Part 9

It was July, 1853, when the Tsar, Nicholas I, mobilized his armies. As his first overt act, he occupied the part of Turkey which lay north of the Danube River. Soon afterward, the Russian fleet destroyed a Turkish squadron in the Black Sea. Now the Tsar became more cautious because of the threat of action by England and France, and especially because of indications that Russia's ally, Austria, would desert her. The Tsar took no further action. Now it required a long time in those days to get a campaign under way, and it was a whole year later, July, 1854, when the allies were ready to start the invasion of the Crimean Peninsula. Meanwhile, Russia had withdrawn her troops from Turkey and there was no real cause for conflict. But tempers had flared, the vast machinery of war had been put in motion, and the allies drew stubbornly nearer to disaster. They knew quite well that the time might be too short to finish the campaign before the bitterly cold weather of the Russian winter would creep out over the Peninsula. In fact, the Tsar had said that his best generals were January and February, and that remark should have carried ample warning.

Actually, the allied attack began in September, 1854. The British had taken possession of the harbor at Balaclava and, in the beginning, the invasion seemed to promise success. But in October the heroic but ill-fated "Charge of the Light Brigade," made immortal by Tennyson, marked the turning point. It was clear then that the campaign would have to be resumed in the spring of 1855. By November, cold weather had arrived, land action had ceased, and the allies were faced with the problem they had hoped so earnestly to avoid--that of keeping their fighting forces intact during winter in a hostile climate.

To understand the dire predicament of the allies when the big storm struck, it is important to note that the harbor at Balaclava had proved to be too small for a supply base. Many ships had to be anchored outside and there was delay and confusion in moving in and out of the harbor. Not only was there a difficult supply problem but the sick and wounded were being transported across the Black Sea to Scutari, near Constantinople, where hospital conditions were abominable. By October, the plight of the army had become a scandal in England. Florence Nightingale was sent to Scutari with authority over all the nurses and a guarantee of co-operation from the medical staff. She arrived on November 4. The remainder of her story is well known as one of the bright pages of history.

Now the stage was set for catastrophe. An obscure winter storm blew its way across Europe without anything happening until its southern center crossed the Black Sea, on November 14. Suddenly, as secondaries often do, it came to life. There was rain turning to snow as the disturbance burst forth in gales of hurricane force. The congestion grew while the signs of the storm intensified. The ghostly mountains around Balaclava disappeared in the gloom, the near-by shore lines next were blotted out, and impenetrable darkness settled down on the shuddering and grinding of the battered remnants of the helpless fleet. Wreckage was strewn along the coast and around the harbor. All the men-of-war survived, although damaged, but nearly all of the vessels with essential stores were lost.

Misery, disease, and horror followed during the bitter winter. The death rate in the hospitals reached forty-two per cent in February. Meanwhile, in France, Napoleon III received news of the terrible gales at Balaclava and brooded over the catastrophe. He determined to learn where this deadly storm had originated, the path it followed, and to set up a plan for tracking and predicting others of its kind in the future. And so he called in the famous astronomer Leverrier and asked him to carry out the investigation.

Urbain Leverrier, then forty-three years old, was known throughout the world as the discoverer of the planet Neptune, in 1846. He knew of the works of Redfield and Reid on hurricanes and by 1854 had noted the efforts of other Americans and Britishers to track extratropical storms. With their ideas in mind, he called on scientists in all European countries to send him observations of the weather on the days from November 12 to 16, preceding and following the day of the disaster at Balaclava. Information moved slowly between countries in those days and, though many scientists co-operated, it was February, 1855, before Leverrier had gathered the data he needed. In developing his plan, he was encouraged by the invention and spread of the electric telegraph in the United States, and he hoped that the extension of lines in Europe would provide fast-moving messages for his purpose.

Before the end of February, Leverrier handed his report to Napoleon III and recommended that a system of weather messages and of issuing warnings be established at once. The Emperor approved this within twenty-four hours. Soon the French government was mapping the weather and looking for storms. The British followed suit. Already Joseph Henry, in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, was trying a similar plan, but it was not until February, 1870, that the Congress of the United States appropriated funds and established a government weather service in the Signal Corps of the Army.

The immediate reason for this legislation in the United States was similar to that in France. At that time there was a rapidly growing commerce on the Great Lakes, but storm disasters were all too frequent. In 1869, nearly two thousand vessels were beached or sunk by gales on the Lakes. On the seacoasts, the situation was almost equally bad. The new service was soon in operation. The first storm warning by the United States government was sent out in November, 1870.

During the next twenty years, blizzards, hail storms, tornadoes and sudden wind storms of other kinds gave the new weather service a great deal of trouble. They brought a vivid realization of the great variety of surprises that lay in wait for the storm hunters. No sooner had they found rules for the issuance of warnings than a new kind of peril came along. The service had been in the Signal Corps of the Army, but in 1891 it was turned over to the Department of Agriculture because of its value to the farmers. The desperate struggle against storms continued, with many experienced weathermen feeling very discouraged about the whole business. And then on February 15, 1898, the Battleship Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor and war with Spain loomed on the horizon.

On April 25, the United States declared war. The Spanish fleet left the Cape Verde Islands for Cuba and American warships departed for the West Indies, to prepare the way for the movement of troops for the coming campaign in Cuba. It was June 29, however, before the transports arrived at Santiago, carrying seventeen thousand officers and men to support the United States fleet. By that time, the commanders on both sides had begun to worry about storms, for the first hurricanes had appeared as early as June in some years, bringing destructive winds and torrential rains to some parts of Cuba and the surrounding area.

Willis Moore was Chief of the Weather Bureau. He had been a sergeant in the Signal Corps, transferred when the service was put in the Department of Agriculture. He knew very well the difficulties of tracking storms and especially in the West Indies, where only scattered weather reports could be obtained by cable from some of the islands. A bad hurricane could easily sneak up on the American forces through the broad waters of the Caribbean, a predicament likely to arise if the Weather Bureau depended on cable messages from native observers.

Moore carried his worries to James Wilson, Secretary of Agriculture, who decided that they should go to the President. At the White House, they soon had an audience with McKinley, and Wilson presented the case. Moore had maps, charts and data on hurricanes and the disasters they had caused in the West Indies. Also, he had sketched a plan for a cordon of storm hunters on islands around the Caribbean, to protect the American fleet. He said that armadas had been defeated, not by the enemy, but by the weather. He thought it probable that as many warships had been sent to the bottom by storms as by the fire of the enemy. The President listened respectfully at first, then with impatience at the lengthy discussion. He had made up his mind. Interrupting Moore, he got up, sat on the corner of his desk and declared:

"Wilson, I am more afraid of a West Indian hurricane than I am of the entire Spanish Navy. Get this service started at the earliest possible moment."

Moore ventured to say, "Yes, indeed, Mr. President, but the Weather Bureau will need the authority of Congress to organize a weather service on foreign soil."

The President told Wilson: "Report to Chairman Cannon of the Appropriations Committee at once. They are preparing a bill to give me all necessary powers to conduct the war and this authority can be included."

It was soon done. As a part of the plan, a fast cruiser was stationed at Key West, to carry the news to the fleet immediately, in case the Weather Bureau predicted a hurricane. In that event, the fleet might have abandoned the blockade, to get sea room and avoid the center of the storm.

With this authority, the Weather Bureau moved swiftly to station men and equipment on the islands. Letters had to be written to European countries for permission to send observers into their possessions. But although the bill containing the authority only passed Congress on July 7, observers arrived as follows: July 21--Kingston, Santiago, Trinidad, San Domingo, St. Thomas; August 11--Barranquilla; August 12--Barbados; August 18--St. Kitts; August 29--Panama.

Land fighting continued in the West Indies until August 12, but the Spanish fleet was destroyed on the morning of July 3. They made a desperate effort to escape from the harbor at Santiago, were shelled by American warships, and all were disabled or beached. Up to that time there had been no tropical disturbances in the region. A small one hit near Tampa on August 3. Another small but vicious hurricane swept the coast of Georgia on August 31. The first big one of the 1898 season raked Barbados, St. Vincent and St. Lucia on September 10 to 11, and disappeared east of the Bahamas.

The stations set up by the storm hunters in 1898 formed the backbone of the hurricane warning service which exists today as a greatly improved system, including squadrons of aircraft that fly into tropical storms to obtain essential data for the forecasters. Before storm hunting could be operated on a practical basis, however, it was necessary to find new means of communication. Dependence on messages by cable from scattered islands was not good enough.

5. RADIO HELPS--THEN HINDERS

"Make it clear that I would veto the bill again." --F. D. R.

In the 1930's there was a strange turn of affairs in hurricane hunting. It had long been the purpose to keep ships out of trouble, first by giving the mariner a law of storms and then by sending warnings by radio. One morning in August, 1932, an indignant citizen came into a Weather Bureau office on the Gulf Coast and wanted to know where the hurricane was. The weatherman told him that there were no ship reports in the area but the center seemed to be somewhere in the central Gulf.

"What's the matter with the radio reports from boats?" he asked.

"Because of the warnings we issued yesterday, all the ships got out of the area and apparently there are no ships close enough this morning to do any good," the weatherman explained.

"Say, what kind of a deal is this?" demanded the citizen. "The only way we can tell where the center is located is to get radio reports from boats out there and you fellows chase all the boats away from the storm."

"Well, that's our business," replied the Weather Bureau man in astonishment. "We are required by law to give warnings to shipping."

"I don't see it. I'm going to write to my Congressman and to the White House, if necessary, to get this straightened out. What we ought to do is send boats out there to give reports when we need them," was the final declaration by the citizen who had one time been a shipmaster himself. And he did write to Congress and the White House. Others joined him. The argument over legislation began.

Long before the use of radio on shipboard, the location, intensity, and movement of hurricanes over the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf, and along the coasts and between the islands in the West Indies had been judged by careful observations of the wind, sea and sky. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the storm hunters had become quite expert at it. Among the best were the Jesuits in the West Indies and in the Far East. They watched the high clouds moving out in advance of the tropical storm, the sea swells that are stirred up by the big winds and travel rapidly ahead, and, finally, as the storm center drew near, they studied the winds in the outer edges when they began to be felt locally. One of the pioneers in this work in the West Indies was Father Benito Viñes, at Havana. He began giving out warnings as early as 1875 and by the end of the century was an authority on the precursory signs of hurricanes, both for land observers and for men on shipboard. By that time many of the Weather Bureau men along the coasts had become experts and, after the Spanish War, they began work on the islands in the West Indies.