It's a long time since I had made a reading note in this category. Lack of time, or lack of discovery ? I once again found a real literary enthusiasm when I read this excellent book by Raymond Reding : " Beaufort, The Admiral of the Wind ”.
Like any sailor that complies, I know the Beaufort scale since my first legs in sailing school, but, shame on me, I had never tried to find out more about this famous Francis Beaufort ! Raymond Reding, went like me through Les Glénans Sailing school, finally fills this lamentable lacuna with the greatest happiness.
Both biography and adventure story, his book will "recognize the part of the legacy left by Francis Beaufort to mariners of our time", as he expresses in his prologue. He invites us to "a maritime adventure, geographic, A journey through time and space, the vastness of the oceans" as Francis Beaufort crossed during his long life.
Embarqued in 14 years old on a merchant ship as aspiring trainee at captain's service, he will pursue a long and labored career in the Royal Navy. Passionate about astronomy and cartography, Initiated since his teenage years in the handling of sextants, chronometers and other measuring instruments for which he demonstrates a certain disposition, he produced throughout his sailing journeys an immense work of maritime cartography that will be later the Hydrographic Service of the British Admiralty which he will head decades later.
His multiple embarkations in the sailing navy also led him to question the strength of the wind and atmospheric phenomena of which nothing was known in his time. He developed the visionary idea of collecting all the meticulous records of the observations made all over the world by the ships of the Royal Navy, in order to establish wind maps that should make it possible to understand the phenomena that cause them. In 1806, He takes up the idea of a wind scale sketched out by several predecessors, and refines it by quantifying the strength of the wind on thirteen levels by the successive sail reductions that it imposes on the ship as it increases. But its scale was not introduced until 1829 to the Royal Navy, and it was only ten years later that it was imposed by the Admiralty on all units of the Royal Navy. And it was only at the International Meteorological Conference of 1853 the international reference for estimating wind strength. Beaufort was then seventy-nine years old !
The turbulent account of Francis Beaufort's career also spans the no less turbulent times of Europe, from the French Revolution until the Napoleonic wars. Raymond Reding gives us some, for once, A well-documented view from the British perspective. A historical reminder that fills me for the inadequacies of a whimsical schooling.
A fascinating book, informative, essential to the general culture of the yachtsman that I am. It is never too late…
The author :
Surgeon in Brussels, Professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, member of the Royal Academy of Medicine, Passionate about navigation and maritime history.