The Wreck of the Kent (Part 4): Weather Watching

For previous segments, see: Part 1 (the bottle), Part 2 (the letters) or Part 3 (the map).

"Sad, Sloppy Weather" by James Gillray (1808), Art Institute of Chicago

At the beginning of the 18thC, when people wrote about weather they focused on meteors. The word “meteor” in this context didn’t necessarily mean a rock falling from outer space (though it could be), but any strange aerial phenomenon: violent storms, fireball lightning, luminous mists, etc.. In previous centuries such phenomena were interpreted as omens. To study the weather at the beginning of the eighteenth century was to study meteors: to be, in short a meteorologist.

As the century progressed, Britons enamored of new scientific theories obsessively watched the weather, often recording daily fluctuations in wind and temperature in “weather diaries.” Some did so because they were hoping to arrive at a better understanding of the rules governing weather, but many believed there was a strong relationship between the weather and their health. Rainy climates like Britain were thought to cause anxiety and sadness, so much so that depression was referred to as “the English disease” in Europe. Dr. George Cheyne, for example, argued in 1733 that England’s high suicide rate should be attributed to the “moisture” of its air and the “variableness” of its weather.

A weather diary covering the years 1756 to 1761, from the BBC.

So far, this may sound fairly close to modern science: Seasonal Affective Disorder is felt by many people around the world, while cloudy weather contributes to Vitamin D deficiencies and therefore to disorders like rickets . However, in an era in which people still subscribed to humoralism – the belief that the body was composed of four “humours” that determined one’s personality -- the weather could have more profound effects. In some weather diaries, as Jan Golinski has observed, diarists recorded their emotions at different times in the day – even the fluctuations in their libido! – to keep track of weather's effect on their personality.

While usable weather forecasting would have to wait for the invention of the telegraph, 19thC Britons did what they could to stay abreast of changing weather conditions, by observing the weather themselves, or by using new technologies. My favorite 19thC weather forecasting device was the Tempest Prognosticator -- a weather forecasting device that used leeches to predict the approach of storms. According to its inventor, the blood-sucking worms would by prompted by a change in atmospheric conditions to climb up a tube and trigger the ringing of a bell.

A replica of the leech-driven Tempest Prognosticator. If you like the look of this device, you're probably not a leech.

Weather – in particular air quality – continued to be seen as having an effect on health. In an era where the fastest form of travel was a sailing ship, it also had a significant effect on transportation.

All of this is to say that, when the weather started to change, the passengers on board the Kent paid attention. At first, Joanna was not alarmed at entering the Bay of Biscay. Her party had been told that the bay “might be crossed in two days with a favorable wind”. Soon, however, she noticed that “the roll of the vessel [had] increased considerably”, making it harder for her to walk. When the ship’s company assembled on deck for a funeral, Joanna began to record the weather in detail, noting that the “sky was of green misty appearance” and that the wind “felt mild and warm... being from the Southwest”. Turning her attention to the funeral, Joanna watched as the first of two small coffins were lowered into the rising waves. They were for two “infants [who] had died since we came on board” – an unfortunately common occurrence on ocean voyages. As the first coffin disappeared, the child’s mother – one of the solder’s wives – started crying out in grief. Elizabeth, herself a new mother, was “much affected." Joanna tried to comfort her sister, but she sensed that the ship’s atmosphere had – literally and metaphorically – altered.

For the next few days, the gale pounded the Kent. Elizabeth and Joanna discovered that it was safer for them to stay seated on the cabin floor. Nevertheless, when Duncan invited Joanna to view the sea, she accompanied him outside, creeping past a port hole through which the sea looked “like a high wall over which the ship rose and fell.” There were only a few sailors visible on the deck, and they were tied to their stations, to help them keep their footing. Joanna was less versed in meteorology than her male companion, but she had received a Regency gentlewoman’s training in social interaction. “I usually studied the countenances of the sailors as my barometer,” she noted gloomily, and “certainly could gather no good omen from them that day.”