poor, it has been overshadowed in nomena is nothing new. From time immemorial civilized society has sought after a plan for averting the violence of the storm and tempest as anxiously as it has sought to resist the deadly approach of the pestilence and the plague. The Great Plague of London, historians tell us, carried off in a year about 90,000 persons. This was, however, in the rude and undeveloped condition of medical science, when the metropolis of England had but few hospitals, and every victim was left in his own house to spread and speed the march of the contagious foe. Appalling as such mortality seems for the year 1665, amidst the wretched and squalid dens of modern times by a greater calamity. On the 5th of October, 1864, the storm which swept over Calcutta destroyed, in a single day, over 45,000 lives! Yet this is but one of a large number of similar occurrences rivaling in magnitude the great Indian disaster. To give forewarning of approaching tempests on the coasts of the Adriatic, the Italian and old Roman castles, as described by an antique writer, had on their bastions pointed rods, to which, as they passed, the guards on duty presented the iron points of their halberds, and whenever they perceived an electric spark to follow, they rang an alarm-bell, to warn the farmer and the fisherman of an approaching THE SIGNAL OFFICE AT WASHINGTON. storm. It is interesting to note that this ancient Italian custom was widely spread over the earth in former ages. And it is not difficult to connect it with those olden towers (not only in Ireland, Scotland, and Spain, but in Africa and the East, Upper India and China) in which the use of a similar conductor may have been one among the many objects of those relics of the past. But, as the title of our article shows, a new element of science has been introduced-the electric telegraph-an invention whose mission of usefulness is destined to unlimited enlarge ment. In November, 1854, while the Anglo-French fleet was operating in the Black Sea against the stubborn walls of Sebastopol, the tidings flashed across the wires that a mighty tempest had arisen on the western coast of France, and, by the warnings of the barometer, was on its way eastward. The telegram was sent by the French Minister of War, Marshal Vaillant, from Paris, and reached the allied fleet in good time to enable them to put to sea before the cyclone could travel the five hundred leagues of its course, and disperse or destroy the most splendid navies that ever rode those waters. The storm came with a fatal punctuality to the predicted hour. The Crimea, shaken, ravaged, scourged by its fury, presented every where a scene of havoc and ruin in the allied camp more fearful than any the fire of all the Russian forts combined could have inflicted. It is perhaps not too much to say that, but for that telegram and its timely storm warning, the congregated navies, far from home and shattered to pieces, could not have sustained the besieging armies, and the event of the great Eastern war might have been different from what it finally was. So happily, in this instance, did theory (too often despised) blend with fact, that the French War Minister said, "It appears that, by the aid of the electric telegraph and barometric observations, we may be apprised several hours or several days of great atmospheric disturbances, happening at the distance of 1000 or 1500 leagues." [EDITOR'S NOTE.-So far as we have been able to learn, the first idea of making use of the telegraph for conveying information in regard to the weather, with a view of anticipating changes at any point, occurred to Professor Henry, the eminent secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, in the year 1847, as in the report of the Institution for that year, page 190 (presented to Congress on the 6th of January, 1848), we find the following paragraph: "The present time appears to be peculiarly auspicious for commencing an enterprise of the proposed kind. The citizens of the United States are now scat tered over every part of the southern and western portion of North America, and the extended lines of telegraph will furnish a ready means of warning the more northern and eastern observers to be on the look-out for the first appearance of an advancing storm." Additional references to this subject were made in the reports of 1848 and 1849, in the latter of which we are informed that "successful applications have been made to the presidents of a number of telegraph lines to allow, at a certain period of the day, the use of their wires for the transmission of meteorological intelligence." Although subsequent reports referred to the intention of the Institution to organize a telegraphic department for its meteorological observations, it was not until 1856, as far as we can ascertain, that observations were actually collected and posted. In the report for 1857 we find that "the Institution is indebted to the national telegraph lines for a series of observations from New Orleans to New York, and as far westward as Cincinnati, which were published in the Evening Star." In the report of 1858 it is announced that "an object of much interest at the Smithsonian building is the daily exhibition, on a large map, of the condition of the weather over a considerable portion of the United States. The reports are received about ten o'clock in the morning, and the changes on the maps are made by temporarily attaching to the several stations pieces of card of different colors, to denote different conditions of the weather as to clearness, cloudiness, rain, or snow. This map is not only of interest to visitors in exhibiting the kind of weather which their friends at a distance are experiencing, but is also of importance in determining at a glance the probable changes which may soon be expected." The report for 1859 contains a list of thirty-nine stations from which daily weather dispatches are received, and the report for 1860 refers to forty-five stations. In the report for 1861 Professor Henry announces that the system has been temporarily discontinued in consequence of the monopoly of the wires by the military department, and in 1862 it seems to have been again resumed. It is very evident that to our own country belongs the credit of first initiating and carrying into successful operation the systematic use of the telegraph for the above-mentioned object. Less than three years after the occurrence of the famous "Black Sea storm," just mentioned, there appeared for the first time, and in an American paper, a formal proposition for the establishment of a general system of daily weather reports by telegraph, and the utilization of that great invention for the collection of meteorologic changes at a central office, and the transmission thence of storm warnings to the sea-ports of the American lakes and our Atlantic sea-board. "Since great storms," says Mr. Thomas B. Butler, in his work on the "Atmospheric System and Elements of Prognostication," "have been found to observe pretty well defined laws, both as respects the motions of the wind and the direction of their progress, we may often recognize such a storm in its progress, and anticipate changes which may succeed during the next few hours. When it is possible to obtain telegraphic reports of the weather from several places in the valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries, we may often predict the approach of a great storm twenty-four hours before its violence is felt at New York." On the coasts of the kingdom of Italy mariners are forewarned that a storm threatens them by a red flag hoisted on all the towers and light-houses of the principal localities, ranging from Genoa to Palermo, and thence up along the Adriatic. On the most dangerous points of the coast of England, where the fishingboats and small craft that perform the service of the coast are exposed to formidable gales even during the most promising season, barometers put up by the Meteorological Bureau are at hand to warn the seamen of bad weather. A striking illustration of the importance of storm weather signals was recently furnished (March 8), when a tornado swept over St. our ports, and the industrial pursuits of the country generally-of that system of meteorological co-operation and research which had been so signally beneficial to commerce and navigation at sea. The Brussels Conference indorsed this recommendation. Much stress, in these appeals to Congress and the people, has been laid upon the value of the magnetic telegraph as a meteorological implement; for it was held that by a properly managed system of daily weather reports by telegraph warnings of many, if not most, of the destructive storms which visit our shores or sweep over the land might be given sufficiently in advance to prevent shipwreck, with many other losses, disasters, and inconveniences to both man and beast."—(Page 6.) The same journal states that the Meteorological Department of the London Board of Trade, under Admiral Fitzroy, was established to co-operate with the suggestion of Lieutenant Maury, which statement is confirmed by the report of the English Board for 1866 (page 17), and also by Admiral Fitzroy himself, in his Weather-Book, where he tells (page 49), "from personal knowledge, how coldly Maury's views and suggestions were received in this country [England] prior to 1853." The great meteorologist, Alexander Buchan, secretary of the Scottish Meteorological So In the year 1857 Lieutenant M. F. Maury, then Superintendent of the National Observatory at Washington, appealed to the public and Congress, through the press, urging the establishment of a storm and weather bureau, and at the same time made an extensive tour through the Northwest, addressing the people with a view of rousing public attention to the vast impor-ciety, in his recent work, strikingly states the indebttance of this meteorological system. In the Journal of the American Geographical and Statistical Society for 1860 we read that "As long ago as 1851 we find the Superintendent of the National Observatory at Washington urging the extension to the land-for the benefit of farmers, the shipping in VOL. XLIII.-No. 255.-26 edness of Europe to the United States for this system: "The establishment of meteorological societies during the last twenty years must be commemorated as contributing in a high degree to the advancement of the science. In this respect the United States stand preeminent."] Louis, destroying several lives and $1,000,000 worth of property. "The once noble ship, the pride not only of our own navy, but of the whole craft of shipbuilders over all the world, was now only an unmanageable wreck. There was little left for the wind to do but entangle the more the masses of broken spars, torn sails, and parted ropes, which were held together by the wire rigging. An hour or two later the tempest began sensibly to abate, and confidence increased in the ability of the ship to hold together. When daylight dawned the danger was over, and we first became aware of the astonishing amount of damage the ship had incurred in bearing us through the perils of that dreadful night. It was evident that she had sacrificed herself to save us." In former publications the writer has demonstrated at length the fire-sprinkled paths and tracks of these storms, some of which are generated in the torrid zone, and sweep over the Gulf of Mexico, and thence up the valley of the Mississippi; or, shooting off from the bosom of the Gulf Stream, strike upon the Atlantic coast, and thence commence their march upon the sea-board and central States of the Union. In these published papers the view taken of these tropic-born cyclones is, with some modifications, that announced in 1831, and then substantially demonstrated by Mr. William C. Redfield, of New York, viz., that they rotate around a calm centre of low barometer, in a direc- The writer was aware, when this view was tion contrary to the hands of a watch in the north-first publicly sustained by himself, that it was ern hemisphere, and with the hands of a watch in not accepted by all meteorologists. the southern hemisphere. The observations, of the most reliable and extended character, made within the last few years, go far to show that the storms which descend on low latitudes of the earth from high polar regions are, as the storms of the tropical regions, likewise of a rotary or cyclonical char One of the most beautiful illustrations of the law which governs these atmospheric disturbances may be found in the gale which is so celebrated as that in which, on the 25th of Oc ter went down, and several hundred lives were lost, in sight of the island of Anglesea, on the coast of Wales. "The Royal Charter gale, so remarkable in its features, and so complete in its illustrations," as Admiral Fitzroy has well remarked, "we may say (from the fact of its having been noted at so many parts of the English coast, and because the storm passed over the middle of the country), is one of the very best to examine which has occurred for some length of time." It would, perhaps, be impossible to give a more vivid and exact account of a cyclone (or typhoon) than the following account of the typhoon of the United States war vessel Idaho.* After depicting the forlorn condition of the vessel after she had passed through the semi-acter. circle of the storm, the eye-witness writes: "At half past seven in the evening the barometer had fallen from 30.05 to 27.62. Suddenly the mercury rose to 27.90, and with one wild, unearthly, soul-thrilling shriek the wind as sud-tober, 1859, the noble steamship Royal Chardenly dropped to a calm, and those who had been in these seas before knew that we were in the terrible vortex of the typhoon, the dreaded centre of the whirlwind. The ship had been fast filling with water, and fruitless efforts had been made to work the pumps; but when the wind died away the men jumped joyfully to the brakes, exclaiming, "The gale is broken! we are all safe!' For the officers there was no such feeling of exultation. They knew that, if they did not perish in the vortex, they had still to encounter the opposite semicircle of the At the fatal time the barometer, for over at typhoon, and that with a disabled ship. It least a thousand square miles of sea and land, was as though a regiment of freshly wounded was generally low, and had become so, gradusoldiers had been ordered to meet a new ene- ally, during many previous days-some tell us my in battle, and that without delay, for the as much as a whole week. On the west coast cessation of the wind was not to be a period of of Ireland all was quiet in the atmosphere; the rest. Till then the sea had been beaten down sky in the north of Scotland was serene. by the wind, and only boarded the vessel when the 21st of September a vessel passed the Scilly she became completely unmanageable; but now Islands and encountered no gale, and on the the waters, relieved from all restraint, rose in 23d securely left the Channel soundings. On their own might. Ghastly gleams of lightning the 24th a vessel bound for Africa sailed from revealed them piled up on every side in rough Liverpool, and met no storm. The Channel pyramidal masses, mountain high, the revolv- squadron noticed the low barometer of 28.50 ing circle of wind which every where inclosed inches. In London rain was incessant and them causing them to boil and tumble as though heavy, and the wind was from the south, while they were being stirred in some mighty caldron. at Liverpool the winds were cold and northerly. "At twenty minutes before eight o'clock the On the dark and rainy afternoon and evening vessel entered the vortex; at twenty minutes of the same day the Royal Charter was making past nine o'clock it had passed, and the hurri-way around Anglesea, close in shore, to her cane returned, blowing with renewed violence sadly chosen anchorage on the north side of from the north, veering to the west. On that island, just in the place where she would feel the full force of the next day's tempest. *Atlantic Monthly, March, 1870: "A Night in a The tempest broke upon her the next morning Typhoon." near seven o'clock, and in one short hour" that |