BAMOS Sep 2020
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Captain James Cook in 1776 . Image : painted by Nathaniel Dance‐Holland , 1735 – 1811 , National Maritime Museum , Greenwich , UK .
The logs of Captain Cook and others of his crew have been of topical interest in this 250th anniversary of the voyage of the Endeavour along the East Australian coast . They are available on line through several libraries , for example :
http :// southseas . nla . gov . au / index _ voyaging . html . The descriptions of wind strength in the formal ship ’ s log and journals kept by Cook and others show that they were in a period of ambiguity regarding the use of the word ' gale '.
As one example , as they departed New Zealand on 31 March 1770 , Cook records :
With this view at daylight in the morning we got under sail and put to sea having the advantage of a fresh gale at SE and clear weather .
Joseph Banks in his journal has :
We this morn weighed and sailed with a fair breeze of wind inclined to fall in with Van Diemen ’ s Land as near as possible to the place where Tasman left it .
Parkinson , the botanical illustrator employed by Banks , in his journal describes the wind as a ' fine breeze '.
On 20 April 1770 after they had made landfall on the Australian coast and started sailing northwards they sighted three waterspouts . The ship ’ s log records the weather as " fresh gales and cloudy with passing squalls and small rains ". Cook ’ s journal is similar : " a fresh gale westerly with squalls attended with showers of rain ". Banks and Parkinson call it ' a brisk breeze '.
Banks and Parkinson were not experienced seamen . Cook and the ship ’ s log are generally consistent but occasionally disagree at times on whether it is a ' gale ' or a ' breeze ', or whether it is a ' strong gale ' or a ' hard gale '. The latter two terms seem to be closer to current day use of the word ' gale ' and these gales required much shortening of the sails . One graphic description from Cook as they approached the New Holland coast at night , unsure of how close they were to land , was :
" Winds southerly a hard gale with heavy squalls attended with showers of rain and a great sea from the same quarter … At 6 o ’ clock the gale increased to such a height as to oblige us to take in the Fore topsail and Main sail and run under Foresail and Mizzen all night sounding every 2 hours but found no ground with 120 fathoms ".
Tracing the term gale back further , the poet Francis Quarles , ( 1592 – 1644 ) had written " In a fair gale , every fool may sail ", meaning a light wind as in the quote from Handel opera above .
As far back as 1704 , Daniel Defoe had become frustrated with vagueness in the words used to describe wind strengths . His proposed " Table of Degrees " had several levels of gale — increasing in strength after a ' fine breeze ' were : ' small gale ', ' fresh gale ', ' top‐sail gale ', ' blows fresh ', ' hard gale ' etc .
The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) lists various meanings of ' gale ' and documents the evolution of the term . It notes the use in poetic and rhetorical language to denote a gentle breeze . Its most recent quotation with that meaning was in 1871 . The OED also notes a different use of ' gale ' as a " vehicle for the transport of odours ".
However , the first meaning of gale listed by the OED is for " a wind of considerable strength ". The first quantitative definition was from a J . Robertson in 1772 who suggested " A common brisk gale is about 15 miles an hour ( 13 knots )". This may have been the definition Cook had in mind for the lowest wind speed he listed as a gale . He seems to have used adjectives such as fresh , strong and hard when he wanted to convey increases beyond that .
Despite the formal adoption of the Beaufort scale by meteorological agencies the OED cites the Westmoreland Gazette in 1899 as advising its readers that " A gale is not a gale until it has reached Force 7 on the Beaufort scale , though many people lightly class all heavy winds as gales ".
Use of the term ' gale ' typifies a general problem of communication when a commonly used word is adopted for a specific application . Other weather‐related problem examples have been the use of the term ' fine ' or the distinction among rain , showers and drizzle . The evolution of the meaning of ' gale ' during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries shows how words change in meaning ( as do the hair styles and wigs in the portraits ). The journals from the Endeavour were written in this period of transition , often making it difficult to estimate quantitatively the wind speed they were experiencing . However , the journals themselves often vividly describe the impact on the ship and give a real insight into their experience of the weather in this pioneering voyage .