[ { "id": 207020, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "FATHER ERNESTO GHERZI, S.J., 1886 - 1973 AN APPRECIATION\n\nG. J. BELL*\n\nIn the Bulletin de Geophysique No. 34 from the College Jean-de-Brebeuf, Montreal there was enclosed a notice of the death of Father Ernesto Gherzi, S.J. at Saint-Jerome, Quebec. He died on 6 December 1973 at the age of 87 years and 4 months. Fr Gherzi was a very well known and popular figure on the China coast between the years 1910 and 1954. He made notable contributions to the science and practice of seismology and meteorology while at Zikawei Observatory, Shanghai from where he operated an efficient typhoon warning service. He was a colourful character who made a great impression on all those who met him and he is remembered with affection by very many mariners and aviators—both military and civil—who served in the Far East in the thirty years prior to 1954.\n\nEARLY YEARS\n\nFr Gherzi was born in San Remo, Italy on 8 August 1886. In October 1903 he joined the Society of Jesus, an order whose members had made great contributions to geophysics and meteorology at their Observatories at Zikawei and Manila. He was posted to Zikawei for the period 1910-13 after which he went to England to work with Appleton on ionospheric studies for the Admiralty, London. He was ordained in England in June 1916 and returned to China in October 1920 to start his long scientific career in the famous meteorological, seismological and magnetic observatory at Zikawei.\n\nThe Zikawei Observatory was supported by grants from the Chinese Customs, the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce, the Shanghai municipality and the telegraph companies; in return it provided time signals, weather forecasts and magnetic data for shipping. Fr Gherzi produced annual summaries of typhoon tracks for 1926 and for the years 1928 to 1940; they were addressed to the\n\n* Mr. Bell has been Director of the Royal Observatory, Hong Kong, since 1965. This article first appeared in Weather, Volume 29, No. 5 (May 1974).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207022, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "FR. ERNESTO GHERZI, S.J.\n\n87\n\ndiscussed 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.'\n\nHis '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'.\n\nA WRITER OF MANY PUBLICATIONS\n\nApart 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", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207024, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "Fr. ERNESTO GHERZI, S.J.\n\n89\n\nfirst meeting of the International Meteorological Organization's Regional Association II which was held at Hong Kong in January 1937.*\n\nIn May 1949 he attended the Conference on Storm Warning Procedures at Manila, which established relevant definitions, standards and procedures for the World Meteorological Organization. However, the revolution in China and its associated nationalism had overtaken Zikawei (1947) and he was refused permission to return to China. The then Director of the Royal Observatory Hong Kong, Mr Heywood, found a place for Fr Gherzi on the staff and he worked there until asked by the Portuguese authorities to help reorganise and equip the Macau Observatory.\n\nWhile in Hong Kong, he finished his two-volume work on the 'Meteorology of China'. Certain sections of the draft manuscript, particularly those on tropical cyclones, were hotly disputed by some staff members and led to much animated discussion. The volumes were eventually published in Macau in 1951 and whilst they suffer, in places, from being out of date and lacking in accuracy—Fr Gherzi's notes remained in China—the books were a good record of the climatology of the Far East and of the experiences of himself and others in typhoons.\n\nIt was during the years that Fr Gherzi spent in Hong Kong and Macau that I was fortunate enough to get to know him quite well. He was a competent organist and after work I would sometimes accompany him to the Rosary Church to listen to his playing—Bach was a favourite—or he would come to my quarters to hear records and take a considerable number of glasses of sherry—his preferred drink. He was game for most activities and his majestic figure often looked out of place in the rudimentary sports car or sailing junk that I used in those days. Over the years, Fr Gherzi developed a technique of using cocktail parties to good advantage; on joining them he would charge his glass with sherry and, whilst stroking his grandee's beard, look for the most senior naval person present. He would then disarmingly engage the poor fellow in typhoon talk and eventually succeed in getting him to donate a radar or other piece of electronic equipment of which the good Father was in need.\n\n*This paragraph records two 'firsts' for Hong Kong in the field of international meteorology. Hong Kong is a member of the World Meteorological Organization in its own right on account of these early developments.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 } ]