Isaac's Storm (15 page)

To
Abbe,
this
was
a
jolt.
In
a
reply
drafted
the
next
day,
Abbe
wrote,
"Nearly
every
real
advance
in
the
progress
of
the
Weather
Bureau
since
I
entered
it,
January
3,
1871,
has
gone
through
the
three
following
steps,
viz.,
first
I
have
suggested
and
urged
it;
next
I
started
the
work
and
showed
how
it
ought
to
be
done;
finally
I
found
the
best
man,
or
organized
a
system,
by
which
the
work
should
be
carried
on
as
a
permanent
feature."

Morton,
unmoved,
demanded
that
Abbe
send
him
proof
of
all
these
accomplishments.
Abbe
sent
him
a
thick
package
of
reports.

Five
days
later,
Morton
notified
Chief
Harrington
that
he
had
decided
to
slash
Abbe's
annual
salary
by
25
percent,
to
$3,000
from
$4,000,
"with
the
understanding
that
proficiency
in
forecasting
will
be
necessary
for
the
continuance
of
his
services
and
the
perpetuation
of
his
pay."
The
man
in
charge
of
gauging
his
proficiency
was
to
be
Major
Dunwoody,
head
of
the
forecast-verification
unit,
and
one
of
that
all-too-common
category
of
men
who
feast
on
boot
polish
and
see
the
failures
of
others
as
stepping-stones
toward
their
own
success.
Dunwoody
had
been
one
of
General
Hazen's
most
ardent
critics,
objecting
at
every
opportunity
to
Hazen's
investment
in
scientific
research.
He
would
turn
up
again
years
later,
in
Cuba,
doing
his
best
to
obstruct
the
efforts
of
Cuban
meteorologists
to
transmit
warnings
about
the
hurricane
of
1900
as
it
advanced
through
the
Caribbean.

Dunwoody
was
a
snake,
and
Chief
Harrington
knew
it.
At
last,
Harrington
lost
his
patience.
In
a
letter
to
Morton
dated
April
30,
1895,
Harrington
wrote:
"Dunwoody
is
a
selfish
intriguer
and
a
source
of
discord
in
the
Weather
Bureau.
I
request
that
the
President
recall
him."

Instead,
Morton
fired
Harrington.
On
July
1,1895,
Morton
replaced
him
with
Isaac's
friend
and
fellow
contestant,
Willis
L.
Moore,
only
thirty-nine
years
old
but
already
a
veteran
of
nearly
two
decades
of
service
within
the
Signal
Corps
and
the
Weather
Bureau.
It
was
an
appointment
that
would
shape
in
dangerous
ways
the
bureau's
ability
to
respond
to
the
1900
storm.

Moore
tightened
headquarters'
control
over
the
bureau's
far-flung
empire.
He
insisted
on
even
stricter
verification
of
forecasts.
Dun-woody's
verification
unit
kept
busy,
and
filed
a
report
on
each
man
to
Moore
every
six
months.
To
further
sharpen
the
bureau's
skill,
Moore
insisted
every
observer
do
practice
forecasts
for
a
location
outside
his
own
territory
so
that
on
any
given
day
a
number
of
forecasters
would
try
predicting
the
weather
for
the
same
city.
This
generated
a
lot
of
tension,
but
Moore
believed
tension
was
good.
The
system,
he
told
Congress,
helped
explain
why
Weather
Bureau
employees
had
to
be
committed
to
insane
asylums
more
often
than
employees
of
any
other
federal
agency.

He
said
this
with
pride.

Moore
also
made
himself
guardian
of
the
bureau's
moral
health,
and
in
this
role
claimed
broadjurisdiction.
Early
in
1900,
in
the
midst
of
rising
anticigarette
sentiment
that
condemned
smoking
not
for
killing
people
but
for
making
them
stupid,
Moore
banished
cigarettes
from
the
bureau's
weather
stations.
The
Christian
Endeavor
Union
of
Washington
promptly
congratulated
him.
Moore,
greedy
for
any
scrap
of
praise,
replied
that
he
personally
had
dismissed
bureau
officials
"purely
on
the
ground
that
their
moral
character
was
such
as
to
bring
discredit
upon
the
Weather
service."
Smoking
was
a
moral
blight.
"In
several
cases,"
Moore
crowed,
"we
have
been
compelled
to
take
action
for
the
reduction
or
removal
of
observers
in
charge
of
station
for
indolence,
forgetful-ness,
and
failure
to
render
reports
promptly,
where
I
was
satisfied
that
shattered
physical
condition
and
mental
impairment
were
due
to
the
excessive
use
of
cigarettes.
The
order
will
be
obeyed."

Moore
never
missed
a
chance
to
burnish
the
reputation
of
the
Weather
Bureau
or
to
boost
his
own
political
stature.
War
provided
a
prime
opportunity.
By
early
1898,
the
nation's
bloodlust
was
high.
The
explosion
of
the
battleship
Maine,
its
true
cause
a
mystery,
had
sent
the
nation
tumbling
irrevocably
toward
war
with
Spain.
Clearly
America's
most
important
weapon
would
be
its
Navy.
"I
knew,"
Moore
wrote,
"that
many
armadas
in
olden
days
had
been
defeated,
not
by
the
enemy,
but
by
the
weather
and
that
probably
as
many
ships
had
been
sent
to
the
bottom
of
the
sea
by
storms
as
had
been
destroyed
by
the
fire
of
enemy
fleets."

He
reported
his
concerns
to
James
Wilson,
who
by
then
had
replaced
Morton
as
secretary
of
agriculture.
Wilson
arranged
a
meeting
between
himself,
Moore,
and
President
William
McKinley.
Moore
spread
out
a
map
of
the
Caribbean
featuring
the
tracks
of
past
hurricanes.
McKinley
studied
the
map,
then
turned
to
the
secretary.
"Wilson,"
he
said,
"I
am
more
afraid
of
a
West
Indian
hurricane
than
I
am
of
the
entire
Spanish
Navy."

Moore
proposed
the
creation
of
a
hurricane-warning
service
with
stations
in
Mexico,
Barbados,
and
elsewhere
in
the
Caribbean.
McKinley
approved.
He
told
Moore,
"Get
this
service
inaugurated
at
the
earliest
possible
moment."

For
that
instant,
at
least,
Captain
Howgate
was
forgotten,
the
Blizzard
of
'88
forgiven.

The
establishment
of
these
hurricane-listening
posts
was
too
weighty
a
task
for
rank-and-file
bureaucrats.
Moore
chose
only
trusted
officers
of
the
bureau.
For
the
West
Indies
network,
he
picked
Dunwoody.
For
the
Mexican
stations,
he
chose
Isaac.

It
was
during
this
Mexican
venture
that
Isaac
encountered
his
first
hurricane
—
at
sea,
no
less.
For
many
people,
it
would
have
been
the
defining
event
of
a
lifetime,
the
story
told
and
retold
every
Thanksgiving
until
the
waves
were
taller
than
Pikes
Peak,
the
winds
strong
enough
to
knock
a
man
clear
to
Halifax.

For
Isaac,
however,
it
had
a
different
effect.

THE
WEATHER
WAS
hot
and
still,
the
Gulf
smooth
as
mica,
but
now
and
then
despite
the
lack
of
wind
a
great
hill
of
water
slid
silently
under
the
ship
and
levered
it
high
above
mean
sea
level.

The
sky
at
the
horizon
turned
copper.
Isaac
had
never
seen
such
color
in
the
atmosphere.
Could
this,
he
wondered,
be
the
"brick-dust"
sky
he
had
read
about
in
mariners'
accounts
of
tropical
cyclones?

His
fellow
passengers
were
unconcerned.
At
breakfast,
one
hundred
men,
women,
and
children
crowded
the
ship's
dining
room,
"all
in
a
jolly
mood."

Soon
the
sky
darkened.
Rain
hammered
the
deck.
The
wind,
by
Isaac's
reckoning,
accelerated
to
hurricane
force.
The
ship
rocked
and
pitched
in
heavy
seas.
At
lunchtime,
Isaac
found
himself
alone
in
the
ship's
dining
room.
Seasickness
and
fear
had
felled
everyone
else.
He
prided
himself
on
his
resilience.
He
made
a
show
of
it,
no
doubtjust
as
he
had
at
Fort
Myer,
where
he
had
raced
his
horse
as
fast
as
he
possibly
could
while
the
city
boys
hugged
their
mounts
and
cursed
his
soul.

The
storm
continued
through
the
day.
At
dinnertime
not
even
Isaac
appeared
in
the
dining
room.
"I
was
so
sick,"
he
wrote,
"that
I
did
not
care
if
the
ship
went
to
the
bottom
of
the
Bay
of
Campeche."

The
ship
survived.
Isaac
survived.
He
had
met
the
most
feared
of
all
meteorological
phenomena,
yet
had
lived
through
it
with
only
a
case
of
seasickness.
The
experience
had
to
have
influenced
his
appraisal
of
the
survivability
of
hurricanes.
On
some
level,
perhaps,
he
came
to
believe
that
hurricanes
were
not
quite
as
awful
as
Piddington,
Redfield,
and
Dampier
had
depicted.
Or
he
assumed
that
technology
—
in
this
case,
the
modern
steamship
—
had
stripped
hurricanes
of
their
power
to
surprise
and
destroy.
Indeed,
in
that
same
hurricane
season
of
1898
a
naval
architect
from
Pleasantville,
New
Jersey,
named
Simon
Lake
survived
a
particularly
intense
cyclone
off
Florida
by
submerging
his
submarine
to
a
depth
below
the
influence
of
the
waves,
exacdy
as
Captain
Nemo
had
done
thirty
years
earlier
in
Twenty
Thousand
Leagues
Under
the
Sea.
"Jules
Verne,"
Lake
wrote,
"was
the
director-general
of
my
life."

Against
the
hubris
of
the
age,
what
was
a
mere
hurricane?

As
THE
YEARS
passed,
Galveston
got
bigger
and
more
glamorous.
Its
future
as
a
deep-water
port
seemed
assured.
In
May
1900,
the
Galveston
News
published
a
plan
for
the
"Improvement
of
Galveston,"
devised
by
Col.
H.
M.
Robert,
divisional
engineer,
U.S.
Army.
Robert,
famous
by
now
for
his
Rules
of
Order,
proposed
an
elaborate
plan
that
would
fill
in
the
wetlands
surrounding
Pelican
Island
in
Galveston
Bay
to
produce
an
expanse
of
land
eight
feet
above
sea
level
called
Pelican
Territory.
A
harbor
channel
was
then
to
be
dredged
between
the
territory
and
Galveston
Island,
and
this
was
to
serve
as
a
portal
to
a
new
harbor
basin
with
a
surface
area
of
seven
thousand
acres.
The
plan
promised
sure
victory
over
Houston
in
the
race
to
dominate
the
Gulf.
It
did
not
include
a
seawall.

STRANGE
WEATHER
CAME
and
went.
One
episode
revealed
an
unusual
characteristic
of
Galveston
Bay,
but
its
true
significance
was
lost
among
the
more
obvious
phenomena
of
the
moment.