Abstract
A propos of the question of drowning, as the same is now raised in NATURE, and especially so as to the alleged “fact that men are very different in buoyancy”, allow me to say that when stationed many years ago at Pembroke Dock, South Wales, two soldiers were drowned there within a few days of each other. One of these casualties occurred off an island named the Stack Rock, in Milford Haven, that was garrisoned by invalided artillery, while the other took place in the creek that separates the town and dockyard from the huts. In the former instance the body of the (drowned) man remained floating upright in the water, “bobbing up and down with every wave”—as an eyewitness assured me—for a considerable time, or until it was lost to sight or recovered (I forget which just now). In the latter the body—that of a healthy, muscular man—was picked up a day or so afterwards by a passing boat as it was floating out with the tide to sea; and I have since seen several fresh bodies floating in the Ganges. Indeed the survivors always attach weights to the remains of even the poorest of their kindred ere they deposit them in that sacred stream; but this may be for the purpose of counteracting the current; and it is, I think, generally assumed in books and courts of law that all bodies, human and bestial, sink as a rule in water as soon as life is extinct; in other words, it is stated that they remain submerged till decomposition sets in, or sets up such an amount of gas within them as enables them to overcome all resistance from above, and float. If such be the case we must either suppose that the corpses referred to within possessed some special attributes of their own, or that “men are very different in buoyancy” after death than they were during life. Assuredly these men could not have been lost in this way had their bodies been able to float in the one state as well as they were in the other; and I heartily agree with Mr. Hill when he says that “no amount of coolness or presence of mind will either supersede the art of swimming or alter the laws of gravity”.
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CURRAN, W. Buoyancy of Bodies in Water. Nature 24, 166 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/024166b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/024166b0
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