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the screw, when the vessel is pitching in a high sea. When a typhoon is blowing you can not set the spanker to get her up, as the sails are usually blown clean out of the gaskets. Extra strong storm- staysails are carried till they blow away, in order to steady the ship. A sailer usually behaves better than a steainer, as even under bare poles she has enough tackle aloft to offer resistance to the wind and keep her bows out of the water. Should the masts go overboard, a sailer, in proper trim, has still a better chance than a steamer, when her deck is swept by the seas, as the hatches may be more easily kept battened down than on board a steamer with its engine-room skylights, etc., but the way of battening down hatches leaves much to be desired. In 1886 I suggested that they should be screwed down like the covers of the portholes, and you ought not to trust to wedges or even to chains. Lately this suggestion has been taken up, at the Shipmasters' Society, London. Any vessel labouring in a mountainous cross sea near the centre of a typhoon is, however, in a most helpless condition. By that time there is nothing further to be done. It must therefore be your aim to avoid that contingency.

The most dangerous typhoons have been encountered in the Pacific in a low latitude, say 12°, and 130° or 140° longitude. They are so small there and move so slowly that it ought to be easy to avoid them on board a steainer. They move WNW-ward, and you are safest to the SE-ward of them. You can see such a typhoon coming up in the shape of an arch, at first perhaps whitish in appearance, but soon developing into a dark and threatening cloud. Its dark appearance and the extreme slow- ness of its motion,-in fact it does not appear to move at all,-distinguishes it from an arched squall, which is moreover often brighter in the centre. If the direction of the notion of the clouds in it is seen to be nearly perpendicular to the bearing of the top of the arch, then there is no doubt that it is a typhoon. Even in Hongkong I have seen a typhoon approach like that.

If after leaving Singapore bound for Hongkong in the SW, monsoon, you find that the barometer falls more than it ought to, the monsoon begins to freshen in squalls, and you notice a cross swell, a lumpy sea, and other signs of a typhoon, then you ought to shape your course to the south-eastward, so as to sail round the centre and benefit by the favourable SE wind behind the centre. But if the season is late in the year, you had better make sure that it is not travelling south-westward, in which case you may be overtaken by the cyclone. Such typhoons are often the cause of high seas in the Gulf of Siam, but as their progressive motion is usually slow, you can "heave to" in order to make observations without losing ground perceptibly. Up to within the last few years steamers often kept their course and travelled from the navigable into the dangerous semi-circle, where they suffered great damage and delay. But that happens seldom now.

If after leaving Hongkong bound for a northern port you fall in with a typhoon coming through the Bashee Channel, and moving NW-ward into the Formosa Channel, you ought to run to the south- ward, and if bound for Yokohama you may afterwards shape a northern course along the east coast of Formosa, where the Kuro Siwo current occasionally sets fast towards the NE. As the typhoons are nearly always moving northwards you are usually safest to the S or rather SE of the centre.

Ships between Foochow and Ningpo are liable to experience the NW gales that precede a typhoon travelling westward and about to strike the coast in that neighbourhood. If you do not like to expose your vessel to the high confused seas round northern Formosa, you should run into shelter early, and wait there till the barometer rises and the weather improves and the tile allows you to get out again.

Between Shanghai and Japan you are liable to fall in with a typhoon travelling in any direction between WNW, N and E. You are therefore safest to the S of the centre, but that may be in the dan- gerous semi-circle and the wind is strongest there. North of this latitude you would prefer to be W of the centre. Near Japan most typhoons inove NE-ward. They generally travel quickly and do not give so long warning as further soutli. In these typhoons you cannot know in which semi-circle you are till the wind shifts. They are as a rule not so violent as within the Tropics, though sometimes they are just as bad, but the incurvature is not so great.

You all know that though typhoons are dangerous on the open sea, they are still more to be feared in open anchorages and near lee shores, such as in Formosa, where you must be ready to run to sea at very short notice, as you could not lie there with any chance of riding out a typhoon, except in the inner harbour of Takow. When you then experience a N gale and a falling barometer, by far the surest signs of an approaching typhoon, and appearances quickly get worse, you must run to the SW with the N gale and bring your ship into a most dangerous position in front of the centre (unless there is time to cross the path) rather than remain at an unsafe anchorage. When at anchor up against a lee shore there is not only danger of being thrown on the shore, but also danger of going down at your moorings. The waves running into shoal water are at first very much increased in height, the slope along the wave-front gets steeper, and when in the hollow of a wave that may be forty feet below the crest, there is a chance of having the bottom knocked out of a vessel, except when the ground is soft mud. Waves on the open sea do not exceed thirty feet in height, measured from crest to hollow, but still it is not known how high they rise in a cross sea near the centre of a typhoon.