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History of Science
The Storm That Created Modern Meteorology
On a violent October night in 1859, hundreds of sailors and passengers died around the coasts of Britain while one ship after another vanished into the darkness. Yet from that catastrophe emerged a revolutionary idea: storms were not random outbursts of nature, but vast moving systems that could be tracked, understood, and perhaps even predicted. At the centre of this transformation stood Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy whose investigation into the wreck of the Royal Charter helped give birth to modern weather forecasting.
Robert FitzRoy, born on 5 July 1805 in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, belonged to one of England’s most noble families, whose progenitor was none other than an illegitimate son of King Charles II Stuart and his famous mistress Barbara Villiers (‘FitzRoy’ is a word of Norman origin meaning precisely ‘son of the king’) and which counted among its ranks a prime minister and a considerable number of dukes and barons, as well as several admirals. Although belonging only to a junior branch of the family, had grown up steeped in the finest ideals of the British aristocracy: courage, honour, a spirit of service, a capacity for sacrifice and, above all, a very strong sense of duty.
His life can be divided into three clearly distinct phases.
