The middle of the column was white, apparently because it contained snow.
The column's narrowest diameter was about twelve feet, while it was three times as broad as its base, which reproduced in water and inverted the cloud-formed funnel above.

The whole column rotated with a spiral motion.
The waterspout, when it approached, took all the wind out of the fore-staysail of the steamship, which went blind, but the schooner-sail still kept full, and presently the fore-staysail filled again.
The Slavonia shook under the shock caused by contact with the column of water, but kept on her course none the worse for the collision.

A few flakes of snow on her bow were the only evidence of the collision after the pillar of water had passed off to port.
While the vessel was uninjured, the waterspout soon showed signs that it had received its death-blow.

As it sailed off to the southeast it parted in the middle, and the cone of water which formed its base and the cone of cloud which formed its top began to grow smaller by degrees.

The waterspout was slowly but surely ceasing to be a waterspout when it disappeared from view in the misty distance some fifteen minutes or more from the time it was sighted.
The _Slavonia's_ encounter with the waterspout took place in latitude 42 degrees 22 minutes north and longitude 52 degrees 35 minutes west.
This is rather far north for waterspouts so early in the year.