On December 9th a memorable fog settled down on London. I addressed a telegram to the Trinity House suggesting some gun observations. With characteristic promptness came the reply that they would be made in the afternoon at Blackwall. I went to Greenwich in the hope of hearing the guns across the river; but the delay of the train by the fog rendered my arrival too late. Over the river the fog was very dense, and through it came various sounds with great distinctness. The signal-bell of an unseen barge rang clearly out at intervals, and I could plainly hear the hammering at Cubitt’s Town, half a mile away, on the opposite side of the river. No deadening of the sound by the fog was apparent.
Through this fog and various local noises, Captain Atkins and Mr. Edwards heard the report of a 12-pounder carronade with a 1-lb. charge distinctly better than the 18-pounder with a 3-lb. charge, an optically clear atmosphere, and all noises absent, on July 3d.
Anxious to turn to the best account a phenomenon for which we had waited so long, I tried to grapple with the problem by experiments on a small scale. On the 10th, I stationed my assistant with a whistle and organ-pipe on the walk below the southwest end of the bridge dividing Hyde Park from Kensington Gardens. From the eastern end of the Serpentine I heard distinctly both the whistle and the pipe, which produced 380 waves a second. On changing places with my assistant, I heard for a time the distinct blast of the whistle only. The deeper note of the organ-pipe at length reached me, rising sometimes to great distinctness, and sometimes falling to inaudibility. The whistle showed the same intermittence as to period, but in an opposite sense; for, when the whistle was faint, the pipe was strong, and _vice versa_. To obtain the fundamental note of the pipe, it had to be blown gently, and on the whole the whistle proved the most efficient in piercing the fog.
An extraordinary amount of sound filled the air during these experiments. The resonant roar of the Bayswater and Knightsbridge roads; the clangor of the great bell of Westminster; the railway-whistles, which were frequently blown, and the fog-signals exploded at the various metropolitan stations, were all heard with extraordinary intensity. This could by no means be reconciled with the statements so categorically made regarding the acoustic impenetrability of a London fog.