On our shelf of science activity books and field guides, we have a little paper gadget the kids made a few years ago, called a “wind scale wheel.” You can make one yourself if you print the pages from the Miami Museum of Science:
http://www.miamisci.org/hurricane/windscale.html
We’ve learned a great deal about wind here in southwest Georgia, experiencing tropical storms, copious thunder storms, and the severe storm that sent a tornado tearing through our town on March 1, 2007. My son is a Weather Channel junkie, and my daughter built a home meteorological observation station last year, using a fun book about weather called The Kids’ Book of Weather Forecasting by Mark Breen and Kathleen Friestad.
So with all the weather tracking at our house, I’d heard of the Beaufort Scale, which is the basis of the little wheel they made, and I also know of two other weather scales that are a seasonal part of our lives in the south: the Saffir Simpson, which classifies hurricanes, and the Fujita Pearson, which classifies tornadoes (if you’re curious, the Americus tornado was an F3).
When I read in the Daedalus catalog about the book Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale and How a 19th Century Admiral Turned Science Into Poetry, by Scott Huler, I was intrigued. I knew nothing at all about the origins of the scale or the man it’s named for, but when I saw the cover of the book at the library, with Admiral Beaufort in uniform and a sailing ship on a rough sea, I was reminded of the Hornblower books by C.S. Forester. I really enjoy Forester, and I also recently received another seafaring series from my Grandmother – her whole set of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin books. I like a good sea story, so I headed to the library in search of Defining the Wind.
I admit wondering how an entire book could be about one little wind scale, which after all, Huler tells readers is only 110 words long. The scale is printed on a dedication page of sorts just before the introduction, and just after this quote from Francis Beaufort himself, taken from a journal entry in 1805:
“Nothing I am sure can be more useful than comparing our present ideas with those of old time, tracing back our chains of actions to their primary sources or motions, ascertaining the causes of our successes or failures, in short, studying the history of our own mind.”
This made me smile, nod, and talk to myself. A good sign, when starting a new book. I’ve copied the quote because it is something I believe myself — a theme you’ve likely noticed in my reading and writing. Connections, between all of us as human beings and among our ideas as codified in writing of all kinds, are a major source of joy and fascination in my own life. I soon learned that this urge to know how and why, when and whom, what and where, and in which way it all fits together is what led Huler on his journey of discovery into the Beaufort Scale.
First, if you are unsure of what the scale is, check it out:
http://www.zetnet.co.uk/sigs/weather/Met_Codes/beaufort.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale
I could go on with the links, because as Huler learned, the Beaufort scale is an organic creation, evolving with langauge and the times, and even changing in the place he first found it, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Huler tells readers in the first chapter of this book that this story is his own. Defining the Wind is not a book about Francis Beaufort, or even, truly, about the wind scale. It’s the tale of a man in love with words, who discovered the scale in the 9th edition of the dictionary when he was a copy editor, and found it would not let him go.
As a word lover myself, I admire Huler’s passion for his subject, and the way it led him, in a beautiful example of life learning, to investigate the many origins of the wind scale and to meet dozens of interesting people whose own special knowledge or enthusiasm for some aspect of the story added to Huler’s own. If there is a book that shows an adult engaging in an autodidactic life and supporting himself while doing so, this is it.
Over many years, via many paths, Huler learned about wind, sailing, English history, drawing, meteorology, chart making, exploration, navigation, the British Met Office, windmills, the BBC Shipping Forecast, and the many men before and after Beaufort who contributed to the wind scale, among many other bits of information — all of which led to the final story in Defining the Wind. Like Beaufort, Huler became something of a Renaissance man, and he corresponded or met with a broad range of people whose own lives and work connect with the Beaufort Scale in some way.
Of course, Huler tells readers about the history of the Beaufort Scale, as it unfolded for him, but at the end of the book, he admits freely that the things he learned are as important as the story itself. And that’s my favorite part of this book. It’s not a dry, scholarly study; it’s not even a warm, thorough biography. It’s a trip through a curious writer’s process, as he researches, gets to know intimately, and writes about a subject he’s passionately interested in.
Huler takes us along as he visits the Huntington Library in California (home to many of Francis Beaufort’s papers); various libraries, archives, museums, and historical sites in England; the harbor of Montevideo (which Beaufort charted and sketched); a sailing ship (the Europa); a wind tunnel; his own neighborhood; and in the end, a small town called North Shields, in northern England, where the author of the actual “110 best words ever written,” as Huler calls them, worked as head post office clerk and one of five weather observers who reported to the Met Office at the beginning of the 20th century.
Yes, that’s right, Beaufort didn’t write the words that set Huler on this quest in the first place. But I don’t want to give away the entire story, because it’s best enjoyed through Huler’s eyes. Reading Defining the Wind is like sitting in a coffee shop listening to a friend tell you about a fascinating project he’s been working on, an amazing trip he’s taken, and a great book he’s read.
You’ll enjoy the story more if you share Huler’s belief in the poetic beauty of the Beaufort Scale itself. The version he read first in the dictionary is actually partially in iambic pentameter. If you’ve read poembound, you know that when I do poetry workshops with teens, I help them feel iambic pentameter by beating out the rhythm against their chests — an echo of their own heartbeats. It’s not just for Shakespeare (speaking of everything being interconnected); iambic pentameter is primally satisfying to the human ear. The langauge of the scale drew Huler in.
And it turns out, it has drawn in a wide variety of other artists. There are poems, books, drawings, paintings, photographs, mixed media art, a stamp series, and even a choral work by the Finnish composer Aullis Sallinen, all inspired by the scale. Every person Huler spoke to in the UK about the BBC’s Shipping Forecast, which includes Beaufort Scale numbers, describes it in terms of its sound and rhythm as well as its content. You can listen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/coast/shipping/
and read about the Shipping Forecast here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_Forecast.
Huler already knew the Beaufort scale is poetic, but he is inspired not only by the scale’s simple beauty, but also by its utility, and ultimately, its design principles. In his research he discovered all manner of scales inspired by Beaufort’s — the tornado and hurricane scales; a scale written for Savannah, Georgia that describes the wind in terms of its effect on Spanish moss and lawn furniture; and updated versions of the Beaufort itself, like the “Peterson State of Sea” version that is in use on ships all over the world today.
The value of these variations is that each scale is useful. Each helps people identify and interpret weather conditions by describing, simply, efficiently, and accurately, the wind and its effect on human activity. Summarizing its neat beauty, Huler writes, “The Beaufort Scale describes everything the wind can do in 110 words” — these 110 words, are ordered, complete, clear, honest, and true. They are also created to be shared, disseminated widely, not kept in a university, office, museum, or archive.
And that is what Beaufort was after, in all of his life’s work, from using and distributing his own version of the scale, to keeping meticulous observations in journals, to streamlining the work of hydrography (sea mapping) for the British Admiralty and issuing the Manual of Scientific Enquiry for ships’ captains, to sharing his work through the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge — my new number one reason to hope for time travel someday. Huler realizes as he draws Defining the Wind to its conclusion that he admires Beaufort and his scale so much because he is a kindred spirit.
In piecing together all that he learned, Huler discovers that the Beaufort Scale he admires so much is “not just an example of brilliant writing but an entire way of looking at the world.” Huler writes that in the preface to Karamania, a book Beaufort wrote about his trip to map the coast of Turkey for the Admiralty, he explains that he published his experiences not out of any authority, but “rather in the hope of exciting further inquiry.” To Huler, this is an “open-hearted intellectual decency to which we ought to aspire every single day.”
In short, Huler believes, “Just the way clear thinking and clear writing have a one-to-one ratio — you can’t have one without the other — the Beaufort Scale has that kind of relationship to an observant, attentive life. If you’re thinking of things in a Beaufort Scale way, you can’t fail to pay attention.”
This resonates deeply with me, because close observation is what writers of all genres use as raw material. In his book The Poetry Home Repair Manual, former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser notes the importance of noticing things and writing them down in a journal before crafting observations into poetry. As a mother trying to instill the value of inquiry in my children, and trying to equip them not with a set of facts from a curriculum but instead with tools they can use to explore their own curiosities to the fullest, I admire both Beaufort’s and Huler’s commitment to purposeful inquisitiveness.
There’s a simple generosity in Beaufort’s hope that readers will take his ideas and run with them that Huler clearly shares, as he provides helpful illustrations throughout the book and a glorious set of appendices and notes which can hardly fail to “excite further inquiry.” I realize that’s why I like adding links when I blog, to provide readers a trailhead for their own exploratory paths.
In reading, thinking, writing, and practicing mindful attention to the world around me and the people in it, I was already striving to infuse my own work with this spirit of useful beauty before I read Defining the Wind. I have a long way to go, but I’m inspired, both by the Beaufort Scale and all of its creators and by the author who unlocked its secrets, to work harder at both living an observant life and distilling my observations into something lasting, true, and lovely.
bookconscious 
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