eamship _Shahjehan_, to the Calcutta _Englishman_, Jan. 21, 1880:

That upon the 5th of June, 1880, off the coast of Malabar, at 10 P.M.,
water calm, sky cloudless, he had seen something that was so foreign to
anything that he had ever seen before, that he had stopped his ship. He
saw what he describes as waves of brilliant light, with spaces between.
Upon the water were floating patches of a substance that was not
identified. Thinking in terms of the conventional explanation of all
phosphorescence at sea, the captain at first suspected this substance.
However, he gives his opinion that it did no illuminating but was, with
the rest of the sea, illuminated by tremendous shafts of light. Whether
it was a thick and oily discharge from the engine of a submerged
construction or not, I think that I shall have to accept this substance
as a concomitant, because of another note. "As wave succeeded wave, one
of the most grand and brilliant, yet solemn, spectacles that one could
think of, was here witnessed."

_Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 32-280:

Extract from a letter from Mr. Douglas Carnegie, Blackheath, England.
Date some time in 1906--

"This last voyage we witnessed a weird and most extraordinary electric
display." In the Gulf of Oman, he saw a bank of apparently quiescent
phosphorescence: but, when within twenty yards of it, "shafts of
brilliant light came sweeping across the ship's bows at a prodigious
speed, which might be put down as anything between 60 and 200 miles an
hour." "These light bars were about 20 feet apart and most regular." As
to phosphorescence--"I collected a bucketful of water, and examined it
under the microscope, but could not detect anything abnormal." That the
shafts of light came up from something beneath the surface--"They first
struck us on our broadside, and I noticed that an intervening ship had
no effect on the light beams: they started away from the lee side of the
ship, just as if they had traveled right through it."

The Gulf of Oman is at the entrance to the Persian Gulf.

_Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 33-294:

Extract from a letter by Mr. S.C. Patterson, second officer of the P.
and O. steamship _Delta_: a spectacle which the _Journal_ continues to
call phosphorescent:

Malacca Strait, 2 A.M., March 14, 1907:

"... shafts which seemed to move round a center--like the spokes of a
wheel--and appeared to be about 300 yards long. The phenomenon lasted
about half an hour, during which time the s