Irish admiral

Sir Francis Beaufort, British admiral and hydrographer to the Royal Navy, was the first in 1805 to introduce and describe a scale of wind for estimating wind strengths without the use of instruments, a system based on subjective observations of the sea. Because expansions to land conditions were later added to the Beaufort wind scale, and quantitative wind speed values were also supplemented to each category in 1926, the scale is still widely used to describe the wind's speed and strength. As well as the Beaufort wind scale, the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean is named after Sir Francis Beaufort.

Sir Francis Beaufort was born in County Meath, Ireland. His father was well known in the areas of geography and topography: he published one of the earliest detailed maps of Ireland. Sir Francis Beaufort's nautical career began at age 13 as a...