Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale, and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry
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Defining the Wind is a wonderfully written account of one man’s crusade to learn about what the wind is made of by tracing the history of the Beaufort Scale and its eccentric creator, Sir Francis Beaufort. It’s as much about the language we use to describe our world as it is an exhortation to observe it more closely. The New Yorker “Small trees in leaf begin to sway; crested wavelets form on inland waters.” So runs the Beaufort scale’s definition of a “fresh breeze,” or one that blows between nineteen and twenty-four m.p.h. Huler’s chance encounter with this guide for assessing wind force at sea sparks an infatuation with its spare, cadenced lines and a desire to learn about their origins. The eponymous Sir Francis Beaufort didn’t actually write the famous descriptions but still acts as the book’s presiding spirit, as Huler traces the rise of scientific classification at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Huler writes with self-deprecating wit, and although some of his scientific discussions are excessively rudimentary (“The Earth is a sphere”), he captures the Beaufort scale’s “open-hearted intellectual decency.”
Introduction : September 6, 1996 : Hurricane Fran and before1Ch. 1Beaufort of the admiralty11Ch. 2In search of the wind43Ch. 3The Beaufort Scale, and who wrote it, in a general way69Ch. 4Reverse-engineering the wind93Ch. 5"Nature, rightly questioned, never lies" : the Beaufort Scale, nineteenth-century science, and the last eighteenth-century man121Ch. 6Getting the word out : on the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, the dictionary, and how Sir Francis Beaufort slept with his sister151Ch. 7Taking the measure of the wind : the fabulous Beaufortometer184Ch. 8A picture of the wind : poetry, the shipping forecast, and the search for the North Shields Observer211Ch. 9Observation, a panegyric : on the Beaufort moment236App. ABeaufort Scale family album251App. BExplanation of the plate describing the rigging, &c., of a first-rate man of war261
