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once which of the following courses open to you you will choose : -Either heave to on the starboard tack (if there is no chance of the centre approaching too near) which will allow your ship to come up to the wind and not be taken aback; or (if in the front quadrant of the dangerous semi-circle) run across the path in front of the centre into the left-hand semi-circle. The incurvature of the wind is less in front of the centre than behind (except in some exceptional case when a typhoon is moving against the monsoon). That helps you to cross the path, and you can run with the wind on the starboard quarter, three points from the stern. If you are within a point, or even two, of the path of the centre, it is generally quite impossible to know in which semi-circle you are, as the wind does not change much, and such change as there is takes place very often in a misleading way.
In that case it is decidedly wrong to heave to. Run at once. It may, of course, also happen that you can run close- hauled on the starboard tack if that shortens your voyage and if you have reason to think that the centre will not come down on you.
The left-hand semi-circle is called the manageable or the navigable semi-circle.
Here you are carried more straight into the centre, but at the same time the wind carries you towards the path behind the centre, where the danger is less, and moreover the force of the wind is not so great in the manageable as in the dangerous semi-circle. On the other hand, the wind does not always change in the same direction as the squalls. In this semi-circle you can run close-hauled with the wind on the starboard tack, but must heave to on the port tack, so as not to be taken aback when the wind backs. Therefore you cannot run so long in this as in the other semi-circle, or you may not be able to wear your ship, and when you heave to on the wrong tack, you run great risk of being dismasted or having your vessel thrown on her beam ends, when you may have to cut away the masts to right her, although they may not go clean overboard. They will not do so unless all the shrouds and ropes were cut before the mast went, and your vessel may have her bottom stove in when she clears them after they have gone overboard and she is drifting to leeward. A dismasted ship is carried round the typhoon and into the centre in a spiral course. Many a sailer has been lost through being on the wrong tack in a typhoon and, as explained above, you have not always the means of knowing with certainty which tack to choose.
All this is on the supposition that you have ample sea-room, so much the more as your dead reckoning may be very much out when navigating in a typhoon. Sometimes a master does not know where he is within a hundred miles. It is no unusual thing for a vessel caught in a typhoon in the China Sea, where dangerous shoals abound, to be carried sixty miles out of her course before it is possible to take sights. Lee-way, strong currents, and uncompensated heeling errors account for that. Heave the lead as often as possible.
When running to the southward across the path of a typhoon moving westward, you will most likely be to the eastward of your dead reckoning from the effect of uncompensated heeling error, but this is not always so. If the permanent magnetism of your ship has been properly corrected by permanent magnets, including a vertical magnet to correct the permanent vertical magnetism, and if the induced horizontal magnetism has been corrected by Airy's soft iron balls, and if the induced vertical magnetism has been corrected by a Flinders' bar, then the heeling error ought to be nearly insensible. But, on the other hand, if the semi-circular deviation arising from induced magnetism has been corrected by permanent magnets, then the heeling error may be considerable, say, one point, which may carry you as much as 40 miles out of your dead reckoning in a day. When on the magnetic equator, where there is no vertical force, you should always adjust your permanent magnets. It is better to remove Flinders' bar while that is being done, as it may chance to interfere somewhat by acting as a short horizontal soft iron bar.
When hove to on the proper tack you should, if you are on board a steamer, keep the engines going ahead dead slow and use oil to calm the sea and prevent it from breaking on board. A small steamer, with insufficient engine power, may resort to a home-made deep-sea anchor. A steamer sometimes rides most easily when stem straight on towards the sea, a position by all means to be avoided by a sailer, who must be kept four points from the wind. Some mariners are in the habit of heaving to stern to wind and sea, or even lashing the helin amidship and allowing the ship to select its own position: that will not do in a typhoon, where a vessel so handled would quickly be carried in towards the centre.
A great deal now depends upon how you are laden. Much has been said against overloading, but quite as many vessels have been lost for lack of ballast or from shifting ballast, as from overloading. A heavy roller might possibly even be safer than a vessel that keeps very steady from having its centre of gravity high up near the metacentre and consequently little stability. With regard to trim, a vessel behaves usually best on even keel. If she is down by the head she steers badly, and if she is down by the stern, the wind and sea may throw her head off to leeward. A vessel with a hurrica deck has a great advantage over those with solid bulwarks. If in soundings, and she will not come up otherwise, you must clubhaul her, in order to get her head to wind, but it should be sufficient to pay out a hundred fathons of chain or upwards in order to prevent her from falling off into the trough of the sea. A sailing vessel may when drifting before the wind pay out a long hawser astern but it would be dangerous to try that on board most screw-propelled steamers, as the hawser might foul