Isaac's Storm (9 page)

The
hurricane
caught
the
convoy
in
the
Mona
Passage
head-on,
the
eye
passing
close,
perhaps
directly
overhead.
It
drove
twenty
of
the
gold
ships
to
the
bottom
with
all
hands.
One
of
these
carried
Bobadilla.
In
all,
five
hundred
mariners
lost
their
lives.
A
few
ships,
gravely
wounded,
fought
their
way
back
to
Santo
Domingo.

Only
one
ship
of
the
original
thirty
made
it
to
Spain:
the
puny
little
Aguja,
carrying
Columbus's
gold.

THE
ENIGMA
OF
air
continued
to
command
the
attention
of
the
world's
greatest
minds.
In
1638,
Galileo
tried
a
variation
of
Aristotle's
leather-bag
experiment.
He
constructed
an
apparatus
consisting
of
a
glass
bulb
with
an
airtight
valve.
He
weighed
the
bulb.
Next
he
forced
air
into
the
bulb
until
it
contained
much
more
than
its
normal
volume.
Now
when
he
weighed
it
he
found
a
measurable
difference.

So
air
did
have
weight.

In
Galileo's
time
this
was
astonishing
news.
Air
was
invisible,
yet
it
had
weight.
It
was
everywhere,
piled
high
over
the
world.
Therefore
it
must
exert
a
force
on
every
man,
rock,
and
tree.
The
meteorological
significance
escaped
Galileo,
but
five
years
later
his
discovery
led
to
a
famous
series
of
experiments
by
Evangelista
Torricelli,
an
Italian
physicist
who
opened
the
single
most
important
window
into
the
forces
that
drive
the
world's
weather.

He
too
began
with
a
glass
bulb,
but
attached
to
it
a
tube
some
"two
cubits"
long,
a
cubit
being
a
vague
unit
of
measurement
equivalent
to
the
distance
between
a
man's
elbow
and
the
tip
of
his
middle
finger.
He
filled
this
tube
with
mercury,
inserted
the
tube
into
a
bowl
also
containing
mercury,
then
watched
the
mercury
in
the
tube
fall
until
it
stabilized
about
halfway
between
the
bulb
and
the
dish.

It
never
completely
stabilized,
however.
Torricelli
observed
that
it
crept
up
and
down
at
different
points
during
the
day
and
under
differing
atmospheric
conditions.
He
did
not
come
to
this
easily.
Before
he
settled
on
mercury,
he
tried
water.
To
get
any
observable
effect,
he
had
to
use
a
glass
tube
sixty
feet
long,
not
exactly
a
device
likely
to
win
favor
among
mariners
headed
for
Shakespeare's
"vexed
Bermoothes."

The
term
barometer
arrived
a
decade
or
so
later
when
Robert
Boyle
coined
the
name
to
describe
his
own
air-weighing
device,
an
instrument
that
so
delighted
the
Royal
Society,
it
resolved
in
1668
to
have
a
collection
of
Boyle's
barometers
built
and
dispatched
to
the
far
limits
of
the
world.
The
proposal
was
never
enacted,
but
by
Isaac's
time
the
barometer
had
become
so
well
accepted
as
a
meteorological
tool
that
it
wound
up
in
all
those
places
anyway.

Storm
accounts
got
more
and
more
detailed,
kindling
the
imaginations
of
countless
landlocked
boys
and
providing
the
first
scientific
insight
into
the
unique
character
of
hurricanes.
One
of
the
most
compelling
writers
of
the
seventeenth
century
was
William
Dampier,
an
Englishman
who
split
his
time
between
adventuring
with
buccaneers
and
patiently
recording
the
natural
phenomena
he
encountered
on
his
far-flung
voyages.
Isaac
considered
him
one
of
the
great
pioneers
of
meteorology.
It
was
Dampier
who
gave
the
world
its
first
detailed
description
of
the
lurid
atmospheric
colors
that
preceded
such
storms
—
the
"brick-dust
sky"
that
Isaac
looked
for
but
did
not
find
as
he
scanned
the
Gulf
horizon.
In
1703
a
storm
of
great
power
and
endurance
brought
the
realities
of
cyclones
to
the
heart
of
London
itself.
In
giving
England
the
worst
storm
of
her
history,
it
also
advanced
the
literary
career
of
Daniel
Defoe,
a
forty-three-year-old
editor
and
journalist
with
a
taste
for
disaster.
He
knew
a
good
thing
when
he
saw
it.

FOR
TWO
WEEKS
in
November
1703,
a
pod
of
strong
gales
paralyzed
shipping
off
the
coast
of
England.
Outbound
ships
had
to
remain
in
port;
inbound
ships
had
to
stay
at
sea.
On
Wednesday,
November
24,
the
winds
abated;
by
Thursday,
hundreds
of
ships,
including
a
contingent
of
Russian
warships
under
ceremonial
escort
by
the
British
man-of-war
Reserve,
began
to
move
in
a
slow
and
graceful
waltz
over
the
rough
"old
seas"
left
behind
by
the
storms.

The
Reserve
put
in
oft"
Yarmouth.
Her
captain,
convinced
the
worst
was
over,
went
ashore
with
his
ship's
surgeon
and
clerk
to
buy
provisions.
In
Deal,
a
small
town
overlooking
the
treacherous
Goodwin
Sands
near
Dover,
Mayor
Thomas
Powell
spent
the
day
at
his
full-time
job
as
"slopseller,"
peddling
supplies
for
seamen.
In
Plymouth,
Henry
Winstanley
and
a
crew
of
workmen
set
out
from
the
Barbican
Steps
on
a
fourteen-mile
sail
to
Winstanley's
controversial
Eddystone
Light
to
repair
its
failed
beacon.
His
critics
had
charged
the
lighthouse
was
unsafe,
to
which
Winstanley
responded
that
his
one
wish
was
to
be
inside
the
structure
during
"the
greatest
storm
that
ever
blew
under
the
face
of
heaven"
—
one
of
those
moments
in
history
that
begged
for
a
burst
of
ominous
music.

BY
NOW
BAROMETERS
could
be
found
not
just
in
the
possession
of
mariners
and
scientists,
but
also
in
some
private
homes.
Scientists
understood
too
that
foul
weather
tended
to
be
accompanied
by
falling
barometric
pressure,
although
why
this
should
be
the
case
remained
a
mystery.
Late
on
Friday,
November
26,
the
barometer
owners
of
England
saw
the
level
of
mercury
begin
to
fall,
then
plummet.

The
storm
struck
with
such
ferocity
that
Queen
Anne
was
escorted
into
the
basement
of
the
Palace
of
St.
James
and
there
deposited
in
a
wine
cellar.
Wind
stripped
the
roof
off
Westminster
Abbey
and
demolished
over
four
hundred
windmills,
in
some
cases
turning
their
mill
sails
so
fast
that
friction
set
the
buildings
on
fire.
The
wind
hurled
roof
tiles
like
cannon
shot.

The
storm
destroyed
seven
hundred
vessels
on
the
Thames
within
London,
jumbling
them
into
great
piles
of
debris,
bowsprits
impaling
stern
cabins.
A
tangle
of
rigging
and
tackle
lay
over
all
as
if
a
giant
spi-derweb
had
settled
upon
the
wreckage.
Along
the
Severn
River,
storm
waters
breached
seawalls
and
drowned
fifteen
thousand
sheep.
Salt
spray
turned
leaves
white.
Antonie
van
Leeuwenhoek,
the
naturalist,
wrote
how
at
eight
the
next
morning,
"I
cast
my
eye
upon
my
barometer,
and
observ'd,
that
I
had
never
seen
the
quick-silver
so
low."

On
land,
only
128
people
died,
many
killed
by
the
collapse
of
fireplace
chimneys.

At
sea
the
story
was
different.
If
not
for
the
clamor
of
wind
and
surf,
what
one
would
have
heard
that
night
up
and
down
the
coast
of
England
was
the
thin
cry
of
doomed
men,
stranded
or
adrift,
many
hanging
from
the
tops
of
masts
that
now
protruded
only
a
few
feet
from
the
sea.

Off
Plymouth
something
happened
that
most
men
would
have
dismissed
as
impossible.
If
one
could
count
on
anything
in
Defoe's
time,
as
in
Isaac's,
it
was
a
lighthouse.

UNTIL
SHORTLY
AFTER
midnight,
Friday
night,
residents
along
the
distant
mainland
saw
the
reassuring
beaconflash
of
the
Eddystone
Light.
It
proved
that
Henry
Winstanley
had
succeeded
in
repairing
the
lamp
despite
the
hurricane
that
must
have
welled
up
even
as
the
work
got
under
way.

After
midnight,
the
light
ceased
to
shine.
When
rescuers
at
last
reached
the
lighthouse,
or
rather,
the
rock
on
which
it
had
been
built,
they
found
nothing.
The
storm
had
scoured
the
light
from
the
face
of
the
earth.
Only
the
barest
trace
of
timber
and
masonry
marked
that
anything
at
all
had
stood
there,
let
alone
a
lighthouse.

Farther
along
the
coast,
several
ships
ran
aground
on
the
Goodwin
Sands.
Survivors
hung
in
the
upper
masts
and
rigging
of
their
ships
until
the
tide
receded,
then
climbed
down
to
the
now-exposed
sands
to
await
rescue,
certain
that
the
town
they
saw
through
the
spindrift
soon
would
send
help.

The
residents
of
Deal
were
aware
of
the
sailors'
plight.
Some
watched
the
stranded
men
through
telescopes.
"It
must
have
been
a
sad
spectacle,"
Defoe
wrote,
"to
behold
the
poor
seamen
walking
to
and
fro
upon
the
sands,
to
view
their
postures
and
the
signals
they
made
for
help,
which,
by
the
assistance
of
glasses,
was
easily
seen
from
the
shore."

Boats
did
set
out
from
Deal,
but
not
for
rescue.
Their
occupants
ignored
the
doomed
men
and
instead
probed
the
floating
debris
for
valuable
salvage.
The
men
on
the
sands
were
fathers,
husbands,
lovers,
and
sons,
"but
nobody
concerned
themselves
for
the
lives
of
those
miserable
creatures."

When
Mayor
Powell
learned
of
his
town's
behavior,
he
was
appalled.
He
pleaded
with
the
local
customs
house
to
deploy
its
boats
for
rescue,
but
the
official
in
charge
refused.
Powell
tried
to
raise
his
own
corps
of
rescuers,
offering
five
shillings
for
every
sailor
saved.
With
the
help
of
a
few
volunteers
Powell
seized
the
customs
boat
and
by
his
example
convinced
some
of
the
salvage
crews
to
help.
The
rescuers
saved
two
hundred
men
but
could
not
return
in
time
to
save
the
many
others
still
stranded
when
the
tide
returned.

In
all,
the
great
English
cyclone
of
1703
killed
over
eight
thousand
seamen
aboard
hundreds
of
ships.
One
victim
was
the
man-of-war
Reserve.
As
the
storm
intensified,
her
captain,
surgeon,
and
clerk
raced
back
to
the
wharf
in
Yarmouth,
where
all
they
could
do
was
stand
and
watch
as
the
seas
consumed
the
ship
and
all
aboard.