The Beaufort Scale: The Poetic British Way of Measuring What Happens at Sea
Suzanne enlightens Muriel about the Beaufort Scale and explores the remarkable story of its creator, hydrographer Francis Beaufort, who went to sea as a boy, was shipwrecked in the Far East, took part in Napoleonic sea battles against the French and in 1805 devised a brilliant empirical scale full of poetic language to evoke the changeable quality of the wind and its effect on the sails of a ship and the surface of the sea. How should one assess a breeze, a gale, a hurricane and learn to survive at sea without Beaufort's system, which even the French adopted? Daniel Defoe guest stars…
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