In one sense, all of the men who survived these terrors at sea were hurricane hunters. They had to be. Those who lived were the men who were always alert to the first signs in sea and sky, who knew when one of the big storms of the tropics was just beyond the horizon. They were learning and passing the knowledge along to others. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the mariner had a “law of storms” that kept countless ships out of the most dangerous parts of tropical disturbances.
4. STORM WARNINGS
“I am more afraid of a West Indian hurricane than of the entire Spanish Navy.” —McKinley
Strangely enough, government weather bureaus were not set up for the purpose of giving warnings of tropical storms. Maybe there was a feeling in the years before radio that nothing could be done for the sailor on the open sea except to teach him the law of storms. And for the landsman the case looked hopeless until the telegraph came in sight. At any rate, most of the men who began to fly into hurricanes during World War II were astonished to find that, up to that time, the prediction of tropical storms had been a kind of side issue.
Although hurricanes are nearly always destructive and other kinds of storms—the “lows” on the weather map—are generally mild, once in a long time one of these others results in a catastrophe. Starting as a low which is spread weakly over a wide area, with cloudy weather, rain or snow, and gentle winds, now and then the exceptional storm suddenly fills newspaper headlines. Gales and winds of hurricane force bring a blizzard, tornado, bad hailstorm, or torrential rain and a damaging flood. If it really is a bad one, it finds its way into the pages of history. In times past, these storms often struck populous districts, while hurricanes, in early centuries, hit on thinly settled islands or coasts.
So far as we know, the worst storm to devastate the British Isles was one of this kind. It was not a tropical cyclone. It was entirely unexpected, as were most of the big gales in England in the old days. Surprise was one of the elements of danger. The weather is seldom fine in the British Isles, over the English Channel or in the North Sea. Gloom, with fog or low-flying clouds, is the rule. Even on the best days, a damp haze hangs everywhere. It is like looking through a dirty window pane. Into this background of gloom many a big storm stole its way eastward from the Atlantic. The record-breaker tore up the docks, wrecked shipping and crumbled buildings in the year 1703.
Houses were ruined and big trees were blown down. Whole fleets were lost and more than nine thousand seamen were drowned. The most violent winds came at night. Startled by the roar of the storm, Queen Anne got out of bed and found a part of the palace roof had been torn away. One prelate, Bishop Kidder, was buried beneath the ruins of his mansion. Awakened by the giant gusts, he put on his dressing gown and made for the door, but a chimney stack crashed through the ceiling and dashed out his brains. His wife was crushed in her bed. After the gales subsided, London and other cities looked like they had been sacked by an enemy. All over the south of England, the lead roofs of churches were rolled up by the wind or blown away in large sheets.
Though other gales almost as bad as this one came in later years, it was more than a century before the storm hunters made much progress. Not long after 1800, several men with an inquiring mind began to get results. Redfield was one, but he studied hurricanes and not the storms of higher latitudes, such as the one which devastated the British Isles.
Shortly after 1800, there were signs of the coming of faster means of travel and communications and they were destined to be a vital factor in weather forecasting. In 1816 a “hobby-horse” with wheels was displayed in Paris by an inventor named Niepice. It was propelled by a man or two sitting on it and pushing on the ground. Even with two men pushing, it went no faster than a man could walk. But strong claims were made about its possibilities. At about the same time, several men were working on devices like the telegraph.
Whether it was this trend or not, something aroused the intense curiosity of a young professor, William Heinrich Brandes, of the University of Breslau, in Germany. He began a study in 1816, to see if the weather moved from place to place and if it would be possible to send predictions ahead by means then available. Everybody at that time knew that storms moved but it was the general belief that ordinary changes in the weather didn’t go anywhere. Brandes collected newspapers from many places and searched them for remarks about the weather, which he put on maps. Here he was amazed to see that all kinds of weather seemed to be constantly in motion, quite generally from west to east. But the newspaper reports were rather poor for his purposes and he couldn’t be too sure about the rate of travel.