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Maria Edgeworth was born in 1768. She was the eldest daughter of the first wife of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, an eccentric but scientifically talented landlord of large estates in Co. Longford. Maria, as we know, wrote many successful novels, the best known being “Castle Rackrent”.
Although never placed in the first rank of 19th century writers, Maria achieved a high reputation in her day, counting among her admirers Byron, McCauley and Sir Walt Scott, who always referred to her as “the great Maria”. She died 155 years ago, on May 22nd 1849. |
The relevance of Maria Edgeworth to Weather Eye, however, lies in the family connection with Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, he who devised the Beaufort Scale. Maria’s father was singularly unlucky with his wives: he lost three in quick succession, and in 1797 took unto himself a fourth, who was Fanny Beaufort, Francis Beaufort’s sister. Then in 1838, to cement the bond between the tribes, Beaufort himself, by now a widower, married Edgeworth’s daughter Honora, half-sister of Maria. The latter thus became Beaufort’s sister-in-law, as well as the step-niece she had been already.
Beaufort was a little younger than Maria Edgeworth, having been born in Navan in 1774. He began his naval career at the age of 14, and in the course of his many voyages was struck by the difficulties caused by the lack of a standard method for assessing wind-speed.
Terms such as “light airs”, “stiff breezes” and “half gales” were in common use among the maritime community, but they had no universally accepted meanings, and mis-understandings and ambiguities were rife. His response was the Beaufort Scale of Wind Force, a first version of which he devised in 1806.
Beaufort approached the problem scientifically. He decided that each range in the scale needed to be assessed against a well-known standard, in much the same way as a standard unit might be used to determine the length of a familiar object. He selected as his ‘standard’ the typical full-rigged man-of-war of the British navy, and his scale described the effect of the wind on such a vessel - and in particular the amount of sail it could carry in high winds without getting into trouble.
The usefulness of Beaufort’s Scale lay in the fact that it assessed the force of the wind, and not its speed - the measurement of the latter being virtually impossible at the time with any accuracy.
The other big advantage enjoyed by the Beaufort Scale was that its originator in due course became Hydrographer to the Royal Navy, and was thus in a position, in December 1838, to ensure that his scale became the standard measure of wind strength on all British naval vessels. It has survived for over a century and a half with mere cosmetic changes. |
