The ‘sea criteria’, showing the gradation of wind from calm to storm, as published in nautical almanacs, are Beaufort’s modification of an idea of Dalrymple’s of a series of drawings illustrating the changing appearance of the sea as the wind grows in strength (cf. the photos on the British Meteorological Office’s most useful ‘State of Sea Card’, Met. O. 688A, which every seaman ought to have).Beaufort’s scale culminates in a Force 12 hurricane ‘which no canvas can withstand,’ when the speed of the wind is above 63 knots and the ‘air is filled with foam and spray: sea completely white with driving spray; visibility very seriously affected’. Beaufort made valuable friends in the years following the end of the war with Napoleon in 1815, including the efficient John Barrow, who became Secretary to the Admiralty in 1812 and did much to root out jobbery and complacency, and the Arctic explorer Edward Parry, who was responsible among other things for reorganisation of the Irish Sea mail services.In 1829 Beaufort succeeded Parry as Hydrographer of the British Navy. He was the fourth to hold the post, which he occupied for 26 years. As he was the longest tenant of the office, so by universal consent it is agreed that he was the greatest. Under Beaufort, the British Admiralty Chart became what even today it largely remains, the most trusted navigational document available for all sea waters.Beaufort, introduced the rule, still meticulously followed, that no chart or other document may ever be published by the Hydrographic Office without undergoing the Hydrographer’s personal scrutiny. Surveys which he initiated included the British Isles, the Mediterranean, the East Coast of Africa, the West Indies, Australia, New Zealand, the China Sea, the Saint Lawrence Gulf and South America.There were other partial surveys. One of his successors, Vice-Admiral Edgell, wrote in 1948: ‘His profound knowledge, devoted application, ability and experience raised the … surveying service to heights which his predecessors had scarcely dreamed of, and the office became the model on which foreign governments shaped their hydrographic services.”
Held in admiration
He was held in admiration and affection by the band of officers who served under him, and it speaks well for their loyalty and faith in his judgement that there was never any question of appointing a younger man … until Beaufort’s health began to suffer from the demands made by the heavy task’(Edgell: Sea Surveys, Longmans Green and Company). Beaufort’s insistence on objective accuracy (and perhaps his Irish background?) led to his absolute refusal to allow hydrographic expeditions to be used for the imperialistic purpose of ‘showing the flag’.
He demanded of his officers what he consistently gave himself, devotion of the whole of their ener- gy to the sublime scientific task of surveying all the seas of the whole world for the good of all mankind. While acting as Hydrographer, Beaufort was a member of the Arctic Council, and a portrait exists of him sitting with this body organising the search – in which Irishmen participated conspicuously – for the Franklin expedition, lost north of Canada trying to find the North-West passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Beaufort was responsible for a group of Arctic Sea islands being named after his friend and predecessor, Parry. The Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska, is named for Francis Beaufort. A portrait of him in the British National Portrait Gallery by S. Pearce shows a handsome, kindly but determined face.
In 1837 Beaufort was one of a group of scientists who made a voyage on the Thames in a barge fitted with the Swedish engineer Ericsson’s new fangled invention, a screw propeller.
Royal Geographical Society
Beaufort was also an expert cryptographer. He devised a wholly original message-code system. Professor Christopher Lloyd, a biographer of the Secretary of the Admiralty, Barrow, discovered in the works of Captain W.H. Smyth, author of the most trustworthy nautical dictionary in English, that it was on Beaufort’s suggestion that Barrow made the moves that led to the foundation in 1830 of the Royal Geographical Society with which Beaufort was associated from the start.
Charles Darwin, in his preface to ‘A Naturalist’s Voyage’, wrote ‘. . . it was in consequence of a wish expressed by Captain Fitzro y, of having some scientific person on board (of HMS Beagle that sailed on December 27 1831 from Devonport to survey the coastal waters of Patagonia) … that I volunteered my services, which received, t h rough the kindness of the Hydrographer, Captain Beaufort , the sanction of the Lords of the Admiralty’ - so that Beaufort was also indirectly responsible for some of the most momentous scientific proclamations of the 19th century: Darwin always insisted that all the work that brought him celebrity had its origin in the Beagle voyage. Beaufort was promoted Rear-Admiral in 1848, retired in 1855, died in 1857.
He once pointedly remarked: ’the tendency of all people is to undervalue what they do not understand’. This is, alas, probably why his life, almost wholly constructive and forward-looking, is so little known in his native land.
Loyal to the service to which he swore allegiance while yet a child, Beaufort developed a vision that far transcended the normal outlook of his fellow-officers.
His passion for knowledge was not just for himself but for all mankind. He was one of the first to realise a truth that we, 230 years after his birth, must face and act upon with the utmost urgency if we want mankind to survive and flourish in the 21st century – the truth that 71% of the globe we inhabit is sea, and if we can understand its untold mysteries we will make life richer and fuller for all.
Beaufort, an individual Irishman born when we had no navy of our own and were a dependent province of another state, made a contribution of unsurpassed importance to the development of understanding of the sea.
His marvellous discoveries were absolutely basic for the development of modern (post 1800) civilisation. He was an exceptional genius about whom far too few people know anything.
Taking an example from him, cannot our whole island community bend its energies to making a constructive contribution, worthy of an independent maritime nation, to widening and deepening that understanding in our own age that requires it so much? |
Another honour for Dr. Ireland