Gale Force 10: The Life and Legacy of Admiral Beaufort

224 pages

Capt. M. K. Barritt

This is a welcome reprint of a fine life story, first published under Hodder Headline’s Review banner in 2002. It was perhaps brave of Nicholas Courtney, albeit an acclaimed biographer, to make this venture into the maritime world. For the American journalist Alfred Friendly had produced a definitive work in 1977, revealing the content of the treasure trove of the Beaufort Collection in the Huntingdon Library, California, and catching attention with revelations that would have been left cloaked in earlier, more sensitive times. Friendly was assisted in the UK by Lieutenant Commander Andew David, whose unrivalled command of the archives of the Hydrographic Office provided more rich material. Courtney ranged through the same archives and sought advice from the next generation of Royal Naval hydrographic specialists. It is a pleasure to testify that both biographies fill out a picture of a key figure in 19th century Britain, and draw out, from his extensive letters and other papers, invaluable insights into the navy in which he served.

The reviews which are included as endorsements in this reprint pick out the author’s narrative skill. The pace and colour that carry a reader along are evident from the outset in the vignette in the Prologue. As in numerous other instances, this is based on his own careful research, and perhaps a judicious touch of imagination. He exploits to great effect what might seem an obscure event, namely the dedication of a tiny mission church on the banks of the Thames. Here I must declare an interest. The chapel was built in memory of Beaufort, and now I discovered that the main speech on the occasion was delivered by the original owner of my copy of Beaufort’s famous book Karamania, which is inscribed “Presented to Edward Augustus Inglefield – Captain in the Royal Navy By his faithful friend The Author.”

Beaufort’s renowned survey of the southern coast of Turkey, then known as Karamania, forms a centrepiece to any account of his life. The handling in this book confirms the author’s gifts: an unfailing, shrewd instinct for compelling incident and colourful scene, whilst weaving in accessible explanation of the hydrographic techniques of the period. A judicious choice of some of the engravings from Beaufort’s book help us to grasp the infectious enthusiasm spawned amongst his people as they came upon more and more survivals from the ancient world. These in-text illustrations have benefitted from the increase in size of this reprint. Sadly, the centre block of illustrations has had to be reproduced in black and white. The one conspicuous gap in the apparatus for this book is the lack of a map to accompany this key section of the narrative.

The family background and education behind Beaufort’s own accomplishments and wide interests are covered well. Courtney is especially good at tracing the training, encouragement and experience which would fit him for the post of Hydrographer. He notes the regular purchase of instruments and books, and the eager practice of astronomy. Whilst not entering into detail, he records the survey work in Woolwich in the Indian Ocean and the River Plate which earned praise from other skilled practitioners and the notice of Alexander Dalrymple, the first Hydrographer to the Board of Admiralty. Along the way we see the emergence of the eponymous wind scale, reflected in the author’s title. We are left in no doubt, however, that Beaufort was a front-line warfare officer. He carried the wounds to confirm it. He was a veteran of the battle of the First of June, leaving worthwhile insights into some of the commanders. Careful allowance is made for the spin which Beaufort might put on his encounters with authority, and we are left with a clear picture of how political interest could outweigh merit and delay that vital step up to post rank.

As he braces himself to cover the decades of Beaufort’s remarkable incumbency as Hydrographer, Courtney repeats the familiar tale of an earlier biographer recoiling as he took stock of ‘the huge canvas’. Beaufort’s capacity for work and his consequent engagement in so many aspects of national affairs were still apparent in the contents of my in-tray in the Hydrographic Department (Whitehall) in the 1990s. Here the political and military context is handled well, apart perhaps from too ready acceptance of some contemporary accounts of the 1820s and the ‘malign’ influence of the First Secretary, John Wilson Croker. There is a welcome geographical span, without disproportionate space allotted to the famous Arctic campaign to find the Northwest Passage, even though it is given one of the only two maps in the book. The other map, borrowed without acknowledgment from Admiral Steve Ritchie’s The Admiralty Chart, illustrates the ‘Grand Survey of the British Isles’, which is given due prominence. Once again in these chapters the author paints a clear picture of process, with a felicitous selection of one survey campaign to which he returns periodically to illustrate every stage from the issue of instructions through to the receipt of results.

It was a particular pleasure to come back to this biography because it bears out a characteristic of Francis Beaufort that endeared him to his surveyors and attracts the admiration of those like me who have followed in his footsteps. His was a generous, almost fatherly disposition. His anguish at the deaths of skilled practitioners such as William Hewett, lost in Fairy in a storm off the Suffolk coast, and his care for their families, is legendary. When Hewett’s death was followed too soon by that of Michael Slater, Beaufort wrote: “no man stood higher in my estimation as a gentleman – an officer – and a surveyor –  to the most minute accuracy he united the most persevering resolution in surmounting every difficulty – and above all other qualities he shewed in every case that scrupulous integrity and truth which stamped such peculiar value on all his work. … I do indeed most deeply and unaffectedly lament his almost irremediable loss…” Beaufort’s criticism of work was balanced with an appreciation of difficulties and invariably bore fruit in sustained meritorious service. Edward Inglefield had experienced that support as a commander in the Arctic. Little wonder that, now an admiral, in that speech by the Thames he recalled “an old brother officer, a great friend, and a gallant admiral, a man whom I had learned to esteem more than anyone on earth.”