Ernle Bradford's writings are not everybody's cup of tea. But maritime matters are his particular forte, and recently I came across an interesting passage from a book of his, The Walls of England:
"The barometer starts a slow fall, and fishermen out in the Channel approaches remember the old saying:
Of a wind-dog to windward beware,
For bad weather you now must prepare.
"The rocks are fanged with foam and, as the tide turns against the wind, the whole surface of the sea comes to the boil. By midnight the storm-cones are hoisted from the Lizard to barren Beachy Head overhanging Brixham, and all the way eastwards to the white forehead of Dover. Channel Gale!"
The reference to "storm-cones" is to a system devised nearly a century and a half ago by Vice-Admiral Robert Fitzroy, founder of what was then the Meteorological Department of the British Navy, to give a visual indication of impending danger to ships in the vicinity of an affected coast. When information was received by telegraph or by any other means that winds of gale force or stronger were probable, signals were hoisted on a tall mast ashore to allow mariners to take note and exercise the necessary vigilance.
The signals displayed were of a semaphore type. If gales were expected from a generally northerly direction, for example, a black cone 3 ft high and 3 ft wide at the base, was raised upon the mast: this was a "North Cone". If, on the other hand, the gales were expected from a southerly quarter, a "South Cone" was hoisted - a cone with its apex pointing downwards.
Other patterns had meanings which quickly became standard and widely understood; a "drum" or cylinder, for example, was sometimes used to indicate successive gales from varying directions. At night red lights were used to indicate the relevant shape - a triangle of lights to form a cone, and four lights arranged in a square to indicate a drum. In all cases the signal was lowered when the wind dropped below gale force, provided no further gales were expected within six hours. A signal still in evidence after the wind had dropped, however, was to be interpreted as a sign that any abatement was only temporary.
"Storm cones" continued in regular use at ports and coastguard stations around Britain until the early 1980s. In general, however, the use of both the cones and the phraseology they engendered has died out with modern improvements in communications, although cones are still displayed occasionally by yacht-clubs on a voluntary basis for the information of the casual passer-by.