3.AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

“Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon:Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,All scattered in the bottom of the sea.”—Shakespeare

“Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;

Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon:

Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,

Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scattered in the bottom of the sea.”

—Shakespeare

Two hundred years ago, scientists were beginning to chart the winds over the oceans and the currents that thread their way across the surface of deep waters. Until this work was finished, the mariner was almost completely at the mercy of the atmosphere and the sea. He would come to uncharted places where the winds ceased to blow and sailing vessels might be becalmed for weeks. Day after day, the burning sun climbed slowly toward the zenith and while the unbearable heat tortured the crew, descended with agonizing slowness toward the western horizon. At night, relief came under unclouded skies but the stars gave no indication of better fortunes on the morrow.

In these places it seldom rained. Drinking water, as long as it lasted, became putrid, but the crew preserved it as theirmost precious treasure, drinking a little when they could go no longer without it—holding their noses. The food became so bad that every man who had the courage to eat it wondered if it wouldn’t be better to starve. This happened often in the North Atlantic in the days when sailing vessels were carrying horses to the West Indies. If they were becalmed and fresh water ran short, the crews had to throw some or all of the horses overboard. In time this region became known as the “horse latitudes.” Because it lay north and northeast of the hurricane belt, a long spell of rainless weather for a sailing ship here could be succeeded suddenly and overwhelmingly by the torrential rains of a tropical storm.

At long intervals, a slight breeze came along, barely enough to extend a small flag, but it gave the ship a little motion and brought hope to the men who were worn out with tugging at the oars. In this circumstance, it might happen that a long, low groundswell would appear. Coming from a great distance, it would raise and then lower the vessel a little in passing. Others would surely follow—low undulations at intervals of four or five to the minute—bringing a warning of a storm beyond the horizon. Here was one of the ironic twists of a sailor’s existence. Even while he prayed for water, the atmosphere was about to give it to him in tremendous quantities, both from above and below. At this juncture the master was in a quandary. For the safety of ship and crew, it was vital that he know exactly what to do at the very instant when the first gusty breezes of the coming storm filled the sails.

From the law of storms, the mariner eventually learned—and it was suicide to forget it at a time like this—that if he could look forward from the center of the hurricane, along the line of progress, the most terrible winds and waves would be on his right. Here the raging demons of the tropicalblast outdo themselves. The whirling velocity is added to the forward motion, for both in these few harrowing hours have the same direction. All the power of the atmosphere is delivered in this space, where unbelievable gales try to blast their way into the partial vacuum at the center. But the atmosphere is held back from the center by a still greater power, the rotation of the earth on its axis. No shipmaster should ever be caught between these awful forces with the huge bulk of the storm drawing toward him.

Here we find horrors that were never disclosed to the early storm hunters. It is doubtful if any sailing ship or any man aboard survived in this sector of a really great hurricane. But even more dangerous are the deceitful motions of the sea surface, which can trap the mariner and drag his vessel toward the dangerous sector, even while he thinks he is fighting his way out of it.

In those uneasy hours when the groundswell preceded the winds, the master had to watch his barometer and the clouds on the horizon, to get the best estimate of the storm’s future course. If it gave signs of coming toward him or passing a little to the west of him, he had to run with the wind as soon as it began, every inch of canvas straining at the creaking masts to get all the headway possible. He would do better than he thought, for the surface of the sea was moving with the winds and his vessel was plowing through the waves while the sea was swirling in the same direction. It was a race for life, and if he was not unlucky, he would find himself behind the storm, sailing rapidly toward better weather.

If he made the wrong choice and tried to go around the center on the east side while the storm moved northward, he might have thought that he was making headway. But the sea surface was carrying him backward while the horrible right sector rushed forward to encompass the ship.Now we see why Redfield, Reid and Piddington, when they came to a realization of some of these facts in the logs of sailing vessels, were so eager to give the world a law of storms. Their work was only a beginning, for the so-called law is not as simple as they imagined. But some shipmasters took their advice and survived, whereas any other course would have taken them to the bottom of the sea. And untold numbers had gone down in big hurricanes.

Among the logs and letters collected by Redfield and Reid in their work on the law of storms were many which referred to a fierce hurricane in 1780. For more than fifty years it had been talked about as “The Great Hurricane.” But the stories didn’t all seem to fit together. The storm was said to have been in too many places at too many different times to suit Redfield. When he had finished putting the data from ships’ logs on a map in accordance with his law of storms, he saw that there had been three hurricanes at about the same time and that they had been confused and reported as one.

In the year of these big hurricanes there were many warships in the Caribbean region. The American War of Independence had started with bloodshed at Lexington and Bunker Hill in 1775, and by 1780 England was in a state of war with half the world. Her battle fleets controlled most of the seas along the American Coast and roamed the waters in and around the West Indies.

The first of the three hurricanes struck Jamaica on the third of October. Nine English warships, under the command of Sir Peter Parker, went to the bottom. Seven of his vessels were dismasted or severely damaged. From the tenth to the fifteenth of October a second—and even more powerful hurricane—ravaged Barbados and progressively devastated other islands in the Eastern Caribbean. This one has been rated the most terrible hurricane in history by many students of storms. It wreaked awful destruction on theisland of St. Lucia, where six thousand persons were crushed in the ruins of demolished buildings. The English fleet in that vicinity disappeared. Neither trees nor houses were left standing on Barbados. Off Martinique, forty ships of a French convoy were sunk and nearly all on board were lost, including four thousand soldiers. On the island itself, nine thousand persons were killed. Most of the vessels in the broad path of the storm as it progressed farther into the Caribbean, including several warships, foundered with all their crews. It drove fifty vessels ashore at Bermuda, on the eighteenth.

Before this terrible storm reached Bermuda another one roared out of the Western Caribbean, crossed western Cuba and passed into the Gulf of Mexico, on October 18. Unaware of the approach of this hurricane, a Spanish fleet of seventy-four warships, under Admiral Solano, sailed from Havana into the Gulf, to attack Pensacola. They were trapped in the eastern section of the Gulf and nineteen ships were lost. The remainder were dispersed, several having thrown their guns overboard to avoid capsizing. Nearly all the others were damaged, many dismasted. The Spanish fleet was no longer a fighting force.

Within three weeks most of the battle fleets in and around the Caribbean had been put out of commission. Both Redfield and Reid were impressed by the power displayed by these hurricanes. In his search of the records, the former succeeded in getting a copy of a letter written by a Lieutenant Archer to his mother in England, giving an account of the first of these terrible storms. The following story is condensed from Archer’s letter.

Archer was second in command of an English warship named thePhoenix. It was commanded by Sir Hyde Parker. Before the first of these three hurricanes developed, thePhoenixhad been sent to Pensacola, where the English werein control. Late in September, she sailed to rejoin the remainder of the fleet at Jamaica. On passing Havana harbor, Sir Hyde looked in and was astounded to see Solano’s Spanish fleet at anchor. He hurried around Cuba into the Caribbean, to take the news to the British fleet.

At Kingston, Jamaica, the crew of thePhoenixfound three other men-of-war lying in the harbor and they had a strong party for “kicking up a dust on shore,” with dancing until two o’clock every morning. Little did they think of what might be in store for them. Out of the four men-of-war not one was in existence four days later and not a man aboard any of them survived, except a few of the crew of thePhoenix. And what is more, the houses where the crews had been so merry were so completely destroyed that scarcely a vestige remained to show where they had stood.

On September 30, the four warships set sail for Port Royal, around the eastern end of Jamaica. At eleven o’clock on the night of October 2, it began to “snuffle,” with a “monstrous heavy appearance to the eastward.” Sir Hyde sent for Lieutenant Archer.

“What sort of weather have we, Archer?”

“It blows a little and has a very ugly look; if in any other quarter, I should say we were going to have a gale of wind.”

They had a very dirty night. At eight in the morning, with close-reefed topsails, thePhoenixwas fighting a hard blow from the east-northeast, and heavy squalls at times. Archer said he was once in a hurricane in the East Indies and the beginning of it had much the same appearance as this. The crew took in the topsails and were glad they had plenty of sea-room. On Sir Hyde’s orders, they secured all the sails with spare gaskets, put good rolling tackles on the yards, squared the booms, saw that the boats were all fast, lashed the guns, double-breeched the lower deckers, got the top-gallantmast down on the deck and, in fact, did everything to make a snug ship.

“And now,” Archer wrote, “the poor birds began to suffer from the uproar of the elements and came on board. They turned to the windward like a ship, tack and tack, and dashed themselves down on the deck without attempting to stir till picked up. They would not leave the ship.”

The carpenters were placed by the mainmast with broad axes, ready to cut it away to save the ship. Archer found the purser “frightened out of his wits” and two marine officers “white as sheets” from listening to the vibration of the lower deck guns, which were pulling loose and thrashing around. At every roll it seemed that the whole ship’s side was going.

At twelve it was blowing a full hurricane. Archer came on deck and found Sir Hyde there. “It blows terribly hard, Archer.”

“It does indeed, Sir.”

“I don’t remember its blowing so hard before,” shouted Sir Hyde, striving to get his voice above the roar of the wind. “The ship makes good weather of it on this tack but we must wear her (to turn about by putting the helm up and the stern of the boat to the wind), as the wind has shifted to the southeast and we are fast drawing up on the Coast of Cuba.”

“Sir, there is no canvas can stand against it a moment. We may lose three or four of our people in the effort. She’ll wear by manning the fire shrouds.”

“Well, try it,” said Sir Hyde, which was a great condescension for a man of his temperament to accept the advice of a subordinate. It took two hundred men to wear the ship, but when she was turned about, the sea began to run clear across the decks and she had no time to rise from one sea until another lashed into her. Some of the sails had been torn from the masts and the rest began to fly from the yards “through the gaskets like coachwhips.”

“To think that the wind could have such force!” Archer shouted into the gale.

“Go down and see what is the matter between decks,” ordered Sir Hyde in a lull.

Archer crept below and a marine officer screamed, “We are sinking. The water is up to the bottom of my cot!”

Archer yelled back, “As long as it is not over your mouth, you are well off.” He put all spare men to work at the pumps. ThePhoenixlabored heavily, with scarcely any of her above water except the quarter-deck and that seldom.

On returning, Archer found Sir Hyde lashed to a mast. He lashed himself alongside his commander and tried to hear what he was shouting. Afterward, Archer tried to describe this situation in his letter. “If I was to write forever, I could not give you an idea of it. A total darkness above and the sea running in Alps or Peaks of Teneriffe (Mountains is too common an idea); the wind roaring louder than thunder, the ship shaking her sides and groaning.”

“Hold fast,” shouted Sir Hyde as a big wave crashed into the ship. “That was an ugly sea! We must lower the yards, Archer.”

“If we attempt it, Sir, we shall lose them. I wish the mainmast was overboard without carrying anything else along with it.”

Another mountainous wave swept the trembling ship. A crewman brought news from the pump room. Water was gaining on the weary pumpers. The ship was almost on her beam-ends. Archer called to Sir Hyde, “Shall we cut the mainmast away?”

“Ay, as fast as you can,” said Sir Hyde. But just then a tremendous wave broke right on board, carried everything on deck away and filled the ship with water. The main and mizen masts went, thePhoenixrighted a little but was in the last struggle of sinking.

As soon as they could shake their heads free of the water, Sir Hyde yelled, “We are gone at last, Archer. Foundered at sea! Farewell, and the Lord have mercy on us!”

Archer felt sorry that he could swim, for he would struggle instinctively and it would take him a quarter hour longer to die than a man who could not. The quarter-deck was full of men praying for mercy. At that moment there was a great thump and a grinding under them.

Archer screamed, “Sir, the ship is ashore. We may save ourselves yet!”

Every stroke of the sea threatened dissolution of the ship’s frame. Every wave swept over her as she lay stern ashore.

Sir Hyde cried out, “Keep to the quarter-deck, my lads. When she goes to pieces that is your best chance.”

Five men were lost cutting the foremast. The sea seemed to reach for them as it took the mast overboard and they went with it. Everyone expected it would be his turn next. It was awful—the ship grinding and being torn away piece by piece. Mercifully, as if to give the crew another desperate chance, a tremendous wave carried thePhoenixamong the rocks and she stuck there, though her decks tumbled in.

Archer took off his coat and shoes and prepared to swim, but on second thought he knew it wouldn’t do. As second officer, he would have to stay with his commander and see that every man, including the sick and injured, was safely off the ship before he left it. He wrote later that he looked around with a philosophic eye in that moment and was amazed to find that those who had been the most swaggering, swearing bullies in fine weather were now the most pitiful wretches on earth, with death before them.

Finally, Archer helped two sailors off with a line which was made fast to the rocks, and most of those who had survived the storm got ashore alive, including the sick andinjured, who were moved from a cabin window by means of a spare topsail-yard.

On shore, Sir Hyde came to Archer so affected that he was scarcely able to make himself understood. “I am happy to see you ashore—but look at our poorPhoenix.” Weak and worn, the two sat huddled on the shore, silent for a quarter hour, blasted by gale and sea. Archer actually wept. After that, the two officers gathered the men together and rescued some fresh water and provisions from the wreck. They also secured material to make tents. The storm had thrown great quantities of fish into the holes in the rocks and these provided a good meal.

One of the ship’s boats was left in fair condition. In two days the carpenters repaired it, and Archer, with four volunteers, set off for Jamaica. They had squally weather and a leaky boat, but by constant baling with two buckets, they arrived at their destination next evening. Eventually, all the remainder of the crew they had left in Cuba were saved except some who died of injuries after getting ashore from thePhoenixand a few who got hold of some of the ship’s rum and drank themselves to death.

How many times this drama of death and narrow escape may have been repeated in the three great hurricanes of 1780 is not disclosed in the records. But hundreds of ships and many thousands of men were lost. And at that time no one knew the true nature of these great winds. It was not until more than fifty years had passed and Redfield and Reid examined all the reports that these tremendous gales were found to be parts of three separate hurricanes. This ignorance seems strange, for nearly three hundred years had passed since Columbus ran into his first hurricane.

As Reid worked at great length on these old records in logs and letters, he became confident that Redfield was right about the whirling nature of tropical storms. There were tenhurricanes in the West Indies in 1837 and these supplied Reid with a great deal of added information. One of the most exciting was the big hurricane in the middle of August of that year.

This was a vicious storm which was first observed by the BarqueFelicityin the Atlantic, far east of the Antilles, on August 12, 1837. The chances are that it came from the African Coast, near the Cape Verde Islands, as many of the worst of them do. By the time these faraway disturbances have crossed the Atlantic and approached the West Indies, they are usually major hurricanes, capable of wreaking great destruction. This one was no exception, but its path lay a little farther to the northward than usual and its most furious winds were not felt on land, even on the more northerly islands in the group.

Ships in its path reported winds which appeared to be of a “rotatory” nature when Reid plotted them on maps. On the fifteenth, the storm passed near Turk’s Island and on the sixteenth, was being felt on the easternmost Bahamas.

At this stage, the shipCalypsobecame involved in the storm and was unable to escape. The master, a man named Wilkinson, wrote an account to the owners, from which the following is taken:

“During the night the Winds increased, and day-light found the vessel under a close-reefed main-topsail, with royal and top-gallant-yards on deck, and prepared for a gale of wind. At 10 A.M. the wind about north-east, the lee-rail under water, and the masts bending like canes. Got a tarpaulin on the main rigging and took the main topsail in. The ship laboring much obliged main and bilge-pumps to be kept constantly going. At 6 P.M. the wind north-west, I should think the latitude would be about 27°, and longitude 77°W. At midnight the wind was west, when a sea took the quarter-boat away.

“At day-dawn, or rather I should have said the time when the day would have dawned, the wind was southwest, and a sea stove the fore-scuttle. All attempts to stop this leak were useless, for when the ship pitched the scuttle was considerably under water. I then had the gaskets and lines cut from the reefed foresail, which blew away; a new fore-topmast-studding-sail was got up and down the fore-rigging, but in a few seconds the bolt-rope only remained; the masts had then to be cut away.”

By this time the wind was even more furious and the seas so high none expected theCalypsoto survive. The master continued his story:

“My chief mate had a small axe in his berth, which he had made very sharp a few days previous. That was immediately procured; and while the men were employed cutting away the mizenmast, the lower yard-arms went in the water. It is human nature to struggle hard for life; so fourteen men and myself got over the rail between the main and mizen rigging as the mast-heads went into the water. The ship was sinking fast. While some men were employed cutting the weather-lanyards of the rigging, some were calling to God for mercy; some were stupified with despair; and two poor fellows, who had gone from the afterhold, over the cargo, to get to the forecastle, to try to stop the leak, were swimming in the ship’s hold. In about three minutes after getting on the bends, the weather-lanyards were cut fore and aft, and the mizen, main, and foremasts went one after the other, just as the vessel was going down head foremost.

“The ship hung in this miserable position, as if about to disappear (as shown in the accompanying reconstruction of the scene by an artist who worked under the direction of the master of theCalypso) and then by some miracle slowly righted herself.

“On getting on board again, I found the three masts hadgone close off by the deck. The boats were gone, the main hatches stove in, the planks of the deck had started in many places, the water was up to the beams, and the puncheons of rum sending about the hold with great violence. The starboard gunwale was about a foot from the level of the sea, and the larboard about five feet. The sea was breaking over the ship as it would have done over a log. You will, perhaps, say it could not have been worse, and any lives spared to tell the tale. I assure you, Sir, it was worse; and by Divine Providence, every man was suffered to walk from that ship to the quay at Wilmington.”

From such accounts the hurricane hunters gathered the facts which led to a better “law of storms” and made life at sea safer for the officers and men who struggled with sails and masts in tropical gales. But it is most likely that the experiences of the crews of those sailing ships that were caught in the worst sectors of fully developed hurricanes in the open sea were never told. It is not probable that any survived the calamitous weather on the right front of the storm center, where the sea, the atmosphere, the rotation of the earth, and the forward motion of the hurricane are combined in a frenzy of destructive power.

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.

“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 rainand 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.

Brandes knew that the French had set up weather stations and collected observations for maps as early as 1780, but the terrible French Revolution had brought an end to this work and the data were lying in disuse. After some delay, he obtained copies of the observations for 1783 and put them on maps. Sure enough, after he had drawn many daily maps, he saw clearly how the weather moved just as he had suspected it did from the newspaper reports. But at the same time he saw that it was hopeless. The weather moved sorapidly that there was no way of sending the reports ahead fast enough for making predictions of what was coming. The quickest way of sending the reports ahead was by horse or a good man on foot, and the weather would easily outrun them. In 1820, Brandes wrote an article about weather maps for publication and then put his maps and newspapers in the trash. But in time his idea got around the world and as the years passed more and more scientists began drawing maps and trying to predict the weather. And so it came about that the government weather services in different parts of the world were set up to predict storms of higher latitudes rather than hurricanes.

Redfield was mapping storms after 1830, but he was not trying to make weather forecasts. He wanted only to learn about hurricanes in order to give the mariner a law of storms by which he could judge the weather for himself. Nobody worried about the landlubber. It was the idea in those days that a man on land could get his weather out of an almanac or by watching the signs of the winds, clouds, birds, stars, or the rise and fall of the barometer. Scientists who believed that it would be possible to predict the ordinary changes in the weather were decidedly in the minority. One of these was James Pollard Espy, who became known as the “Old Storm King” of America.

James Espy was born in Pennsylvania, in the vicinity of Harrisburg, but his father moved the family to Kentucky while James was an infant. It has been said in biographies of Espy that the boy had no education and was seventeen years old before he learned to read, but this was denied by relatives who survived him. It seems that the elder Espy soon went to the Miami Valley in Ohio, to get established in business, and left James with an older sister in Kentucky. At eighteen James registered at Transylvania University, in Lexington, where he was much interested in science. In anyevent, at various times he was a schoolteacher in Ohio, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, until he became fully occupied in the study of weather.

In 1820, Espy joined the Franklin Institute, in Philadelphia, to teach languages and work on the weather. In an amazingly short time, he became an authority on meteorology. He was a pleasant, easygoing man, but very persistent in two matters. First, he was determined to have a government bureau established to predict storms; and, second, he disagreed with Redfield in the latter’s whirlwind theory of hurricanes. At times the two carried on a violent controversy in the press. Espy argued that the winds blow directly toward the center of a storm or toward a line through the center. He was right with respect to storms of middle and higher latitudes, as everybody knows today. He anticipated the modern idea of fronts, and he and other scientists of his day sometimes referred to these lines as “like a line of battle.” In a way, Redfield also was right, for the typical hurricane in the tropics has no fronts.

In his efforts to set up a government weather bureau, Espy was successful in a small way. In 1842, he was appointed by Congress for five years as “Meteorologist to the U. S. Government” and assigned to the Surgeon General, where he worked for five years. This rather strange appointment was due to the fact that the Surgeon General had been taking weather observations at Army posts since 1819 and had much data for study.

In the meantime, Espy had visited England and France, where he was received with honor by renowned scientific associations. On returning to the United States, he published a book,The Philosophy of Storms, in 1841. His weather maps and storm reports were now famous and by this time he was widely known as the “Old Storm King.” When his term as “Meteorologist to the U. S. Government” expired, he securedan appointment as meteorologist under the Secretary of the Navy, to work with the Smithsonian Institution, where he made an annual report to the Navy until 1852.

During these years, Espy was continually after Congress to do more about storm hunting. In Washington, he earned the title of the “Half Baked Storm Hunter” and in Congress he was known as the “Old Storm Breeder.” In 1842 he was granted hearings and members of an appropriation committee said that he was a “monomaniac” and his “organ of self-esteem was swollen to the size of a goiter.” They told him that they were not impressed just because “the French had indorsed all his crack-brained schemes.” Espy kept insisting for several years and was looked upon as a nuisance in Congress until he died in 1860, having had very little success in getting the government to do anything about it, except to give him an appointment to study the weather himself.

As it finally worked out, Congress in 1870 established a weather service, to study storms on the Great Lakes and the seacoasts of the United States. This proved to be such a tough job that, for the time being, the hurricane work, which had been neglected during and after the War between the States, was dropped into second place.

The disturbances that kept the government service busy after 1870 are those that begin in higher latitudes and move generally from west to east—the lows of the weather map—called extratropical to distinguish them from hurricanes and other tropical storms. If they were as regular in their shapes and movements as the tropical variety, the forecasting job would be much easier. But the extratropical kind takes odd forms, elongated or in the shape of a trough, sometimes with two or more centers. Their movements are irregular. Rarely does one of them become extremely violent, but there is always danger of it and so the forecasters must always be on the alert.

The English warshipEgmontin the “Great Hurricane” of 1780.

TheCalypsoin the big Atlantic hurricane of 1837, showing the crew climbing over the rail as the mastheads go into the water.

USWB—Miami Herald Staff PhotoA tremendous wave breaks against the distant seawall on Florida coast at the height of a hurricane.

Official U. S. Navy PhotographTyphoon buckles the flight deck of the aircraft carrierBenningtonand drapes it over the bow.

Wind of hurricane drive pine board (10 feet by 1 inch by 3 inches) through the tough trunk of a palm tree in Puerto Rico, September 13, 1928.

Official U. S. Navy PhotographLooking down from plane at the surface of the sea with wind of 15 knots (17 miles an hour).

Official U. S. Navy PhotographSea surface with winds of 40 knots (46 miles an hour).

Official U. S. Navy PhotographSea surface with winds of 75 knots (86 miles an hour).

Official U. S. Navy PhotographSea surface with winds of 120 knots (138 miles an hour). Tops of big waves are torn off and carried away in a white boiling sheet.

Superfortress B-29 used by Air Force for hurricane hunting.

Official U. S. Navy PhotographNeptune P2V-3W used by Navy for hurricane hunting.

Official U. S. Navy PhotographNavy crew of hurricane hunters.

Air Force PhotoAir Force crew being briefed by weather officer before flight into hurricane.

Official U. S. Navy PhotographConditions at birth of Caribbean Charlie in 1951.

In the foreground, part of a spiral squall band, an “arm of the octopus.”

Photographed by McClellan Air Force BaseThrough Plexiglas nose, weather officer sees white caps on sea 1,500 feet below.

Official U. S. Navy PhotographNavy aerologist at his station in nose of aircraft on hurricane mission.

Official Defense Department PhotographRadar operator in foreground; navigator in background.

Official Defense Department PhotographMaintenance crew goes to work on B-29 after return from hurricane mission.

USWB—Miami Daily NewsCity docks at Miami after passage of Kappler’s Hurricane in September, 1945.

Official Defense Department PhotocopyPositions of crew members in B-29 on hurricane mission.

Part of scope showing typhoon by radar. Eye is above center at right with spiral bands showing. Radar is located at center of picture with surrounding clouds showing as dense white mass due to heavy nearby echo return. Echo from opposite side of typhoon is faint.

Official U. S. Navy PhotographLooking down into the eye of Hurricane Edna (foreground) on September 7, 1954.

U. S. Air Force PhotoLooking down at the central region of Typhoon Marge in 1951.

Weather officer in nose of aircraft talking to pilot (left) and radar operator.

Official Photo U. S. A. F.The engineer in a B-29 on hurricane reconnaissance.

The two scanners ready to signal engine trouble the instant it shows up.

Official Defense Department Photograph

Official Photo U. S. A. F.

The new plane (B-50) to be used by the Air Force for hurricane reconnaissance.

Some of the most dangerous of the extratropical storms begin as small companions or secondary centers of huge disturbances, generally on the south side, where they grow rapidly in fury and merge with the original cyclones to produce winds of tremendous destructive power. This often happens in the so-called “windy corners” of the world. One of these, and a good example, is Cape Hatteras, on the eastern coast of North Carolina. It is a sort of way station for both the tropical and extratropical varieties. Hurricanes heading northwestward from the Caribbean and curving to follow the coastline, sweep over the Cape, which juts into the ocean at the point where the northward-moving storms still retain great force. In winter, big extratropical cyclones passing eastward across the region of the Great Lakes tend to produce small companions or secondaries in the southeastern states and some of them develop gales of hurricane force by the time they reach Hatteras. Here the cold air masses of the continent, guided by storm winds, are thrown against the warm, moist air from the Gulf Stream. In the reaction, there are towering seas and hazardous gales that are well known to seamen.

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 crewscould 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 andwounded 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 Reidon 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.

During the next twenty years, blizzards, hail storms, tornadoesand sudden wind storms of other kinds gave the new weather service a great deal of trouble. They brought a vivid realization of the great variety of surprises that lay in wait for the storm hunters. No sooner had they found rules for the issuance of warnings than a new kind of peril came along. The service had been in the Signal Corps of the Army, but in 1891 it was turned over to the Department of Agriculture because of its value to the farmers. The desperate struggle against storms continued, with many experienced weathermen feeling very discouraged about the whole business. And then on February 15, 1898, the Battleship Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor and war with Spain loomed on the horizon.

On April 25, the United States declared war. The Spanish fleet left the Cape Verde Islands for Cuba and American warships departed for the West Indies, to prepare the way for the movement of troops for the coming campaign in Cuba. It was June 29, however, before the transports arrived at Santiago, carrying seventeen thousand officers and men to support the United States fleet. By that time, the commanders on both sides had begun to worry about storms, for the first hurricanes had appeared as early as June in some years, bringing destructive winds and torrential rains to some parts of Cuba and the surrounding area.

Willis Moore was Chief of the Weather Bureau. He had been a sergeant in the Signal Corps, transferred when the service was put in the Department of Agriculture. He knew very well the difficulties of tracking storms and especially in the West Indies, where only scattered weather reports could be obtained by cable from some of the islands. A bad hurricane could easily sneak up on the American forces through the broad waters of the Caribbean, a predicament likely to arise if the Weather Bureau depended on cable messages from native observers.

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