Sometimes great disasters are indirectly caused by lightning. Thus in July, 1903, it set fire to an old house at Muda, Paluzzo. Under other circumstances, 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 (Côte 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 ships that have been struck by lightning?
Here is the case of one which was literally cut in two.
On August 3, 1862, the ship Moses, on her passage 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 passengers were lost. Captain Pearson was on the bridge, and had just time to catch a floating spar, which supported him during seventeen hours. The ship sank in three minutes.
At the commencement of last century, the ship 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.