Turbulent lessons from tropical storms

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Living through the awful aftermath of hurricanes like Katrina (Image: Homas Dworzak/Magnum)


From 16th-century colonisers of the Caribbean to Katrina's victims, Stuart Schwarz's Sea of Storms explores the long geopolitical shadow of tropical hurricanes


THINK back to when you were a child building cities with your friends out of Meccano or Lego, effortlessly solving engineering problems. Now marvel in retrospect at how different the resulting bridges, towers or skyscrapers were, even when you all started out with the same kit.


Building Caribbean colonies from scratch in the 16th century must have been similar. How European colonists met the challenges of island life and economy varied greatly, depending largely on the political and social structures they imported from home.



But there was one major difference. Younger siblings aside, no one would have knocked down your childhood creations. In the Caribbean, however, there were hurricanes. What happens when they hit, when economies, societies and people are warped, rent or lost entirely, is the subject of Stuart Schwartz's Sea of Storms.


Caused by warm seas and equatorial Coriolis forces, hurricanes were completely outside the European experience. So when 16th-century Spanish colonists were faced with winds that carried church bells and cannons kilometres inland, sank fleets and destroyed whole towns, they considered them manifestations of divine wrath. Later British, French, Dutch and Danish arrivals could only agree.


Following a hurricane in 1772, for example, one poor planter wrote bitterly: "In vain are all our schemes if the hand of providence interferes to blast our hopes... we tremble in the face of danger and call upon Him for succour who alone can protect us."


Using the abundant archive material sent home by plantation owners, sea captains and civil and military administrators, Schwartz shows how this providential point of view gradually changed. Curiosity crept out from under the duvet of religion, barometers and thermometers became available – and the culture of scientific quantification and explanation became acceptable.


Schwartz details the lives and achievements of meteorological luminaries such as William Reid, a British lieutenant-colonel, and William Redfield, an American former harness-maker. Together, Reid and Redfield worked through the evidence to discover how hurricanes work. Shortly after, Jesuit priest Benito Viñes used this knowledge and the newly invented telegraph to create the first Caribbean-wide storm-warning service.


Schwartz's finely researched work also shows how difficult it must have been to be a colonial administrator: when all communication went by sea, a reply to an urgent request for funds could take eight months.


There was also the delicate act of balancing what the Crown wanted against what the settlers considered their due, what creditors insisted on and what the slave population threatened. Hurricanes regularly sundered this balance, and Schwartz explores how this brought out the best and worst in people at all levels of society. With its long, historical perspective this fascinating story shows how hurricane Katrina's recent racial divisions, individual heroisms and official finger-pointing are far from unique events.


This article appeared in print under the headline "Turbulent times"


Adrian Barnett is a rainforest ecologist at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research in Manaus


Issue 3005 of New Scientist magazine


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