Time to simplify the Beaufort Scale?

John Savage argues that the empirical measure needs an update

- JOHN SAVAGE

Sailors tend to understand the basics of the Beaufort Scale, but how many of us know it verbatim? And that is the problem. How many of us actually know the scale or could quote it from memory? The Beaufort Scale is a wonder of meteorological description, but it is not easy to recall and, more importantly, it is difficult to teach making it just another obscure sailing eccentricity for novice sailors to learn.

Have you ever been sailing and thought that 11 knots does not really feel like the same sailing condition as 16 knots, or that while you like the Beaufort Scale, you cannot remember the limits of each force, so you just use the knots reading from the wind gauge in the log book? If so, you are not alone, and what is more, you are not to blame either-history is. Having had these same thoughts, I did some research and found an old, contrary mistake.

Created in 1805 by Francis Beaufort (later Admiral Beaufort) while serving aboard HMS Woolwich, the Beaufort Scale was devised as a way of describing wind speed. Initially, it used descriptive terms, such as:

0 Calm

1 Faint air, just not Calm

2 Light airs

3 Light breeze

all the way up to

11 Hard gale

12 Hard gale with gusts

13 Storm