Detailed information concerning the effects of temperature on all sorts of food products, both in transportation and in storage, was collected by the Weather Bureau some years ago and published as the Bureau’s Bulletin No. 13.
While the domestic shipper can easily obtain from the Weather Bureau detailed climatic statistics for all parts of the United States, as well as the current weather reports for this country, and can profit greatly by regulating his operations in accordance therewith, it is not quite so easy for the shipper to foreign markets to obtain the corresponding data of foreign countries. With the expansion of our foreign trade, the demand for such data has grown to large proportions. The Weather Bureau, which has an unrivaled meteorological and climatological library in Washington, is naturally the place where such data are most frequently sought, but the labor entailed in extracting and digesting the information in response to individual requests is often too great to be undertaken by a Government office, where the time of the employees is absorbed in routine duties. There is, therefore, a promising field here for the private commercial meteorologist. Unofficial work in this line is already carried on to some extent. Thus a great steel company in New York has a salaried “consulting geographer” on its staff, who advises on meteorological questions. One of the problems he has been called upon to solve was to determine the proper dates for shipping steel from Atlantic and Pacific ports of the United States to various places in India, so that it would never arrive during the monsoon rains. Records of current and very recent weather in distant countries are, in a great majority of cases, unobtainable anywhere in the United States. The interchange of detailed weather reports between the different meteorological services of the world involves in the first place, with few exceptions, a painfully slow process of publication, and then distribution by mail; so that, for example, records of observations at some places in South Africa or Australia, or even many parts of Europe, do not reach the Weather Bureau Library, in Washington, until two or three years after the observations are made. Undoubtedly the time will come—and probably in the near future—when there will be a world-wide exchange of weather news by wireless telegraphy.
One kind of business wholly dependent upon the weather, which we have not yet mentioned, is weather insurance. There are several kinds, but hail insurance and tornado insurance are those extensively practiced; the former much more widely and systematically in the Old World than in the New, while the latter is confined to America. Insurance against frost is said to have been practiced in Germany, and there appears to be an excellent field for it in the United States. The insurance of outdoor events, such as games, shows, and al fresco parties, against rain has been carried on for a good many years by speculative underwriters at Lloyd’s, in England, and has more recently been undertaken in this country. Of course the weather element enters to a considerable degree into other kinds of insurance. Ordinary marine insurance is, to a large extent, insurance against storms; fire insurance is partly insurance against lightning; window and plate glass insurance involves the risk of breakage by wind and hail; and even life insurance is greatly concerned with the effects of weather and climate.
CHAPTER XVII
MARINE METEOROLOGY
That it behooves a sailor to be weather-wise has always been admitted, but there was a time, almost within the memory of men now living, when neither seamen nor landsmen had the remotest conception of the benefits that a systematic study of the meteorology of the sea was capable of conferring upon the maritime world. The man who first grasped the importance of such a study and translated his ideas into facts was the American naval officer, Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury.
During his brief career at sea Maury became impressed with the meagerness of the information then available concerning the winds and currents that aid or hinder the voyages of sailing ships. When, in consequence of an accident that incapacitated him for shipboard duties, he was assigned to service in Washington, he began to explore the old logs of naval vessels, filed in the Navy Department, for notes on meteorological conditions, and eventually developed a plan of securing regular observations from both the Navy and the merchant marine. The result of this undertaking was the publication of the famous Wind and Current Charts, which revolutionized navigation throughout the world.
The practical value of these charts, of which 200,000 copies were distributed to the masters of merchant vessels of all nationalities, was promptly recognized. By taking advantage of the favorable winds and currents shown on the charts, and avoiding those that were unfavorable, mariners were able to reduce the average time of a sailing voyage between the Atlantic and Pacific ports of the United States by forty days. The money value of the charts to vessels sailing from the United States to South America and the Far East was estimated at $2,250,000 per annum. British shipping on all seas is said to have benefited to the extent of $10,000,000 per annum. Neither was the utility of the charts limited to the saving of money. The following episode is cited in Maury’s biography:
“When the San Francisco, with hundreds of United States troops on board, foundered in an Atlantic hurricane, and the rumor reached port that she was in need of help, everyone looked to Maury as the only man in the country who could tell where to find the drifting wreck. To him the Secretary of the Navy sent for information. He at once set to work and showed how the wind and currents acting upon a helpless wreck would combine to drift her ‘just here’, pointing to a spot on the chart, and making a cross mark with the blue pencil he had in his hand. Just there the relief was sent, and just there the survivors of the wreck were picked up. This was an incidental result of his study of winds and currents.”