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. On August 26, 1900, the steamer _Numidie_, sailing from Bone, was struck by lightning. The fluid fell on the mizzen-mast, and went down the standing jib, to which the second officer was clinging. The unfortunate man had had both his hands paralyzed and fallen; but if he had fallen on the outside of the draille, death would have been inevitable. The _Rodney_ was under weigh before Syracuse when it was struck. This was on December 7, 1838. The top-gallant-mast went first; it weighed eight hundred pounds, and such was the violence of the stroke that it was instantly reduced to shavings, which hung the whole length of the vessel, like rubbish in a carpenter's shop. The topmast was very much damaged and shattered here and there. As for the mainmast, with its ironwork weighing more than a ton, it was wrecked for a length of some seventeen metres. At times the masts are split from top to bottom, broken or cut transversely in fragments, and flung to a distance. Sometimes they are planed, like the beams and trees of which we have already spoken. The _Blake_ was struck by lightning in 1812. The top-gallant-mast was in green pine, which was split into long fibres in every direction, like branches of a tree. It is not unusual for lightning to creep into the heart of a mast and do it all kinds of injuries, without in any way hurting the outside; in a word, there may be single or double furrows, longitudinal or zigzag, sometimes curved, and of varying depth. Sometimes also, the electric current, far more powerful than the blast of the wind, seizes the rigging and carries it off. This phenomenon was observed on the _Clenker_, December 31, 1828; the topmast and sails were torn off and thrown into the water. Neither are the sails spared by the terrible meteor; they are torn, riddled with holes, or set on fire. But as a rule the yards are spared.