ملاحظات على الفصول
(١) سجل السفينة
For historical background on the metrics of
weather applied by observers at sea, I looked first to Scott Huler’s Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale, and How a 19th-Century
Admiral Turned Science into Poetry (New York: Three Rivers Press,
2004). Verification of basic scientific parameters (in this and subsequent
chapters) came primarily from Donald Ahrens and Robert Henson’s Meteorology Today: An Introduction to Weather, Climate, and
the Environment, 12th edition (Boston: Cengage, 2019) and
Reeds Maritime Meteorology, 4th edition,
by Maurice Cornish and Elaine Ives (London: Bloomsbury, 2019). The details of
weather’s moving parts—waves, fronts, and mesoscale features like the sting jet
that overtook Captain Jay Amster on the Robert C.
Seamans in 2019—were largely resolved in the twentieth century
and are often best explored in journal accounts from the researchers themselves
(see Selected Articles). The image of grain ships thundering east across the
Southern Ocean is a universal one in maritime mythology, but for a tale of
actual events I have found few more compelling than Basil Lubbock’s The Last of the Windjammers, volume 1 (Glasgow:
Brown, Son, and Ferguson, 1927), written in a time when square rig sailors were
still a regular part of the working waterfront populace.
(٢) المبادئ الأولى
Technical discussions in this chapter are
supported by information from the texts named in Chapter One, along with
material from W. L. Ferrel’s The Motions of Fluids and
Solids Relative to the Earth’s Surface (New York: Ivison,
Phinney, 1860)—a mixed volume of dense mathematics and predicted atmospheric
behavior, all miraculously derived before the election of Abraham
Lincoln.
It is hard to set sail in the Pacific without
considering the trails left—for better or worse—by Captain James Cook and his
many followers. As re-markable as Cook’s navigational feats were, they may have
been equaled by his skills as a diarist, and anyone wanting a real-time
narrative need only procure a copy of his recounting, The Journals of Captain Cook. On my bookshelf is the 1999
Penguin paperback edition, edited by Philip Edwards. My own perspectives as a
foreign mariner in today’s Pacific were also influenced by several readings of
Tony Horwitz’s Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where
Captain Cook Has Gone Before (New York: Picador, 2002)—a nuanced
and often humorous journey into the legacies of colonialism, for both colonists
and the colonized.
(٣) غابة السُّحُب
In tandem with a review of clouds and their
meteorology, my discussions of sudden wind events and their threat to sailing
ships are much informed by the work of Captain Daniel Parrott in Tall Ships Down: The Last Voyages of the Pamir,
Albatross, Marques, Pride of Baltimore, and
Maria Asumpta (Camden, ME: International Marine, 2003). There are few prospects
more frightening to a sailor than the thought of having your ship blown down
and
sunk, and I am grateful to those among my colleagues who have been willing to
share their own difficult stories with the hope of fostering safer outcomes in
the future. (See Selected Articles.)
(٤) الإعصار الأفعواني
This chapter owes much credit to Peter Moore’s
The Weather Experiment: The Pioneers Who Sought to
See the Future (London: Vintage, 2015), for information on the
early conceptualization of cyclones among nineteenth-century mariners and
scientists. The remarkable emergence of quantitative meteorology under the
Norwegians is described in Robert Marc Friedman’s Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the Construction of a
Modern Meteorology (New York: Cornell University Press, 1989),
and uniquely summarized in Jacob Bjerknes’s original monograph on wave cyclones
from 1926 (see Selected Articles). For discussions of maneuvering a ship under
threat from a tropical cyclone—and Captain Phil Sacks’s successful evasion of
Hurricane Frances aboard the schooner Westward in 1992—I turned to Auxiliary
Sail Vessel Operations for the Professional Sailor, 2nd edition,
by Captain G. Andy Chase (Centreville, MD: Cornell Maritime Press, 2016). The
inherent risks of crossing a hurricane track at sea are revisited by Captain
Chase in his article “Lessons of the BOUNTY”
(see Selected Articles).
(٥) قبة السماء الواسعة
My own education in the remarkable
accomplishments of Pacific navigators is owed in no small part to Christina
Thompson for her recent book, Sea People: The Puzzle of
Polynesia (London: William Collins, 2019). Also valuable were
Andrew Crowe’s Pathway of the Birds: The Voyaging
Achievements of Māori and Their Polynesian Ancestors (Honolulu:
University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018) and Sam Low’s Hawaiki
Rising: Hōkūle’a, Nainoa Thompson, and
the Hawaiian Renaissance (Honolulu: Island Heritage Publishing,
2013). One of America’s present experts on wayfinding is in fact a particle
physicist by trade, and I thank Dr. John Huth of Harvard University for both
his
book—The Lost Art of Finding Our Way
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2013)—and his
enthusiastic collaboration during my time with the SEA Education Association
of
Woods Hole. It was also during my SEA voyages that I had the good fortune to
sail briefly with Captain Ka‘iulani Murphy and some of her fellow navigators
at
Hawai‘i’s Polynesian Voyaging Society, modern stewards of an ancient
art.
(٦) السفينة الأم
For stories of early marine meteorology and its
founding practitioners— Beaufort, FitzRoy, Redfield, and the like—I again credit
Peter Moore’s The Weather Experiment.
Discussions of modern forecasting were informed by Andrew Blum’s The Weather Machine (New York: Ecco, 2019) and a
monograph by longtime National Weather Service scientist Dr. Harry R. (Bob)
Glahn: The United States Weather Service: The First 100
Years (Rockville, MD: Pilot Imaging, 2012). A gripping image of
the service’s formative years comes from Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in
History (New York: Random House, 2000), while insights on
forecasting during World War II were provided by John Ross in The Forecast for D-Day and the Weatherman Behind Ike’s
Greatest Gamble (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2014). In supplement
to these books was a long list of articles from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), a trove
of information for any researcher on this topic (see Selected Articles). Most
of
all, thanks are owed to Joe Sienkiewicz, a longtime friend and resource to all
of us who travel under sail—slowly, sensitive to weather, and with precious
cargo.
(٧) العودة من البحر
Perspective on my own Mediterranean sailings
was expanded by readings of Alfred Crosby’s Ecological
Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1986,1993, 2004). Also, Nigel Cliff’s
The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco da
Gama (New York: Harper, 2011), Laurence Bergreen’s Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying
Circumnavigation of the Globe (New York: HarperCollins, 2004),
and Robert Fuson’s Juan Ponce de León and the Spanish
Discovery of Puerto Rico and Florida (Blacksburg, VA: McDonald
and Woodward, 2000). In present-day Spain I owe Nick Lloyd for offering me a
greater grasp of Spanish history than a passing mariner might ever hope to have,
and for his book, Forgotten Places: Barcelona and the
Spanish Civil War (Nick Lloyd, 2015).
(٨) خروجٌ آمن إلى البحر
My discussions of the human element in marine
casualties were supported by another book from Captain Dan Parrott, Bridge Resource Management for Small Ships (Camden,
ME: International Marine, 2011). This illuminating set of case studies is
informed by Captain Parrott’s many years of experience at sea and as a professor
at Maine Maritime Academy. Also insightful was Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Ethnic
Theory of Plane Crashes,” in Outliers: The Story of
Success (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008). Official
investigation reports for the Picton Castle,
Bounty, and El Faro casualties
are referenced in Selected Articles. Reading the stories of others who have gone
to sea and met with misfortune is a humbling process. One can only accept this
information in the way its authors intended—which is with the hope that the
lessons learned may improve the safety of future voyages.
(٩) نهرٌ من الرياح
A full account of the mysterious disappearance
(and rediscovery) of the airliner Star Dust
is to be found in Star Dust Falling: The Story of the
Plane That Vanished, by Jay Rayner (New York: Doubleday, 2002).
For the emergence of the jet stream as a core principle in atmospheric
science—and its modern role at the heart of forecasting and climate change—I
again mined the abundant vein of scientific articles that exist on the topic,
beginning with Carl-Gustaf Rossby’s original work at the University of Chicago.
(See Selected Articles.) Special thanks to Dr. Jennifer Francis of Woods Hole’s
Woodwell Climate Research Center, for her willingness to review early drafts
of
this chapter and improve my understanding of certain key
points.
(١٠) ولائم بحرية من الماضي
For background on the underpinnings of El Niño,
I referred to Edward S. Sarachik and Mark A. Cane, The
El Niño-Southern Oscillation Phenomenon (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), as well as Sir Gilbert Walker’s original monograph,
Correlation in Seasonal Variations of Weather, IX—A
Further Study of World Weather (Calcutta: Government of India
Press, 1924). Again, credit is owed to Andrew Crowe’s Pathway of the Birds for his thoughts on how interannual wind
variations might have shaped the journeys of island voyagers. Thanks also to
my
many friends in the world of oceanography who built my understanding of ENSO
in
uncounted lunchtime lectures and long nights on deck spent watching gear
deployments. Special appreciation to Professor Daniel Sandweiss at the
University of Maine, for taking time to discuss the extensive work he has done
in South America with others from the Climate Change
Institute.
(١١) مثاقب الجليد
On the development of pilot charts, naval
hydrography, and the long interplay between climatology and navigation, I looked
to Chester Hearn’s Tracks in the Sea: Matthew Fontaine
Maury and the Mapping of the Oceans (Camden, ME: International
Marine, 2002), as well as Nathaniel Philbrick’s Sea of
Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery—The US Exploring Expedition
(New York: Penguin, 2003). For an overall history of polar exploration, I tapped
an old favorite, Pierre Berton’s The Arctic Grail: The
Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909
(New York: Viking, 1988). Also valuable was Ken McGoogan’s Fatal Passage: The Story of John Rae, the Arctic Hero Time
Forgot (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001). For an account of
the more recent (if also nearly forgotten) adventure of the SS Manhattan, I read Ross Coen’s Breaking Ice for Arctic Oil: The Epic Voyage of the
SS Manhattan through the Northwest
Passage (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2012). Background
on ice cores and their foundational role in paleoclimatology came from Paul
Mayewski and Frank White’s The Ice Chronicles: The Quest
to Understand Global Climate Change (Hanover, NH: University
Press of New England, 2002). Dr. Mayewski—who is director of the Climate Change
Institute at the University of Maine—was of great help in modernizing my
understanding of the field after my long-ago meeting with his GISP-2 research
team in Greenland. Other important sources for this chapter included Brian
Fagan’s The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made
History (New York: Basic Books, 2000, 2019), and Bob Drury and
Tom Clavin’s Halsey’s Typhoon: The True Story of a
Fighting Admiral, an Epic Storm, and an Untold Rescue (New York:
Grove, 2007)—each a landmark account of the recurrent crossings between weather
and history. The quote from Percy Langston regarding sea level rise on
Kiritimati is taken from the video documentary Between
Sky and Ocean (https://youtu.be/aXrZ-k333aw), made
by Wojciech Hupert in 2012, not long after my own visits to the island in the
Robert C. Seamans. For a frightening and
informative personal memoir of the nuclear tests at Kiritimati, I recommend J.
Haggas’s Christmas Island: The Wrong Place at the Wrong
Time (London: Minerva, 1997).
As a baseline resource for this chapter, I used
Robert Henson’s The Thinking Person’s Guide to Climate
Change (Boston: American Meteorological Society, 2014). Books
can’t be written fast enough to track the changes currently at play in this
field—particularly in the polar regions—and here I relied extensively on journal
articles to keep pace with events. (See Selected
Articles.)
The ultimate form of this chapter was shaped
greatly by conversations with my old friend and shipmate Dr. Kevin
Wood—scientist, craftsman, polar voyager, author, husband, and father. Sadly,
Kevin passed away in February of 2022, just after this manuscript was finished.
No doubt his substantial contributions to science will be carried forward by
colleagues, but for many Kevin’s departure will leave a gap that cannot be
filled. After some deliberation I have decided to leave him in these pages as
he
will be remembered: alive, in the present tense, filled with enthusiasm for the
world’s interesting things and always ready to share new
ideas.
(١٢) هونجا تونجا هونجا هاباي
Much of what is told here of Tonga and Samoa is
taken from conversations I had while going through my days in these two distinct
chambers of Polynesia’s heartland. Once, after a flight from Honolulu to Pago
Pago (there are two per week), I was approached in baggage claim by the man
who’d been seated next to me in coach. Did I have a ride? A place to stay? If
not, I was welcome to spend the night with his family—hospitality offered at
a
level that was touching but not at all uncommon. The artists Regina and Su’a
Fitiao have offered such a welcome to the entire SEA crew across an arc of
multiple visits—turning American Samoa into a second home for many, just about
as far as it’s possible to go from the mainland.
In approaching the dog’s breakfast that is
weather in the southwest Pacific, one might begin with Bob McDavitt’s Mariners Met Pack: South West Pacific (Auckland:
Captain Teach Press, 2007)—a fine book, which, rather like a road map of Boston,
constitutes a mere introduction. To glean any real understanding, it is
necessary to drive into the place and get lost—engaging in serial acts of
self-rescue until some actual cognitive model begins to
emerge.
(١٣) المهنة التي اخترتها
What literacy I possess in Kiwi weather owes
much to the slim guides of Jim Hessel (Auckland: MetGen Meteorological
Consulting, 1991) and the gracious welcome given to our ship’s staff on repeated
visits at the Meteorological Service of New Zealand, in Wellington. Special
thanks to Mark Schwarz, who always found the time to greet us on what must have
been a long string of busy days. Thanks also to David Webster, Neal Osborne,
Ross Bannister (who made sure our barometer was telling the truth), and Ian
Attwood—the man who first admitted our band of hopeful gate-crashers on a
morning too foul for sailing.
(١٤) فبراير ومارس شهرٌ واحد
No research was required here to know that
there is no better part of voyaging than coming home.
