Seafarers, aviators and chronic insomniacs are familiar with the Beaufort Scale, the empirical measure of wind force so soothingly delivered on the Shipping Forecast . It was developed on board HMS Woolwich by its then commander, Irish-born Francis Beaufort (1774-1857).

Beaufort’s first seafaring position was as a cabin boy aged 14 on the East Indiaman Vansittart , soon learning the value of accurate charts when she hit a shoal off Indonesia and was wrecked. In 1790, he joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman, even then ‘expand[ing] his journal from the required notation of the weather every 12 to 24 hours to reports of it at two-hour intervals’. From then on, until three days before his death aged 83, he kept a daily weather journal, with notations of wind, temperature and barometric

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