 In many cases, the only evidence that a hurricane existed was reports from ships in its path.Judging by the direction of winds experienced by ships, and their location in relation to the storm, it is possible to roughly pinpoint the storm's center of circulation for a given point in time.This is the manner in which three of the eight known storms in the 1861 season were identified by hurricane expert José Fernández Partagás's reanalysis of hurricane seasons between 1851 and 1910.