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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
was the first to scientifically classify the different types
of cloud and to use cloud form and structure to predict
the weather outcome. He’s the chap who came up with
the Latin inspired names we are familiar with today:
cumulus (heap), stratus (something spread) and cirrus
(curl of hair). Luke Howard’s cloud classifications
inspired the German philosopher Goethe to encourage
others to adopt a more scientific approach to the study
of nature and his work also influenced the skies of the
Romantic Era artists JMW Turner and John Constable.
Indeed Turner combined Goethe’s colour theory with
Howard’s cloud studies to produce the wonderful
meteorological paintings that are always worth a trek
to Tate Britain for. Luke Howard the cloud man’s
pharmaceutical factory at one time occupied premises
at the junction of the City Mills River and the
Waterworks River in a location that is today inside the
Olympic Park at Stratford.
The Wind Man
Francis Beaufort’s life at sea didn't begin entirely as
planned. At a time when nepotism was rife within the
Royal Navy a promise by a family friend to
‘give him
standing’
which was a common practice of the 18th
century whereby a child’s name was entered into a
ship’s log, a bit like putting a boy’s name down for a
top school, turned out to have been an empty promise.
Unable to enter the Navy as an officer Beaufort went
into the Merchant Navy instead, joining an East
Indiaman at Gravesend in 1789. His first voyage was a
storm lashed one and young Beaufort was sick as a dog
but he still managed to impress his shipmates and
Captain. His father found another family friend to
speak for his boy and Beaufort entered the Royal
Navy as a midshipman (just as young Fred here in
the City & Village Tours office is hoping to do this
year). In the next few years Beaufort met Lord Elgin
of marbles fame when he escorted the Earl to
Constantinople to take up his appointment as
Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and along the
way he met Lord Nelson too. But lacking strong
family connections his naval career was a frustrating
one and despite being an excellent officer he saw
many a man his seagoing inferior but social superior
promoted above him. But in 1805 his luck changed
and he was given command of HMS Woolwich
lying at Deptford. It was by no means a glamorous
or prestigious command, HMS Woolwich was but a
stores ship and to his chagrin he was busy sailing
backwards and forwards to the Isle of Wight for
supplies while Nelson was dying so gloriously on
The Victory at The Battle of Trafalgar, but it was a
command. This was a time when ship’s officers
routinely made daily weather observations. He
didn’t invent the method of measuring wind speed
or the instruments used, but like Howard with his
clouds, Beaufort came up with a standard scale with
thirteen classes from zero to 12 based not on wind
speed measurements but rather the effects of the
wind on the sails of a Royal Navy man-of-war.
Many others had dabbled with wind scales, among
Luke Howard, the cloud man’s factory in Stratford