The Book of the Damned (35 page)
Read The Book of the Damned Online
Authors: Charles Fort
The Gulf of Oman is at the entrance to the Persian Gulf.
Jour. Roy. Met. Soc.,
33-294:
Extract from a letter by Mr. S.C. Patterson, second officer of the P. and O. steamship
Delta:
a spectacle which the
Journal
continues to call phosphorescent:
Malacca Strait, 2 a.m., March 14, 1907:
“. . . shafts which seemed to move round a center—like the spokes of a wheel—and appeared to be about 300 yards long.” The phenomenon lasted about half an hour, during which time the ship had traveled six or seven miles. It stopped suddenly.”
L’Astronomie,
1891-312:
A correspondent writes that, in October, 1891, in the China Sea, he had seen shafts or lances of light that had had the appearance of rays of a searchlight, and that had moved like such rays.
Nature,
20-291:
Report to the Admiralty by Capt. Evans, the Hydrographer of the British Navy:
That Commander J.E. Pringle, of H.M.S.
Vulture,
had reported that, at Lat. 26 º 26’ N., and Long. 53º 11’ E.—in the Persian Gulf—May 15, 1879, he had noticed luminous waves or pulsations in the water, moving at great speed. This time we have a definite datum upon origin somewhere below the surface. It is said that these waves of light passed under the
Vulture.
“On looking toward the east, the appearance was that of a revolving wheel with a center on that bearing, and whose spokes were illuminated, and, looking toward the west, a similar wheel appeared to be revolving, but in the opposite direction.” Or finally as to submergence—“These waves of light extended from the surface well under the water.” It is Commander Pringle’s opinion that the shafts constituted one wheel, and that doubling was an illusion. He judges the shafts to have been about twenty-five feet broad, and the spaces about 100. Velocity about 84 miles an hour. Duration about 35 minutes.
Time 9:40 p.m. Before and after this display the ship had passed through patches of floating substance described as “oily-looking fish spawn.”
Upon page 428 of this number of
Nature,
E.L. Moss says that, in April, 1875, when upon H.M.S.
Bulldog,
a few miles north of Vera Cruz, he had seen a series of swift lines of light. He had dipped up some of the water, finding in it animalcule, which would, however, not account for phenomena of geometric formation and high velocity. If he means Vera Cruz, Mexico, this is the only instance we have out of oriental waters.
Scientific American,
106-51:
That, in the
Nautical Meteorological Annual,
published by the Danish Meteorological Institute, appears a report upon a “singular phenomenon” that was seen by Capt. Gabe, of the Danish East Asiatic Co.’s steamship
Bintang.
At 3 a.m., June 10, 1909, while sailing through the Straits of Malacca, Captain Gabe saw a vast revolving wheel of light, flat upon the water—“long arms issuing from a center around which the whole system appeared to rotate.” So vast was the appearance that only half of it could be seen at a time, the center lying near the horizon. This display lasted about fifteen minutes. Heretofore we have not been clear upon the important point that forward motions of these wheels do not synchronize with a vessel’s motions, and freaks of disregard, or, rather, commonplaces of disregard, might attempt to assimilate with lights of a vessel. This time we are told that the vast wheel moved forward, decreasing in brilliancy, and also in speed of rotation, disappearing when the center was right ahead of the vessel—or my own interpretation would be that the source of light was submerging deeper and deeper and slowing down because meeting more and more resistance.
The Danish Meteorological Institute reports another instance:
That, when Capt. Breyer, of the Dutch steamer
Valentijn,
was in the South China Sea, midnight, Aug. 12, 1910, he saw a rotation of flashes. “It looked like a horizontal wheel, turning rapidly.” This time it is said that the appearance was above water. “The phenomenon was observed by the captain, the first and second mates, and the first engineer, and upon all of them it made a somewhat uncomfortable impression.”
In general, if our expression be not immediately acceptable, we recommend to rival interpreters that they consider the localization—with one exception—of this phenomenon, to the Indian Ocean and adjacent waters, or Persian Gulf on one side and China Sea on the other side. Though we’re Intermediatists, the call of attempted Positivism, in the aspect of Completeness, is irresistible. We have expressed that from few aspects would wheels of fire in the air look like wheels of fire, but, if we can get it, we must have observation upon vast luminous wheels, not interpretable as optical illusions, but enormous, substantial things that have smashed down material resistances, and have been seen to plunge into the ocean:
Athenæum,
1848-833:
That at the meeting of the British Association, 1848, Sir W.S. Harris said that he had recorded an account sent to him of a vessel toward which had whirled “two wheels of fire, which the men described as rolling millstones of fire.” “When they came near, an awful crash took place: the topmasts were shivered to pieces.” It is said that there was a strong sulphurous odor.
22
Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society,
1-157:
Extract from the log of the bark
Lady of the Lake,
by Capt. F.W. Banner:
Communicated by R.H. Scott, F.R.S.:
That, upon the 22nd of March, 1870, at Lat. 5º 47’ N., Long. 27º 52’ W., the sailors of the
Lady of the Lake
saw a remarkable object, or “cloud,” in the sky. They reported to the captain.
According to Capt. Banner, it was a cloud of circular form, with an included semicircle divided into four parts, the central dividing shaft beginning at the center of the circle and extending far outward, and then curving backward.
Geometricity and complexity and stability of form: and the small likelihood of a cloud maintaining such diversity of features, to say nothing of appearance of organic form.
The thing traveled from a point at about twenty degrees above the horizon to a point about eighty degrees above. Then it settled down to the northeast, having appeared from the south, southeast.
Light gray in color, or it was cloud color.
“It was much lower than the other clouds.”
And this datum stands out:
That, whatever it may have been, it traveled against the wind.
“It came up obliquely against the wind, and finally settled down right in the wind’s eye.”
For half an hour this form was visible. When it did finally disappear that was not because it disintegrated like a cloud, but because it was lost to sight in the evening darkness.
Capt. Banner draws the following diagram:
23
Textbooks tell us that the Dhurmsalla meteorites were picked up “soon,” or “within half an hour.” Given a little time the conventionalists may argue that these stones were hot when they fell, but that their great interior coldness had overcome the molten state of their surfaces.
According to the Deputy Commissioner of Dhurmsalla, these stones had been picked up “immediately” by passing coolies.
These stones were so cold that they benumbed the fingers. But they had fallen with a great light. It is described as “a flame of fire about two feet in depth and nine feet in length.” Acceptably this light was not the light of molten matter.
In this chapter we are very intermediatistic—and unsatisfactory. To the intermediatist there is but one answer to all questions:
Sometimes and sometimes not.
Another form of this intermediatist “solution” of all problems is:
Yes and no.
Everything that is, also isn’t.
A positivist attempts to formulate: so does the intermediatist, but with less rigorousness: he accepts but also denies: he may seem to accept in one respect and deny in some other respect, but no real line can be drawn between any two aspects of anything. The intermediatist accepts that which seems to correlate with something that he has accepted as a dominant. The positivist correlates with a belief.
In the Dhurmsalla meteorites we have support for our expression that things entering this earth’s atmosphere sometimes shine with a light that is not the light of incandescence—or. so we account, or offer an expression upon, “thunderstones,” or carved stones that have fallen luminously to this earth, in streaks that have looked like strokes of lightning—but we accept, also, that some things that have entered this earth’s atmosphere, disintegrate with the intensity of flame and molten matter—but some things, we accept, enter this earth’s atmosphere and collapse non-luminously, quite like deep-sea fishes brought to the surface of the ocean. Whatever agreement we have is an indication that somewhere aloft there is a medium denser than this earth’s atmosphere. I suppose our stronghold is in that such is not popular belief—
Or the rhythm of all phenomena:
Air dense at sea level upon this earth—less and less dense as one ascends—then denser and denser. A good many bothersome questions arise—
Our attitude:
Here are the data:
Luminous rains sometimes fall
(Nature,
March 9, 1882;
Nature,
25-437). This is light that is not the light of incandescence, but no one can say that these occasional, or rare, rains come from this earth’s externality. We simply note cold light of falling bodies. For luminous rain, snow, and dust, see Hartwig,
Aerial World,
p. 319. As to luminous clouds, we have more nearly definite observations and opinions: they mark transition between the Old Dominant and the New Dominant. We have already noted the transition in Prof. Schwedoff’s theory of external origin of some hailstones—and the implications that, to a former generation, seemed so preposterous—“droll” was the word—that there are in interplanetary regions volumes of water—whether they have fishes and frogs in them or not. Now our acceptance is that clouds sometimes come from external regions, having had origin from super-geographical lakes and oceans that we shall not attempt to chart, just at present—only suggesting to enterprising aviators—and we note that we put it all up to them, and show no inclination to go Columbusing on our own account—that they take bathing suits, or, rather, deep-sea diving-suits along. So then that some clouds come from interplanetary oceans—of the Super-Sargasso Sea—if we still accept the Super-Sargasso Sea—and shine, upon entering this earth’s atmosphere. In
Himmel und Erde,
February, 1889—a phenomenon of transition of thirty years ago—Herr O. Jesse, in his observations upon luminous night clouds, notes the great height of them, and drolly or sensibly suggests that some of them may have come from regions external to this earth. I suppose he means only from other planets. But it’s a very droll and sensible idea either way.
In general I am accounting for a great deal of this earth’s isolation: that it is relatively isolated by circumstances that are similar to the circumstances that make for relative isolation of the bottom of the ocean—except that there is a clumsiness of analogy now. To call ourselves deep-sea fishes has been convenient, but, in a quasi-existence, there is no convenience that will not sooner or later turn awkward—so, if there be denser regions aloft, these regions should now be regarded as analogues of far-submerged oceanic regions, and things coming to this earth would be like things rising to an attenuated medium—and exploding—sometimes incandescently, sometimes with cold light—sometimes non-luminously, like deep-sea fishes brought to the surface—altogether conditions of inhospitality. I have a suspicion that, in their own depths, deep-sea fishes are not luminous. If they are, Darwinism is mere Jesuitism, in attempting to correlate them. Such advertising would so attract attention that all advantages would be more than offset. Darwinism is largely a doctrine of concealment: here we have brazen proclamation—if accepted. Fishes in the Mammoth Cave need no light to see by. We might have an expression that deep-sea fishes turn luminous upon entering a less dense medium—but models in the American Museum of Natural History: specialized organs of luminosity upon these models. Of course we do remember that awfully convincing “dodo,” and some of our sophistications we trace to him—at any rate disruption is regarded as a phenomenon of coming from a dense to a less dense medium.
An account by M. Acharius, in the
Transactions of the Swedish Academy of Sciences,
1808-215, translated for the
North American Review,
3-319:
That M. Acharius, having heard of “an extraordinary and probably hitherto unseen phenomenon,” reported from near the town of Skeninge, Sweden, investigated:
That, upon the 16th of May, 1808, at about 4 p.m., the sun suddenly turned dull brick-red. At the same time there appeared, upon the western horizon, a great number of round bodies, dark brown, and seemingly the size of a hat crown. They passed overhead and disappeared in the eastern horizon. Tremendous procession. It lasted two hours. Occasionally one fell to the ground. When the place of a fall was examined, there was found a film, which soon dried and vanished. Often, when approaching the sun, these bodies seemed to link together, or were then seen to be linked together, in groups not exceeding eight, and, under the sun, they were seen to have tails three or four fathoms long. Away from the sun the tails were invisible. Whatever their substance may have been, it is described as gelatinous—“soapy and jellied.”
I place this datum here for several reasons. It would have been a good climax to our expression upon hordes of small bodies that, in our acceptance, were not seeds, nor birds, nor ice crystals: but the tendency would have been to jump to the homogeneous conclusion that all our data in that expression related to this one kind of phenomena, whereas we conceive of infinite heterogeneity of the external: of crusaders and rabbles and emigrants and tourists and dragons and things like gelatinous hat crowns. Or that all things, here, upon this earth, that flock together, are not necessarily sheep, Presbyterians, gangsters, or porpoises. The datum is important to us, here, as indication of disruption in this earth’s atmosphere—dangers in entering this earth’s atmosphere.
I think, myself, that thousands of objects have been seen to fall from aloft, and have exploded luminously, and have been called “ball lightning.”
“As to what ball lightning is, we have not yet begun to make intelligent guesses.”
(Monthly Weather Review,
34-17.)
In general, it seems to me that when we encounter the opposition “ball lightning” we should pay little attention, but confine ourselves to guesses that are at least intelligent, that stand phantom-like in our way. We note here that in some of our acceptances upon intelligence we should more clearly have pointed out that they were upon the intelligent as opposed to the instinctive. In the
Monthly Weather Review,
33-409, there is an account of “ball lightning” that struck a tree. It made a dent such as a falling object would make. Some other time I shall collect instances of “ball lightning,” to express that they are instances of objects that have fallen from the sky, luminously, exploding terrifically. So bewildered is the old orthodoxy by these phenomena that many scientists have either denied “ball lightning” or have considered it very doubtful. I refer to Dr. Sestier’s list of one hundred and fifty instances, which he considered authentic.
In accord with our disaccord is an instance related in the
Monthly Weather Review,
March, 1887—something that fell luminously from the sky, accompanied by something that was not so affected, or that was dark:
That, according to Capt. C.D. Sweet, of the Dutch bark,
J. P. A.,
upon March 19, 1887, N. 37º 39’, W. 57º 00’, he encountered a severe storm. He saw two objects in the air above the ship. One was luminous, and might be explained in several ways, but the other was dark. One or both fell into the sea, with a roar and the casting up of billows. It is our acceptance that these things had entered this earth’s atmosphere, having first crashed through a field of ice—“immediately afterward lumps of ice fell.”
One of the most astonishing of the phenomena of “ball lightning” is a phenomenon of many meteorites: violence of explosion out of all proportion to size and velocity. We accept that the icy meteorites of Dhurmsalla could have fallen with no great velocity, but the sound from them was tremendous. The soft substance that fell at the Cape of Good Hope was carbonaceous, but was unburned, or had fallen with velocity insufficient to ignite it. The tremendous report that it made was heard over an area more than seventy miles in diameter.
That some hailstones have been formed in a dense medium, and violently disintegrate in this earth’s relatively thin atmosphere:
Nature,
88-350:
Large hailstones noted at the University of Missouri, Nov. 11, 1911: they exploded with sounds like pistol shots. The writer says that he had noticed a similar phenomenon, eighteen years before, at Lexington, Kentucky. Hailstones that seemed to have been formed in a denser medium: when melted under water they gave out bubbles larger than their central air spaces.
(Monthly Weather Review,
33-445.) Our acceptance is that many objects have fallen from the sky, but that many of them have disintegrated violently. This acceptance will coordinate with data still to come, but, also, we make it easy for ourselves in our expressions upon super-constructions, if we’re asked why, from thinkable wrecks of them, girders, plates, or parts recognizably of manufactured metal have not fallen from the sky. However, as to composition, we have not this refuge, so it is our expression that there have been reported instances of the fall of manufactured metal from the sky.
The meteorite of Rutherford, North Carolina, is of artificial material: mass of pig iron. It is said to be fraudulent.
(Amer. Jour. Sci.,
2-34-298.)
The object that was said to have fallen at Marblehead, Mass., in 1858, is described in the
Amer. Jour. Sci.,
2-34-135, as “a furnace product, formed in smelting copper ores, or iron ores containing copper.” It is said to be fraudulent.
According to Ehrenberg, the substance reported by Capt. Callam to have fallen upon his vessel, near Java, “offered complete resemblance to the residue resulting from combustion of a steel wire in a flask of oxygen.” (Zurcher,
Meteors,
p. 239.)
Nature,
Nov. 21, 1878, publishes a notice that, according to the
Yuma Sentinel,
a meteorite that “resembles steel” had been found in the Mohave Desert. In
Nature,
Feb. 15, 1894, we read that one of the meteorites brought to the United States by Peary, from Greenland, is of tempered steel. The opinion is that meteoric iron had fallen in water or snow, quickly cooling and hardening. This does not apply to composition. Nov. 5, 1898,
Nature
publishes a notice of a paper by Prof. Berwerth, of Vienna, upon “the close connection between meteoric iron and steelworks’ steel.”
At the meeting of Nov. 24, 1906, of the Essex Field Club, was exhibited a piece of metal said to have fallen from the sky, Oct. 9, 1906, at Braintree. According to the
Essex Naturalist,
Dr. Fletcher, of the British Museum, had declared this metal to be smelted iron—“so that the mystery of its reported ‘fall’ remained unexplained.”
