Shipwreck by Lightning Author:Robert Bennet Forbes Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: In 1 out of 16 instances, the electrical discharge falls on a ship in a forked or divided stream of two or three branches. In 1 in 20 times, it falls obliquel... more »y in respect of the masts and hull in a single branch. In about once in 27 times, ships are struck by quickly-repeated discharges in the same storm, from 2 to 5 times. We find in these instances, 4 cases in which ships, having a common chain conductor at the main, have been struck by lightning on the foremast, and about 6 instances in which from some cause the common chain or wire conductor failed to afford the required protection. No. n. Expenditure on Account of Damage to the Royal Navy by Lightning. "We can scarcely hope to determine with very great accuracy, and in its full extent, the absolute loss to the public Exchequer on account of damage to the Eoyal Navy by lightning : independently of the calculation being very intricate and complicated, the total number of instances in which H. M. ships have suffered from lightning is not known, or can they now be traced. Of this, however, we may be quite assured ; the amount must have been, since the war in 1793, something very considerable. The mainmast of a 74 gun ship, made of Riga spars, was in the last war estimated at £1000 and upward. The mainmast of a first rate, £1200. We find a 74's mainmast estimated at £850 nearly in the subsequent peace. A 44 gun frigate's mainmast cost £476 in the war, and above £400 in the subsequent peace. Topmasts of ships of the line varied from £140 to £180 ; of frigates, from £80 to £100. The contract price for spars for topmasts was once £200 each: seeing therefore the large quantity of made masts and other spars destroyed in the 235 instances recorded in No. I., the loss upon this item could not have been insignificant....« less