Fierce gales hit the Irish Sea in late October 1859. The storm wrecked more than 200 ships, killed over 700 people, and shocked a nation reliant on the sea for its economic and military strength. Many of the dead were on the ship Royal Charter, after which the storm was named. In the aftermath, Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy of the Royal Navy became a weather prediction pioneer.
Famous as captain of the HMS Beagle when Charles Darwin was aboard, FitzRoy was already interested in science and meteorology. Historian Sarah Dry explains how FitzRoy used the storm as a catalyst to create one of the first systems of weather forecasting. His forecasts quickly became part of a weather watching network in which coastal fishermen played a key role.
Parliament had recently established the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade (Met Department), with FitzRoy as chief. But their goal was mainly data collection. Scientists hoped to use the data to understand the “laws of the weather, including laws of storms,” Dry writes. Prediction would have to come after robust theories.
Ships logged observations, and coastal stations telegraphed data to London, where the Royal Society created statistical reports. But after the Royal Charter Gale, FitzRoy urged them to stray from “the safe waters of meteorological statistics and into the much murkier realm of prognostication,” Dry explains.
FitzRoy hastily and independently began issuing forecasts in 1861. Telegraphed data arrived in the morning, and FitzRoy made quick extrapolations from his knowledge of storm theories, sending forecasts an hour later. But inaccuracies threatened to discredit the emerging field of meteorology and could leave fishermen frustratingly grounded during calm weather.
Dry argues that FitzRoy’s project to distribute barometers, which measure changes in atmospheric pressure, to fishermen limited the damage (a drop in pressure signals the arrival of a low-pressure system and a consequent forecast of wind and precipitation; high-pressure systems bring clear skies and calm—or at least lighter winds). Starting in 1858, fishermen could write to the Met Department requesting a barometer for their community. Largely illiterate, they often had to find a “local gentleman” to help, and many could not sign their own names. But soon, a tall barometer in an oak case would arrive, with instructions included.
This was originally intended to support poor but vital fishing communities. Fishermen had “no obvious place” in the Met Department’s statistical project. But as FitzRoy’s faulty forecasts began, the fishermen came to the rescue.
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“FitzRoy suggested,” Dry writes, “that the independent judgement of the fishermen could act as a corrective to the shortcomings of the forecasts.” Daily forecasts became one tool in a larger toolbox. Forecasts warned of larger weather patterns, then fishermen could make their own decisions based on the barometers and local “weather wisdom.”
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It provided autonomy and became a way for the fishermen to hone their instincts. This lowered the pressure on FitzRoy’s forecasts and cultivated connections between the scientists of London and a skeptical population. In turn, scientists tried to understand what clues gave the fishermen unique insight.
For Dry, this challenges some common ideas about the Victorian centralization of scientific institutions. “The barometer story,“ she argues, “is an example of how enhancing the individual authority of local actors could help sustain centralized liberal governance.”
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