Why wind guru Beaufort had to hide a stormy personal life

The Irishman whose device for measuring wind became the standard, harboured a deep secret at home, says Robert Hume

MARCH is a windy month and an appropriate time for next week’s European Wind Energy Conference (March, 10-13) in Barcelona. Here in Ireland, construction is underway on the Beaufort Research Centre, at Ringaskiddy, Co. Cork — named after the Irish hydrographer, Francis Beaufort, who devised a windscale still used by met offices and yachtsmen.

Beaufort was born in 1774 at ‘Flower Hill’, a small house near Navan in Co Meath, where his father was rector. When he was a boy, his family moved to Cheltenham, where he and his brother were expelled from school because their ‘atrocious’ Irish accents ‘spoiled’ the pronunciation of the other boys.