J.N. Chamberlain
1896, 19 August
Waterspout off Oak Bluffs, Cottage City

Boudoir card
Christopher Wahren Fine Photographs
Courtesy of Christopher Wahren Fine Photographs (Skylight Gallery Catalog 27, October, 23, 2008 #70)
 
Printing-out print of a waterspout (tornado over water) near Cottage City Massachusetts, 1896, by J.N. Chamberlain. With a clipping glued to card reverse describing the formation and photographing of the spout. Print size 4.75 x 7.75 inches (12x20 cm).
 
An amazing and somewhat threatening-looking image. Onlookers are visible as dark silhouettes along bottom of image as they gaze out to sea and a small sailboat seems to be out on the water precariously near the tornado. The notice on reverse gives an eyewitness account of the formation of the tornado and the process of photographing it:
 
"WATERSPOUT OFF OAK BLUFFS."
"A Rare Treat for Summer Residents at Cottage City. "
 
About 12-45 noon, August 19, 1896. We were startled by the cry of a Waterspout, and with our assistants started with the Camera to the Park in front of Dr. Tucker's residence, where we could see a little north from the direction of Nantucket very dark and angry clouds with a pointed streak issued downward until it touched the water. We made two exposures of this, showing a slight difference. After about 12 minutes it gradually and completely vanished. Very soon a second one appeared more curved than the first with a long sharp streak from the same clouds and slowly extended downwards to a point, about 100 feet from the surface of the ocean. In a few moments this changed to a smaller streak with a different curve bending to the south, while the former bent to the north. Both of these we photographed. The height of this, which Prof. Dwight of Vassar College, says was a genuine Waterspout, was about a mile high. The cloud burst disturbed the water in the sound for several hundred yards until it looked like a boiling pool. We could trace through the camera the spiral motion of the water as it was drawn into the clouds, every moment augmented their portentous darkness. The cloud from above and spray below being drawn together by suction and condensed, torents of water poured down a few hours later, which was found by persons in different places on the Island to be salt, which proves that it was carried up to a height and scattered round as solid bodies are by tornadoes on land. The Greeks applied this term 'prester' to the Waterspout, which signifies a firey fluid, from its appearance being generally accompanied with flashes of lightning and a sulphurous smell showing the activity of the electrical principal in the air."
 
"Photographs of the Waterspout with the description for sale at our Studio. Cabinets, 25 cents, 5x8, 35 cents; 7x10, 50 cents. / J.N. Chamberlain, Photographer / Cor. Circuit and Narragansett Avenue, Cottage City, Mass."
 
LL/30965