from its four corners, and hang to it an equal weight, so as to draw it downwards when let fall, its whole breadth pressing against the air. Let those two bodies be attached, one of them to one end of a thread a yard long, the other to the other end. Extend a twine under the ceiling of a room, and put through it at thirty inches distance two pins bent in the form of fish-hooks. On these two hooks hang the two bodies, the thread that connects them extending parallel to the twine, which thread being cut, they must begin to fall at the same instant. If they take equal time in falling to the floor, it is a proof that the resistance of the air is in both cases equal. If the whole card requires a longer time, it shows that the sum of the resistances to the pieces of the cut card is not equal to the resistance of the whole one.*

This principle so far confirmed, I would proceed to make a larger experiment, with a shallop, which I would rig in this manner. (Plate XII. Fig. 4.) A B is a long boom, from which are hoisted seven jibs, a, b, c, d, e, . f, g, each a seventh part of the whole dimensions, and as much more as will fill the whole space when set in an angle of forty-five degrees, so that they may lap when going before the wind, and hold more wind when going large. Thus rigged, when going right before the wind, the boom should be brought at right angles with the keel, by means of the sheet ropes CD, and all the sails hauled flat to the boom.

These positions of boom and sails to be varied as the wind quarters. But when the wind is on the beam, or when you would turn to windward, the boom is to be hauled right fore and aft, and the sails trimmed according as the wind is more or less against your course.

*The motion of the vessel made it inconvenient to try this simple experiment at sea, when the proposal of it was written. But it has been tried since we came on shore, and succeeded as the other.

It seems to me, that the management of a shallop so rigged would be very easy, the sails being run up and down separately, so that more or less sail may be made at pleasure; and I imagine, that there being full as much sail exposed to the force of the wind which impels the vessel in its course, as if the whole were in one piece, and the resistance of the dead air against the foreside of the sail being diminished, the advantage of swiftness would be very considerable; besides that the vessel would lie nearer the wind.

Since we are on the subject of improvements in navigation, permit me to detain you a little longer with a small relative observation. Being, in one of my voyages, with ten merchant ships under convoy of a frigate at anchor in Torbay, waiting for a wind to go to the westward, it came fair, but brought in with it a considerable swell. A signal was given for weighing, and we put to sea all together; but three of the ships left their anchors, their cables parting just as the anchors came a-peak. Our cable held, and we got up our anchor; but the shocks the ship felt before the anchor got loose from the ground, made me reflect on what might possibly have caused the breaking of the other cables; and I imagined it might be the short bending of the cable just without the hawse-hole, from a horizontal to an almost vertical position, and the sudden violent jerk it receives by the rising of the head of the ship on the swell of a wave while in that position. For example, suppose a vessel hove up so as to have her head nearly over her anchor, which still keeps its hold, perhaps in a tough bottom; if it were calm, the cable still out would form nearly a perpendicular line, measuring the distance between the hawse-hole and the anchor; but if there is a swell, her head in the trough of the sea will fall below the level, and when lifted on the wave

will be much above it. In the first case the cable will hang loose and bend perhaps as in figure 5. In the second case, figure 6, the cable will be drawn straight with a jerk, must sustain the whole force of the rising ship, and must either loosen the anchor, resist the rising force of the ship, or break. But why does it break at the hawse-hole?

Let us suppose it a cable of three inches diameter, and represented by figure 7. If this cable is to be bent round the corner A, it is evident that either the part of the triangle contained between the letters a, b, c, must stretch considerably, and those most that are nearest the surface; or that the parts between d, e, f, must be compressed; or both, which most probably happens. In this case, the lower half of the thickness affords no strength against the jerk, it not being strained, the upper half bears the whole, and the yarns near the upper surface being first and most strained, break first, and the next yarns follow; for in this bent situation they cannot bear the strain all together, and each contribute its strength to the whole, as they do when the cable is strained in a straight line.

To remedy this, methinks it would be well to have a kind of large pulley wheel, fixed in the hawse-hole, suppose of two feet diameter, over which the cable might pass; and, being there bent gradually to the round of the wheel, would thereby be more equally strained, and better able to bear the jerk, which may save the anchor, and by that means in the course of the voyage may happen to save the ship.

One maritime observation more shall finish this letter. I have been a reader of newspapers now near seventy years, and I think few years pass without an account of some vessel met with at sea, with no living soul on board, and so many feet of water in her hold, which

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vessel has nevertheless been saved and brought into port; and when not met with at sea, such forsaken vessels have often come ashore on some coast. The crews, who have taken to their boats and thus abandoned such vessels, are sometimes met with and taken up at sea by other ships, 'sometimes reach a coast, and are sometimes never heard of. Those that give an account of quitting their vessels generally say, that she sprung a leak, that they pumped for some time, that the water continued to rise upon them, and that, despairing to save her, they had quitted her, lest they should go down with her. It seems by the event that this fear was not always well founded, and I have endeavoured to guess at the reason of the people's too hasty discouragement.

When a vessel springs a leak near her bottom, the water enters with all the force given by the weight of the column of water without, which force is in proportion to the difference of level between the water without and that within. It enters therefore with more force at first and in greater quantity, than it can afterwards when the water within is higher. The bottom of the vessel too is narrower, so that the same quantity of water coming into that narrow part, rises faster than when the space for it to flow in is larger. This helps to terrify. But, as the quantity entering is less and less as the surfaces without and within become more nearly equal in height, the pumps, that could not keep the water from rising at first, might afterwards be able to prevent its rising higher, and the people might have remained on board in safety, without hazarding themselves in an open boat on the wide ocean. (Fig. 8.)

Besides the greater equality in the height of the two surfaces, there may sometimes be other causes that retard the farther sinking of a leaky vessel. The rising water within may arrive at quantities of light wooden

work, empty chests, and particularly empty water-casks, which if fixed so as not to float themselves may help to sustain her. Many bodies which compose a ship's cargo may be specifically lighter than water; all these when out of water are an additional weight to that of the ship, and she is in proportion pressed deeper into the water; but, as soon as these bodies are immersed, they weigh no longer on the ship, but on the contrary, if fixed, they help to support her, in proportion as they are specifically lighter than the water. And it should be remembered, that the largest body of a ship may be so balanced in the water, that an ounce less or more of weight may leave her at the surface or sink her to the bottom. There are also certain heavy cargoes, that, when the water gets at them, are continually dissolving, and thereby lightening the vessel, such as salt and sugar. And as to water-casks, mentioned above, since the quantity of them must be great in ships of war, where the number of men consume a great deal of water every day, if it had been made a constant rule to bung them up as fast as they were emptied, and to dispose the empty casks in proper situations, I am persuaded that many ships which have been sunk in engagements, or have gone down afterwards, might with the unhappy people have been saved; as well as many of those which in the last war foundered, and were never heard of. While on this topic of sinking, one cannot help recollecting the well-known practice of the Chinese, to divide the hold of a great ship into a number of separate chambers by partitions tight caulked (of which you gave a model in your boat upon the Seine), so that, if a leak should spring in one of them, the others are not affected by it; and, though that chamber should fill to a level with the sea, it would not be sufficient to sink the vessel. We have not imitated