Peter Parley's Wonders of the Earth, Sea, and Sky

by Samuel G. Goodrich

Sometimes it inclined a little one way, and then another; and sometimes it was very considerably bent, and then suddenly straightened itself again.

When the ship was nearest to it, we heard a noise from it like the rushing of a waterfall, and before it was over, heavy rain came on with lightning, but no thunder. The wind all the time was very unsteady, though it was not violent.

While we were looking at it, two smaller ones formed at some distance under very nearly the same circumstances. One of them stood quite still for some seconds, and then disappeared; but the other moved steadily on in a straight line, for several minutes.

The great one continued moving also very slowly for nearly half an hour, and then seemed to snap in two, and one half sank rapidly into the sea, as if it had been unhooked from above, and the other half remained hanging from the cloud for some time, and then curled upwards and disappeared, throwing down a heavy torrent of rain.

I have seen many water-spouts since, in my voyages over the great ocean, but have never been so struck with the appearance of any one as of this.

There is a common notion that a cannon fired at a water-spout, will disperse it by making a great concussion of the air; but I do not think that this is true, unless the water-spout be very small. At all events, it was not true in this case, for we fired right at the large one several times, and it took no effect except in splashing the water about as the ball went through.

It is also generally imagined that they are very dangerous to ships, and if they come close, that they throw such a quantity of water into them as to sink them. I have somewhere read an account of a vessel having once been put in danger by one off the Coast of Guinea, and two or three of the men being washed overboard, and I once saw the sails and deck of a vessel, made very wet by a small one, myself. But my own opinion is, that there is not much to be dreaded from them, for they are not a solid mass of water, but merely condensed vapour in the form of a tube, with a hollow space in the middle. And I think if you were right under one of them, it would be no worse than rain descending in very large drops.

Once I saw a much smaller water-spout on land. It was a gusty, cloudy day, and the wind had changed several times, when a dark cloud at some distance from where I was, extended downwards till it came nearly to a point.