Word: waterspout
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...they all get in somehow. There have been accidents, torn sails, broken masts, but no one has ever been lost. Each captain picked his own course, looking for wind. First to reach Hamilton was Dr. George W. Warren's Yankee Girl II of Manhattan, undaunted by a bursting waterspout less than a mile off her course. Class A: first prize (shortest time): John G. Alden's Malabar X; Class B: K. W. Ferris's Malay...
...people have ever studied a tornado, fewer still its nautical equivalent, a waterspout. First instinct of those who have seen this terrifying natural phenomenon, which links heaven and earth with a dark, serpentine Jacob's ladder, is to get out of its path...
...Geographic Society reported that its South American survey plane was cruising from Miami to Havana when: "Pilot Hawkins, to avoid an angry black cloud, veered to port. Then, to our amazement, there quickly dropped from the north end of the storm cloud a thin writhing black column of a waterspout. In a few seconds, as we watched, it grew into a black, whirling corkscrew at least 600 feet high and probably 50 feet or more in diameter. ... As it grew in size ... it took the shape and appearance of a great snake, spray and mist rising in clouds from where...
Sailors cherish an ancient notion-a de-lusion-that, if a ship cannot escape a waterspout by moving out of its path, a shot fired into the column of water will cause it to collapse. Science has no record of this having actually been done, for the good reason that no cannon projectile (unless perhaps a large explosive shell timed exactly) would be big enough to disrupt the enormous vacuum which supports the water column...
...dancing column of the waterspout, often a mile high, 200 ft. in diameter, carries a great volume of water which it sucks from the sea. Terrifying to seamen by virtue of the fact that the column whirls at the rate of 150 m. p. h., these twisters are seldom long lived. Tornadoes over land last longer, travel from 30 to 50 mi. Greatest in the U. S. was that of 1925 which stretched a ribbon of destruction across Missouri, Illinois, Indiana. In its wake were 695 dead and $16.500,000 worth of tangled, destroyed property.* Instead of transporting water, tornadoes...