A few instances in which the effects of these storms have been
particularly characterized, will be both interesting and instructive.
That fermented liquors are apt to be soured and spoiled by thunder, is a
fact well known; but that dried substances should be so acted on, is a
still more remarkable phenomenon, and not so easy of explanation. It
happened, however, some years ago, that in the immense granaries of
Dantzic, the repositories of the corn, of Polish growth, intended for
exportation, the wheat and rye, which were before dry and sweet, were,
by the effect of a violent thunder-storm in the night, rendered clammy
and stinking, insomuch that it required several weeks to sweeten them
and render them fit for shipping.
The effects of a thunder-storm on a house and its furniture, at New
Forge, Ireland, on the ninth of August, 1707, were very singular. It was
observed that the day was, throughout, close, hot and sultry, with
scarcely any wind, until toward evening, when a breeze came on with
mizzling rain, which lasted about an hour. As the air darkened after
sunset, several faint flashes of lightning were seen, and thunder-claps
heard, as at a distance; but between ten and eleven o’clock they became,
in their approach, very violent and terrible, progressively increasing
in their intensity, and coming on with more frequency, until toward
midnight. A flash of lightning, and a clap of thunder, louder and more
dreadful than all the rest, came simultaneously, and shook and inflamed
the whole house. The mistress being sensible, at that instant, of a
strong sulphureous smell in her chamber, and feeling a thick, gross dust
fall on her hands and face as she lay in bed, concluded that part of her
house had been thrown down by the thunder, or set on fire by the
lightning. The family being called up, and candles lighted, both the
bed-chamber, and the kitchen beneath it, were found to be filled with
smoke and dust. A looking-glass in the chamber had been broken with such
violence, that not a piece of it was to be found of the size of half a
crown: several of the pieces were stuck in the chamber-door, which was
of oak, as well as on the other side of the room. The edges and corners
of some of the pieces of broken glass were tinged of a light flame
color, as if they had been heated by the fire. On the following morning
it was found that the cornice of the chimney next the bed-chamber had
been struck off, and a breach twenty inches in breadth, made in the
wall. At this part there was seen on the wall a smutted scar or trace,
as if left by the smoke of a candle, which pointed downward to another
part of the wall, where a similar breach was made. Within the chamber,
the boards on the back of a large hair trunk, filled with linen, were
forced in, and two-thirds of the linen pierced or cut through, the cut
appearing of a quadrangular figure. Several pieces of muslin and wearing
apparel, which lay on the trunk, were dispersed about the room, not in
any way singed or scorched, notwithstanding the hair on the back of the
trunk, where the breach was made, was singed. In the kitchen, a cat was
found dead, with its legs extended as in a moving posture, without any
other sign of being hurt, except that the fur was singed a little about
the rump.
In the parish of Samford Courtney, near Oakhampton, in Devon, on the
seventh of October, 1811, about three in the afternoon, a sudden
darkness came on. Several persons being in the church-porch, a great
fire-ball fell among them, and threw them down in various directions,
but without any one being hurt. The ringers in the belfry declared that
they never knew the bells go so heavily, and were obliged to desist from
ringing. Looking down from the belfry into the church, they perceived
four fire-balls, which suddenly burst, and the church was filled with
fire and smoke. One of the congregation received a blow in the neck,
which caused him to bleed both at nose and mouth. He observed the fire
and smoke to ascend to the tower, where a large beam, on which one of
the bells was hung, was broken, and the gudgeon breaking, the bell fell
to the floor. One of the pinnacles of the tower, next the town, was
carried away, and several of the stones were found near a barn, at a
considerable distance from the church.
On the fifteenth of December, 1754, a vast body of lightning fell on the
great hulk at Plymouth. It burst out a mile or two to the westward of
the hulk, and rushed toward it with incredible velocity. A portion of
the derrick (a part of the apparatus which served to hoist in and fix
the masts of the men-of-war) was cut out, of a diameter of at least
eighteen inches, and about fifteen feet in length: this particular piece
was in three or four places girt with iron hoops, about two inches
broad, and half an inch thick, which were completely cut in two by the
lightning, as if done by the nicest hand and instrument. The lightning
was immediately succeeded by a dreadful peal of thunder, and that by a
most violent shower of hail, the hailstones being as large as nutmegs,
and for the greatest part of the same size and shape.
Among the many fatal accidents by lightning which have befallen ships,
the following is a remarkable instance. In the year 1746, a Dutch ship
lay in the road of Batavia, and was preparing to depart for Bengal. The
afternoon was calm, and toward evening the sails were loosed, to take
advantage of the wind which then constantly blows from the land. A black
cloud gathered over the hills, and was brought by the wind toward the
ship, which it had no sooner reached, than a clap of thunder burst from
it, and the lightning set fire to the maintopsail: this being very dry,
burned with great fury: and thus the rigging and mast were set on fire.
An attempt was immediately made to cut away the mast, but this was
prevented by the falling of the burnt rigging from the head of the mast.
By degrees the fire communicated to the other masts, and obliged the
crew to desert the ship, the hull of which afterward took fire, and
burning down to the powder magazine, the upper part was blown into the
air, and the lower part sunk where the ship was at anchor.
In crossing the Atlantic, in the month of November, 1749, the crew of an
English ship observed a large ball of blue fire rolling on the water. It
came down on them so fast, that before they could raise the main-tack,
they observed the ball to rise almost perpendicularly, and within a few
yards of the main chains: it went off with an explosion as if hundreds
of cannon had been fired off simultaneously, and left behind it a great
smell of brimstone. The maintopmast was shattered into a thousand
pieces, and splints driven out of the mainmast which stuck in the
main-deck. Five seamen were knocked down, and one of them greatly burnt,
by the explosion. The fireball was apparently of the size of a large
millstone, and came from the north-east.
The ingenious and indefatigable Professor Richman lost his life on the
sixth of August, 1753, as he was observing, with M. Sokolow, engraver to
the royal academy of St. Petersburgh, the effects of electricity on his
gnomon, during a thunder-storm. It was ascertained that the lightning
was more particularly directed into the professor’s apartment, by the
means of his electrical apparatus, for M. Sokolow distinctly saw a globe
of blue fire, as large as his clenched hand, jump from the rod of the
right gnomon, toward the forehead of Professor Richman, who at that
instant was about a foot distant from the rod, observing the electrical
index. The globe of fire which struck the professor, was attended with a
report as loud as that of a pistol. The nearest metal wire was broken in
pieces, and its fragments thrown on M. Sokolow’s clothes, on which burnt
marks of their dimensions were left. Half of the glass vessel was broken
off, and the metallic filings it contained thrown about the room. Hence
it is plain that the force of the lightning was collected on the right
rod, which touched the filings of metal in the glass vessel. On
examining the effects of the lightning in the professor’s chamber, the
door-case was found split half through, and the door torn off, and
thrown into the chamber. The lightning therefore seems to have continued
its course along the chain conducted under the ceiling of the apartment.
In a Latin treatise, published by M. Lomonosow, member of the royal
academy of sciences of St. Petersburgh, several curious particulars are
mentioned relative to this melancholy catastrophe. At the time of his
death, Professor Richman had in his left coat-pocket seventy silver
coins, called rubles, which were not in the least altered by the
accident which befell him. His clock, which stood in the corner, of the
next room, between an open window and the door, was stopped; and the
ashes from the hearth thrown about the apartment. Many persons without
doors declared that they actually saw the lightning shoot from the cloud
to the professor’s apparatus at the top of his house. The author, in
speaking of the phenomena of electricity, observes that he once saw
during a storm of thunder and lightning, brushes of electrical fire,
with a hissing noise, communicate between the iron rod of his apparatus
and the sides of his window, and that these were three feet in length,
and a foot in breadth.
Somewhat analogous to these movements of electricity, are those
connected with the electric telegraph during the violent thunder-storms
that so often take place in the summer season. When such storms are
raging, and particularly when the lightning is abundant and near, not
only is the operation of the telegraph entirely suspended, but sometimes
the lightning itself passes with great violence over the wires, in some
cases melting and destroying them, and in others passing by them as it
does by the lightning-rod, and manifesting its violence chiefly at the
point of their termination. In some instances, the wires have been
instantly melted by the electric fluid, and in others the machinery of
the offices injured or destroyed, while at other times persons have been
struck, or dwellings set on fire by its power.