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RobertFitzRoy

Page history last edited by R H Johnston 15 years, 6 months ago

Admiral Robert FitzRoy (1805-1865)

FATHER OF METEOROLOGY

Text and research by Dr Richard Johnston, The Yateley Society, 2002

 

Admiral Robert FitzRoy, son of Sir William FitzRoy was a half-cousin of F. Horatio FitzRoy of Yateley.

 

Admiral Robert FitzRoy is most famous for having been the Captain of the 10 gun survey ship HMS Beagle, and for choosing Charles Darwin as his gentleman companion for the 1831-1836 expedition.

 

But this is not Robert FitzRoy's only claim to fame. He was elected MP for Durham in 1841, and appointed Governor of New Zealand in 1843.

 

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He one of the first people to attempt a scientific weather forecast. In 1854 he took up the newly created post of Head of Meteorology at the Board of Trade (the Met Office) and began to collate the information necessary to predict the weather. Using the newly invented electric telegraph, FitzRoy managed to receive data quickly enough to make a forecast viable. He introduced the first daily weather forecasts in The Times in 1860.

 

His name was associated with several types of barometers, though he did not actually design them. His importance stems from his promotion of barometers, and the "storm glass", and from his instructions on how to interpret the results presented by these instruments, together with other readily obtainable information like temperature and wind direction, to produce forecasts (published as The Weather Book, 1862). Simplified versions of these rules still appear on modern barometers. These instruments and instructions saved the lives of many sailors.

 

His life came to a sad end, when he committed suicide by cutting his throat.

 

His services to meteorology are commemorated by the recent renaming of a "sea area" in his honour.

 

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