"A great peculiarity," says Sir William Snow Harris, "may be observed in cases of ships set on fire by lightning, viz. a rapid spreading of the fire in every part of the vessel, as if the electric agency had so permeated the mass as to render the extinction of the fire by artificial means impossible." Take, for instance, the burning of the _Sir Walter Scott_ in June, 1855. This fine passenger ship, of 650 tons, was struck in the Bay of Biscay: the lightning shivered the foremast, completely raked the vessel, and instantly set fire to the cargo. The passengers and crew had scarcely time to jump from their beds and put on their clothes, and leap into the boats, when the masts went over the sides, the flames shot up into the air, and the ship went down like a stone. Such extraordinary catastrophes as these seem to set forth in unmistakable terms the feebleness of man in the presence of the tremendous powers of nature. In reality, they are only forcible instances to call upon him to use the means for dominating the peril. Of all the dangers that beset the mariner at sea, danger by lightning is the only one that he can thoroughly guard against. To Sir William Snow Harris we owe the perfecting of the lightning-conductor for marine purposes, and the power of braving unscathed the direst electric storms. The permanent conductor adopted in the navy in 1842 is arranged so as to extend along the masts, from the truck to the keelson, and so out to sea. In the hull various branches ramify, and admit of a free dispersion of the electric fluid in all directions. Thus armed, the ship is impregnable to all the forked lightnings that may dart about her. Since the system of fitting men of war with this apparatus has been adopted, no vessel of the Royal Navy has been injured. The log of the frigate _Shannon_, commanded by the late gallant Sir W. Peel on his voyage out to China, affords a striking example of the manner in which the fury of such electric storms as are only to be met with in the Indian Ocean, was baffled by a contrivance which may truly be called, in the words of Dibdin-- "The sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, And takes care of the life of poor Jack." "When the ship was about 90 miles south of Java she became enveloped in a terrific thunderstorm, and at 5 p.m. an immense ball of fire covered the maintopgallant-mast: at 5·15 the ship was struck a second time on the mainmast by apparently an immense mass of lightning; at half-past 5 another very heavy discharge fell upon the mainmast, and from this time until 6 p.m. the ship was completely enveloped in sharp forked lightning. On the next day her masts and rigging were carefully overhauled, but, thanks to Sir Snow Harris's system of permanent lightning-conductors, no injury whatever to ship or rigging was discovered."