FR. ERNESTO GHERZI, S.J.
87
discussed his impressive character. For example, Sir Francis Chichester in his book The Lonely Sea and the Sky (1964) tells of his early flight from New Zealand to Japan in August 1931 and of his visit to Zikawei to ask Fr Gherzi when it would be safe to proceed to Kagoshima. "... I waited in a cool, silent, stone hall, while a priest went to find Father Gherzi. He was a thin tall man with slender high-browed head, and a narrow black beard. He wore a long black robe under which appeared two enormous black boots. He was impatient, impetuous and clever. In a rapid, emphatic way, he said that there was a typhoon centred east of Formosa, that it was travelling fast straight for Shanghai, that it was impossible for me to leave for Japan because of a 35 mph head wind, and that I must secure my seaplane at once. After my experience the day before with the emphatic reporter in the sampan, I started cross-examining Father Gherzi about this weather. He showed clearly that he resented this, and that he thought me a fool.... In the afternoon Father Gherzi said that I must not leave before he had the Japanese reports at 8.30 in the morning. That meant a 9.30 start, which was later than I liked, but what could I say to a man who was taking so much trouble for my safety? There was something fine about that dark impatient man, and he was good; each time I parted from him, I had an impulse to live a better life.'
His 'enormous black boots' were sometimes the butt for humour by his more youthful and disrespectful colleagues, one of whom spoke of the 'longest feet in Asia protruding from beneath a long black cassock'.
A WRITER OF MANY PUBLICATIONS
Apart from his annual reports and papers, Fr Gherzi wrote the following books on the distribution of the meteorological elements in the Far East: Rainfall (1928), Winds and upper air currents (1931), Temperature (1934), Humidity (1934) and an Appendix on Rainfall (1937), all published by Zikawei Observatory. He was particularly interested in microseisms and was the first (1923) correctly to attribute the source of a certain type of microseism to the central region of typhoons but he thought, incorrectly, that they were caused by barometric pulsations of the central atmospheric column. He presented his case in a number of journals (e.g. 1932) and for the rest of his life, he continued to argue for this cause of typhoon microseisms. Indeed, the journal which carried notice of
FR. ERNESTO GHERZI, S.J.
87
discussed his impressive character. For example, Sir Francis Chichester in his book The Lonely Sea and the Sky (1964) tells of his early flight from New Zealand to Japan in August 1931 and of his visit to Zikawei to ask Fr Gherzi when it would be safe to pro- ceed to Kagoshima. *... I waited in a cool, silent, stone hall, while a priest went to find Father Gherzi. He was a thin tall man with slender high-browed head, and a narrow black beard. He wore a long black robe under which appeared two enormous black boots. He was impatient, impetuous and clever. In a rapid, emphatic way, he said that there was a typhoon centred east of Formosa, that it was travelling fast straight for Shanghai, that it was impossible for me to leave for Japan because of a 35 mph head wind, and that I must secure my seaplane at once. After my experience the day before with the emphatic reporter in the sampan, I started cross- examining Father Gherzi about this weather. He showed clearly that he resented this, and that he thought me a fool.... In the after- noon Father Gherzi said that I must not leave before he had the Japanese reports at 8.30 in the morning. That meant a 9.30 start, which was later than I liked, but what could I say to a man who was taking so much trouble for my safety? There was something fine about that dark impatient man, and he was good; each time I parted from him, I had an impulse to live a better life.'
His 'enormous black boots' were sometimes the butt for humour by his more youthful and disrespectful colleagues, one of whom spoke of the 'longest feet in Asia protruding from beneath a long black cassock'.
A WRITER OF MANY PUBLICATIONS
Apart from his annual reports and papers, Fr Gherzi wrote the following books on the distribution of the meteorological elements in the Far East: Rainfall (1928), Winds and upper air currents (1931), Temperature (1934), Humidity (1934) and an Appendix on Rainfall (1937), all published by Zikawei Observatory. He was particularly interested in microseisms and was the first (1923) cor- rectly to attribute the source of a certain type of microseism to the central region of typhoons but he thought, incorrectly, that they were caused by barometric pulsations of the central atmospheric column. He presented his case in a number of journals (e.g. 1932) and for the rest of his life, he continued to argue for this cause of typhoon microscisms. Indeed, the journal which carried notice of
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