Tine's Teapot in Beaufort's Tempest
It was a tempestuous day in the village today, with winds gusting to nearly 70 mph. Down at the Sound, where Tine and Rubob had circumnavigated a mulberry bush on Tuesday, 70 mph winds would constitute a Force 11 storm on the Beaufort scale, meaning "widespread damage to buildings and trees, and mountainous waves."
Photo from: http://carl-fh.com/beaufort/beaufort.php
In fact, the Coast Guard had issued gale and storm warnings for Wednesday morning and afternoon. Fortunately, Tine's small craft, Puffin, was safely on land, up on its poppets at a marina upriver.
Tine and Rubob were on land upriver, too, this morning, though not on poppets. They were sitting snugly indoors while the tempest shook the house and treetops. While there were no mountainous waves observed in the village, Rubob was quietly hove to, with double reefs in his mainsail -- the newspaper in his lap.
With the portholes rattling, Tine read to Rubob:
"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples ....
And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!"
When Rubob had ventured down the pathway first thing in the morning for his newspaper, he found a battered chimney cap in the driveway.
It fell squarely under the definition of a Force 10 storm in Admiral Beaufort's system: "Damage to chimneys and TV antennas; pushes over shallow-rooted trees." That sounds decidedly unseamanlike, but Beaufort's scale, while developed at sea in 1805, was later adapted for use on land.
Photo from: http://carl-fh.com/beaufort/beaufort.php
In Tine and Rubob's landlocked (but increasingly swamped) front yard, a shallow-rooted dogwood was down, lying next to a lamppost it had barely missed.
The agent behind all this trouble was an agitator from the south named Boreas. He's shown puffing away below, in an unflattering likeness that was enough to make anyone furious:
Indoors, Tine busied herself with a pot of tea, to calm her nerves as the wind and rain beat against the windows.
"A teapot in a tempest," she thought, harking back to her journey with another admiral, Admiral Peary, this past weekend.
Kettle over soapstone lamp.
Photo by Donald B. MacMillan,
Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum.
By midafternoon, the storm was beginning to abate, and Tine proposed a walk.
"I'm not going out there today, Tine," Rubob said. "It's too wet."
"I'd like to survey the damage," Tine said, thinking scenes of destruction might whet his interest.
With much reluctance, Rubob fetched his foul-weather gear and followed Tine out. Boreas could be seen over the treetops, heading north.
The stream in the old Bull Lot, the field on the hillside, had developed into a flood.
The sidewalk was strewn with branches, and trees and limbs were down in the back yards and woods. The great trunks of the largest trees stood out amid the fallen branches.
The bark resembled the thick planks on the hull of an oceangoing wooden ship, a vessel that knew well the "thick rotundity o' the world."
"Strong sinews to withstand many a storm," Tine," Rubob opined.
"Sturdy strakes over a steam-bent frame," Tine said.
"Look, it's beginning to clear," Rubob said, pointing to the sky over the treetops.
Chimneys, funnels and smokestacks could rest secure on their cabintops, Tine thought.
In places, Tine and Rubob's path was blocked by downed limbs -- the fallen spars of less resilient vessels.
Photo from: http://carl-fh.com/beaufort/beaufort.php
In fact, the Coast Guard had issued gale and storm warnings for Wednesday morning and afternoon. Fortunately, Tine's small craft, Puffin, was safely on land, up on its poppets at a marina upriver.
Tine and Rubob were on land upriver, too, this morning, though not on poppets. They were sitting snugly indoors while the tempest shook the house and treetops. While there were no mountainous waves observed in the village, Rubob was quietly hove to, with double reefs in his mainsail -- the newspaper in his lap.
With the portholes rattling, Tine read to Rubob:
"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples ....
And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!"
When Rubob had ventured down the pathway first thing in the morning for his newspaper, he found a battered chimney cap in the driveway.
It fell squarely under the definition of a Force 10 storm in Admiral Beaufort's system: "Damage to chimneys and TV antennas; pushes over shallow-rooted trees." That sounds decidedly unseamanlike, but Beaufort's scale, while developed at sea in 1805, was later adapted for use on land.
Photo from: http://carl-fh.com/beaufort/beaufort.php
In Tine and Rubob's landlocked (but increasingly swamped) front yard, a shallow-rooted dogwood was down, lying next to a lamppost it had barely missed.
The agent behind all this trouble was an agitator from the south named Boreas. He's shown puffing away below, in an unflattering likeness that was enough to make anyone furious:
Indoors, Tine busied herself with a pot of tea, to calm her nerves as the wind and rain beat against the windows.
"A teapot in a tempest," she thought, harking back to her journey with another admiral, Admiral Peary, this past weekend.
Kettle over soapstone lamp.
Photo by Donald B. MacMillan,
Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum.
By midafternoon, the storm was beginning to abate, and Tine proposed a walk.
"I'm not going out there today, Tine," Rubob said. "It's too wet."
"I'd like to survey the damage," Tine said, thinking scenes of destruction might whet his interest.
With much reluctance, Rubob fetched his foul-weather gear and followed Tine out. Boreas could be seen over the treetops, heading north.
The stream in the old Bull Lot, the field on the hillside, had developed into a flood.
The sidewalk was strewn with branches, and trees and limbs were down in the back yards and woods. The great trunks of the largest trees stood out amid the fallen branches.
The bark resembled the thick planks on the hull of an oceangoing wooden ship, a vessel that knew well the "thick rotundity o' the world."
"Strong sinews to withstand many a storm," Tine," Rubob opined.
"Sturdy strakes over a steam-bent frame," Tine said.
"Look, it's beginning to clear," Rubob said, pointing to the sky over the treetops.
Chimneys, funnels and smokestacks could rest secure on their cabintops, Tine thought.
In places, Tine and Rubob's path was blocked by downed limbs -- the fallen spars of less resilient vessels.
"Force 9 at the very least," Tine thought: "Branches break off trees, shingles blown from roofs, high-crested waves."
The only waves visible were those in a brook by Hatter's Lane.
"A veritable deluge," Rubob said.
Not far from the stream, Tine ambled over to a tree that appeared to know a thing or two about storms.
"Another strong bow stem that's bent to many a storm," she said to Rubob.
As they made their way up the channel leading home, the sun was out again and Beaufort's scale was tipping back to 1 ("smoke drifts slowly, sea is lightly rippled") or even zero ("tree leaves don't move, smoke rises vertically").
Photo from: http://carl-fh.com/beaufort/beaufort.php
Arriving home, Tine thought, "All in all, a very pleasant (but tempestuous) sail."
posted by Tine at 3:27 PM
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