Part 22 (1/2)
Doubtless to the quickness of the lightning, which does not leave the powder time enough to ignite.
Powder magazines are frequently struck by lightning, and this subject is one of very great interest; they are not always blown up, in spite of the vast quant.i.ties of explosive materials which they contain.
Here are some examples which go to prove this statement:--
On November 5, 1755, lightning fell near Rouen on the Maromme powder magazine, and split one of the beams of the roof. Two barrels of powder were reduced to atoms without exploding. The magazine contained eight hundred of these barrels.
Can it be that man's thunder can repulse that of Jupiter?
Not always, as numerous examples prove the contrary. The following observations are extracted from a collection of similar facts:--
Lightning struck the tower of St. Nazaire, Brecia, on August 18, 1769.
It stood above an underground magazine containing a million kilogrammes of powder belonging to the Republic of Venice. The whole edifice was blown up, the stones falling in showers. Part of the town was thrown down; three thousand people peris.h.i.+ng.
At four o'clock in the afternoon of October 6, 1856, lightning penetrated the vaults of the church of St Jean, at Rhodes, setting fire to an enormous quant.i.ty of powder. Four or five thousand people lost their lives in the catastrophe.
The power of lightning is immeasurable. Well, it sometimes enjoys itself after the following manner:--
In 1899 it lit a candle which had just been put out. The person who held it was not struck, but the shock sent him to sleep for four days; then he awoke, only to go mad, and then slept for seven consecutive days.
At Harbourg it put out all the lights at a ball; the room was plunged in darkness, and filled with thick and fetid vapour.
Many a time, too, has a fire, burning brightly in a grate, been suddenly extinguished by lightning; and the same thing has happened with pottery and tile-making furnaces. As a rule, it is extremely difficult to re-light candles or fires thus extinguished. In some instances it takes on itself to light the gas.
On August 3, 1876, near the Observatory in Paris, Rue Leclerc, towards the corner of the Boulevard Saint Jacques, a gas jet was lit by lightning. The latter was twenty centimetres from a long gutter, and was in the gap, so to speak, of an electric circuit formed by it and the damp wall communicating with the ground. A violent explosion took place at the moment the gas caught alight, the gas meter, on the wall two metres above it, was dislodged, when a second explosion was heard.
The thunderclap was truly terrific, and immediately followed the lightning flash. The chronometer in the meteorological bureau in the Observatory was stopped suddenly. The keeper of the square of the Luxembourg saw a ball of red fire explode with great violence, and scatter in all directions. The plate belonging to the Peres was, according to M. de Fonvielle, broken to a thousand pieces, and the outer part of an iron bar was volatilized. There were no deaths or injuries to record, although several people were thrown down by the shock.
Sometimes great disasters are indirectly caused by lightning. Thus in July, 1903, it set fire to an old house at Muda, Paluzzo. Under other circ.u.mstances, the accident might have been insignificant. But, fanned by a violent wind, the flames increased, and, approaching nearer and nearer, burned a hundred houses, or in other words, the whole village.
A similar catastrophe took place at the village of Ochres, in Dauphine, on August 27, 1900. Lightning set fire to twenty thatched cottages, which, out of thirty-two composing the village, were in ashes within less than an hour. Three persons were burnt alive, and four others seriously injured.
On August 25, 1881, lightning struck the village of Saint Innocent, at three o'clock in the morning. Seven houses were totally burnt, and three women perished in the flames.
A fire caused by lightning burst out on June 24, 1872, at Perrigny, near Pontailler (Cote d'Or). Seventeen houses were burnt, and seventy-eight people found themselves homeless. Sometimes these disasters attain terrifying proportions.
During an awful thunderstorm, the electric spark set fire to eighteen parishes in Belgium; ruin spread over an area of 160 kilometres.
But could anything be more dreadful than the fate of certain s.h.i.+ps that have been struck by lightning?
Here is the case of one which was literally cut in two.
On August 3, 1862, the s.h.i.+p _Moses_, on her pa.s.sage from Ibraila to Queenstown, was overtaken in sight of Malta by a violent thunderstorm.
Towards midnight lightning struck the mainmast, and then downwards along it to the hold, cutting the vessel in two. She filled immediately. Crew and pa.s.sengers were lost. Captain Pearson was on the bridge, and had just time to catch a floating spar, which supported him during seventeen hours. The s.h.i.+p sank in three minutes.
At the commencement of last century, the s.h.i.+p _Royal Charlotte_ being in Diamond Harbour, on the Hoogley, was struck by lightning and blown into a thousand pieces, through the explosion of her powder magazine.
The report was heard a great distance off, and the shock was felt for miles around.
The form and position of the masts exposes them particularly to the attacks of the dread meteor. Several examples are known of sailors being struck by the electric current while aloft in the rigging, and even being thrown from there into the sea.