As these big storms roar past Cape Hatteras, the winds shift to northwest and the sky clears, unless you happen to be on shipboard and the tops of big waves are being torn off by the wind and thrown into the air, to pass overhead in streaks or splatter on the decks. In the days of the sailing ship, the master was not surprised when he got into trouble in the area between Bermuda and Hatteras. Here many merchantmen from far places passed, en route to or from New York or other Atlantic ports. Slowed by cross seas and dirty weather hatched over the Gulf Stream, they were soon reduced to storm stay-sails. As the gales mounted, the crews could see other ships rising on the billows in one instant before slithering into a great trough where, in the next instant, they could see nothing but jagged peaks of water and a welter of foam. On the Hatteras side, especially, the master could get into a rendezvous with death, for he often had only two choices. He could run full tilt toward the west and try to get around the front of a hurricane moving northward, but this maneuver would take him toward Hatteras, where he might find company in the wrecks of countless other ships that had failed in the effort and had been thrown against the coast. The other choice was no better. He could make such progress as was possible toward the east and hope that he would not be caught in the dangerous sector of the oncoming hurricane, a course which more likely than not would lead to disaster.
As has been noted, however, it was the tragic losses caused by extratropical cyclones that induced governments to take over the job of hunting storms and issuing warnings. In France, the first country to take positive action, the immediate cause was the catastrophe which struck the allied fleets in the harbor at Balaclava in 1854, during the Crimean War. Ships of England and France were caught in this desperate position because of jealousies and hatreds which have abounded in Europe for centuries. In this case, the Tsar of Russia seized a pretext to try to gain control of a part of Turkey. This was not unexpected. Russia always has looked with covetous eyes at the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, which lead through the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. On this score Europe is perpetually uneasy. France and England, who had been enemies, now joined forces and planned a campaign against Russia.
It was July, 1853, when the Tsar, Nicholas I, mobilized his armies. As his first overt act, he occupied the part of Turkey which lay north of the Danube River. Soon afterward, the Russian fleet destroyed a Turkish squadron in the Black Sea. Now the Tsar became more cautious because of the threat of action by England and France, and especially because of indications that Russia’s ally, Austria, would desert her. The Tsar took no further action. Now it required a long time in those days to get a campaign under way, and it was a whole year later, July, 1854, when the allies were ready to start the invasion of the Crimean Peninsula. Meanwhile, Russia had withdrawn her troops from Turkey and there was no real cause for conflict. But tempers had flared, the vast machinery of war had been put in motion, and the allies drew stubbornly nearer to disaster. They knew quite well that the time might be too short to finish the campaign before the bitterly cold weather of the Russian winter would creep out over the Peninsula. In fact, the Tsar had said that his best generals were January and February, and that remark should have carried ample warning.
Actually, the allied attack began in September, 1854. The British had taken possession of the harbor at Balaclava and, in the beginning, the invasion seemed to promise success. But in October the heroic but ill-fated “Charge of the Light Brigade,” made immortal by Tennyson, marked the turning point. It was clear then that the campaign would have to be resumed in the spring of 1855. By November, cold weather had arrived, land action had ceased, and the allies were faced with the problem they had hoped so earnestly to avoid—that of keeping their fighting forces intact during winter in a hostile climate.
To understand the dire predicament of the allies when the big storm struck, it is important to note that the harbor at Balaclava had proved to be too small for a supply base. Many ships had to be anchored outside and there was delay and confusion in moving in and out of the harbor. Not only was there a difficult supply problem but the sick and wounded were being transported across the Black Sea to Scutari, near Constantinople, where hospital conditions were abominable. By October, the plight of the army had become a scandal in England. Florence Nightingale was sent to Scutari with authority over all the nurses and a guarantee of co-operation from the medical staff. She arrived on November 4. The remainder of her story is well known as one of the bright pages of history.
Now the stage was set for catastrophe. An obscure winter storm blew its way across Europe without anything happening until its southern center crossed the Black Sea, on November 14. Suddenly, as secondaries often do, it came to life. There was rain turning to snow as the disturbance burst forth in gales of hurricane force. The congestion grew while the signs of the storm intensified. The ghostly mountains around Balaclava disappeared in the gloom, the near-by shore lines next were blotted out, and impenetrable darkness settled down on the shuddering and grinding of the battered remnants of the helpless fleet. Wreckage was strewn along the coast and around the harbor. All the men-of-war survived, although damaged, but nearly all of the vessels with essential stores were lost.
Misery, disease, and horror followed during the bitter winter. The death rate in the hospitals reached forty-two per cent in February. Meanwhile, in France, Napoleon III received news of the terrible gales at Balaclava and brooded over the catastrophe. He determined to learn where this deadly storm had originated, the path it followed, and to set up a plan for tracking and predicting others of its kind in the future. And so he called in the famous astronomer Leverrier and asked him to carry out the investigation.
Urbain Leverrier, then forty-three years old, was known throughout the world as the discoverer of the planet Neptune, in 1846. He knew of the works of Redfield and Reid on hurricanes and by 1854 had noted the efforts of other Americans and Britishers to track extratropical storms. With their ideas in mind, he called on scientists in all European countries to send him observations of the weather on the days from November 12 to 16, preceding and following the day of the disaster at Balaclava. Information moved slowly between countries in those days and, though many scientists co-operated, it was February, 1855, before Leverrier had gathered the data he needed. In developing his plan, he was encouraged by the invention and spread of the electric telegraph in the United States, and he hoped that the extension of lines in Europe would provide fast-moving messages for his purpose.
Before the end of February, Leverrier handed his report to Napoleon III and recommended that a system of weather messages and of issuing warnings be established at once. The Emperor approved this within twenty-four hours. Soon the French government was mapping the weather and looking for storms. The British followed suit. Already Joseph Henry, in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, was trying a similar plan, but it was not until February, 1870, that the Congress of the United States appropriated funds and established a government weather service in the Signal Corps of the Army.
The immediate reason for this legislation in the United States was similar to that in France. At that time there was a rapidly growing commerce on the Great Lakes, but storm disasters were all too frequent. In 1869, nearly two thousand vessels were beached or sunk by gales on the Lakes. On the seacoasts, the situation was almost equally bad. The new service was soon in operation. The first storm warning by the United States government was sent out in November, 1870.