[Piddington, Henry, 1848, Sailor's Horn-book for the Law of Storms, John Wiley, New York]

...

2. The earliest published account we have of these storms being distinctly considered as whirlwinds is by a Captain Langford, in the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1698, in a paper on the West Indian hurricanes, which he calls "whirlwinds". He describes the veering of the wind,...

...

7. Fortunately for science, however, Mr. William Redfield, of New York, had his attention drawn to the subject in the course of his professional pursuits as a Naval Architect, and in 1831 published in the "American Journal of Science" a valuable paper, the first of a numerous series which have since followed, in which he demonstrated not only that the storms of the American coast were whirlwinds, but moreover that they were progressive whirlwinds, moving forward on curved tracks at a considerable rate, and were traceable from the West Indies and along the Coast of the United States till they curved off to the Eastward between the Bermudas and the Banks of Newfoundland. He also gave many practical rules for the management of ships, so as to avoid, or at least to diminish, the chances of damages from rotatory storms, and valuable remarks on the Barometer as a guide.

...

9. Mr. Redfield was followed in 1838 by Lieut.-Col. Reid fo the Royal Engineers, who published the valuable and well known work usually called "Reid on the Law of Storms," in which he not only fully confirmed Mr. Redfield's views, but added most extensively to the proofs of them, by investigations of the West Indian hurricanes, and those of the Southern Indian Ocean, and moreover by proving farther what Redfield had already announced theoretically, that in the Southern Hemisphere the Storms revolve in a contrary direction to those in the Northern one.

The great step of bringing the science to full practical use was also made by Colonel Reid, who showed that safe rules for scudding or lying to in a hurricane might be deduced from the theory, and that, farther, when obliged to lie to, ships should, to avoide being taken aback by the veering of the wind heading them off, chose a particular track to lie to on, according to the side of the path of the Storm on which they were; and lastly that ships might often, by means of this knowledge, profit by storms by sailing round instead of through them; and the theory like so many other sciences then became, from a speculative view, or theory of which the uses had been only remotely and dimly foreseen and hoped for, a practical Law.--THE LAW OF STORMS; of the first use to the mariner, and of the highest importance to every naval and commercial nation.

...

notes:

long_title: The sailor's horn-book for the law of storms: being a practical exposition of the theory of the law of storms, and its uses to mariners of all classes in all parts of the world, shewn by transparent storm cards and useful lessons

http://books.google.com.au/books/about/The_sailor_s_horn_book_for_the_law_of_st.html?id=HpwTAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y

Title The sailor's horn-book for the law of storms: being a practical exposition of the theory of the law of storms, and its uses to mariners of all classes in all parts of the world, shewn by transparent storm cards and useful lessons

Author Henry Piddington

Publisher John Wiley, 1848

Original from Harvard University

Digitized 3 Jan 2008

Length 292 pages

Subjects Navigation Storms

BibTex

@book{piddington1848sailor,

title={The sailor's horn-book for the law of storms: being a practical exposition of the theory of the law of storms, and its uses to mariners of all classes in all parts of the world, shewn by transparent storm cards and useful lessons},

author={Piddington, H.},

lccn={07019892},

url={http://books.google.com.au/books?id=HpwTAAAAYAAJ},

year={1848},

publisher={John Wiley}

}