DEFINING THE WIND

NPR contributor Huler was browsing a dictionary in 1983 when he first became obsessed with the language of the Beaufort Scale’s wind definitions: the “the best, clearest and most vigorous descriptive writing I had ever seen.”

Frantically seeking wider knowledge of the man who penned such classics as Beaufort Force 9 (“Strong gale, chimney pots and slates removed”), Huler begins by tracking down the works of Francis Beaufort (1774–1857), the Irish-born admiral who served the British navy for 68 years and gave his name to the graduated scale of wind strength (not speed) still used today. An indepth body of research ensues in which any number of thinkers, including Aristotle, 16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, and Daniel Defoe (in 1704) are found to have preceded Beaufort in trying assign a numeric scale to wind force. Beaufort was solely concerned with defining wind for those with most to gain from it, seamen; the land-based perspective version that ensnared Huler with its poetic meters was compiled in 1906, it turns out, from observations by a group of British coastal weather watchers. Yet Beaufort sticks, not only because of his slavish attention to detail, but as a symbol of the rise of information-based hydrography in a navy that truly ruled the waves. He rubbed shoulders with the likes of Bligh, recommended that the Beagle’s captain sign on an untried young naturalist named Charles Darwin for an exploratory Pacific cruise, and fought with pistol and saber at sea and on land until his hip was broken by a sniper’s ball in the Mediterranean. Note to Russell Crowe’s agent: role comes with immense baggage; Beaufort’s compulsion to observe and report all extends to diary entries about an affair with his sister while a widower in his 60s.

All things Beaufort considered, including derivative poetry and even symphonic music.