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Weathering the empire: meteorological research in the early British straits settlements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2015

FIONA WILLIAMSON
FIONA WILLIAMSON*
Affiliation:
School of History, Politics and Strategy, National University of Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia43600. Email: f.williamson@uea.ac.uk.
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Abstract

This article explores meteorological interest and experimentation in the early history of the Straits Settlements. It centres on the establishment of an observatory in 1840s Singapore and examines the channels that linked the observatory to a global community of scientists, colonial officers and a reading public. It will argue that, although the value of overseas meteorological investigation was recognized by the British government, investment was piecemeal and progress in the field often relied on the commitment and enthusiasm of individuals. In the Straits Settlements, as elsewhere, these individuals were drawn from military or medical backgrounds, rather than trained as dedicated scientists. Despite this, meteorology was increasingly recognized as of fundamental importance to imperial interests. Thus this article connects meteorology with the history of science and empire more fully and examines how research undertaken in British dependencies is revealing of the operation of transnational networks in the exchange of scientific knowledge.

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Type
Research Article
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The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 2015, pp. 475 - 492
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Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2015 

Introduction

The early nineteenth century witnessed a rapid and significant extension of British interests in the Malay Peninsula. The British had taken control of Penang Island (renamed Prince of Wales Island) from the Dutch in 1786, then Singapore in 1819 and Malacca in 1824. The transfer of all three port regions to the British collectively created the Straits Settlements in 1826, whose resident administration reported to Calcutta until 1867, and thereafter directly to London. The political history of the Straits Settlements is well known but the study of scientific research, especially meteorology, as a window into the Straits Settlements' past has been little considered. This has much to do with the current historiographical preoccupations of local scholars, but also with the lack of scholarly research generally into meteorological history for the region. The tropical climate was, however, a significant determinant in South East Asian exploration and colonization.Footnote 1 As Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells argued in her groundbreaking study of colonial Malaya's forest, the country's climate and lush tropical landscapes were imperative to ‘trade and commercial agriculture [and] mediated the link between overseas expansion and the development of European scientific thought’.Footnote 2 The colonial administration understood that increasing knowledge of tropical environments and climate systems could benefit their economic output, specifically within the agricultural sector. Thus research on aspects of the environment, new species, tropical diseases and the weather was undertaken in situ by colonial officers, often in conjunction with the local knowledge offered by inhabitants. This process connected Britain's far-flung dependencies with transnational scientific communities at a time when meteorological research was also developing in Britain, Europe and beyond. In this way the Straits Settlements became a node in a global scientific network.

This article explores meteorological interest and experimentation in the early history of the Straits Settlements. It begins by considering the background to meteorological research in the region but centres on the establishment of an observatory in 1840s Singapore. It examines the channels that linked the observatory to a global community of scientists, colonial officers and a reading public. By using the observatory as a lens focused on these networks, it will argue that, although the value of overseas meteorological investigation was recognized by the British government, investment was piecemeal and progress in the field often relied on the commitment and enthusiasm of individuals. This was certainly the case in 1840s Singapore, where the observatory ‘experiment’ was undermined by a lack of centrally administered funds and sustained largely by the hard work of a single officer. The discussion will then move on to explore how, after the closure of the observatory, meteorological research continued to be conducted in the region. Despite an inauspicious start, meteorology was confirmed over the course of the nineteenth century as a fundamental focus of imperial interest, if not investment. This article thus connects meteorology with the history of science and empire more fully, explores the importance of meteorology to successive colonial governments, and, significantly, reveals the operation of transnational networks in the exchange of scientific knowledge across British dependencies.

The study builds on a varied historiography. The pioneering studies of E. Le Roy Ladurie, Christian Pfister and Wolfgang Behringer in the field of historic climatology have provided the foundation for a generation of scholars interested in the relationship between weather, society, historic development and change.Footnote 3 More recently, scholars interested in weather have drawn from the field of cultural history, with important works by Jan Golinski and Vladimir Janković exploring weather, national identity, Enlightenment thought and the changing cultural significance of meteorology as a discipline.Footnote 4 Importantly, Golinski has argued how meteorology has been downplayed in the historiography of science, a fact that has reduced its contemporary significance in comparison with the ‘high sciences’.Footnote 5 Other works have considered environmental determinism as a shaping factor in colonial European mentalities, culture and literature during the heyday of empire.Footnote 6 The history of weather and disease in British colonies has also received attention, with scholars investigating how Victorian perceptions of the tropics – especially their supposed debilitating effect on body and soul – affected Europeans settled in Asia.Footnote 7

Moreover, British meteorology has been explored as a way into the networks of knowledge that stretched across an increasingly connected world. Katherine Anderson's study of the field during the Victorian era is pertinent here. It engages with the expanding field of interest in transnational colonial space, seeing knowledge as an abstract force that transcends conceptual and physical national borders. Colonial space was criss-crossed by active channels created during the dissemination and exchange of knowledge and of goods. This study, and the others like it, reimagines colonial society as an integrated network that hinged on ever more efficient communications and transport technologies.Footnote 8 John McAleer's close study of the passage of astronomical instruments between observatories and suppliers in Britain, southern Africa and India, for example, considers the transit of knowledge and objects through institutional networks, revealing the ‘symbiotic relationship of science and empire’.Footnote 9 Likewise, David Aubin, Charlotte Bigg and Otto Sibum's collection of essays has explored the overlapping complexity of observatory sciences and highlighted how the transfer of knowledge and material goods is a way of understanding colonial narratives.Footnote 10 This transfer was critical in the evolution of British colonial discourses, which were made and remade during the processes of exchange, rather than transmitted from Britain and imposed on the inhabitants of colonized settlements.Footnote 11 As Kathirithamby-Wells argues, ‘natural history in the Peninsula, typical in the colonial tropics, was the outcome of Western and indigenous collaboration. By this process, long traditions of local knowledge fed into the broader stream of evolving metropolitan science, engaging coloniser and colonised at the cutting edge of science’.Footnote 12 Meteorology is especially valuable to understanding how networks of knowledge operated, as its practice was not restricted to a scientific elite. The basic observation of the weather, for instance, required only limited scientific expertise and equipment, and was practised by colonial officers with and without formal training, and also by private individuals.Footnote 13

This article thus builds on an emerging field which, as Lee MacDonald explains in a recent article, explicitly connects colonial history with the politics of Victorian science.Footnote 14 Considering the relationships between the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society and the Kew Observatory in London, MacDonald explores Edward Sabine's personal ‘Magnetic Crusade’ that led directly to the establishment of the magnetic observatory at Singapore in the 1840s. Like McAleers's contribution, this article homes in on a period of Singapore's nineteenth-century history that has remained relatively underexplored in favour of the periods immediately following the country's foundation in 1819 and after the 1890s.Footnote 15 In so doing, this article aims to highlight more forcefully the role of the Straits Settlements, especially Singapore, as a hub for British colonial meteorological science in the South East Asian region and as a node in a global scientific network. At the same time it emphasizes the place of the weather sciences in nineteenth-century colonial discourse, empire building, and science history.

Weather and the British settlement of Penang

The climate was one of the attractions of the Malaysian peninsula for Europeans. The region's equatorial climate was described in 1935 as traditionally monsoonal, experiencing heavy rains between November and February when the Siberian (Asiatic) High moves southwards across the northern peninsula. It was over this winter period that the North East Monsoon caused disruption along the east coast. March to April and September to October were inter-monsoonal. Here, erratic winds and rains were produced by an equatorial trough now know as the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone.Footnote 16 However, peninsular Malaysia – especially the west coast and the south, where Penang, Malacca and Singapore are located – escaped the worst weather conditions. The significance of this to the development of these western port cities should not be underestimated. Their relative climatic stability combined with high rainfall to create the lush, fertile tropical landscapes that proved so alluring to early traders and settlers. Moreover, the protection afforded the western peninsular coastline by Sumatran landfall provided respite from the cruellest seas. It was the prevailing weather in June 1592, for instance, that forced the first English trading voyage to the East Indies to arrive at Penang Island. Under command of Sir James Lancaster, the Edward Bonaventure had been expected to make anchor at the Nicobar Islands but six days of unceasing high winds and rains had obstructed their ‘due observation of the south starre’, forcing the ship off course. The storms were quickly followed by a terrible calm and the crew of the Bonaventure – by this time struck low with sickness – were compelled to make landfall at the nearby ‘Ilands of Pulo Pinaon’ (Pulau Penang). Finding the islands to have good anchor and for the most part uninhabited, the crew remained for the winter, recovering their health and making good use of the abundant tall trees for essential repairs.Footnote 17

Climate was an important factor in deciding where to establish permanent overseas bases. In the eastern Indian Ocean region, Captain Alexander Kyd of the Royal Engineers was tasked with determining the strategic military potential of Penang (acquired by Francis Light in 1787) and the Andaman Islands (1789) by means of detailed surveys of their natural resources, harbours and defensive capabilities.Footnote 18 Kyd's final detailed reports of harbour, strategic and defensive capabilities and natural resources also contained a comprehensive analysis of the islands' respective climates, revealing his keen understanding of the monsoon as it affected each island's potential. He described how Penang's weather was ‘seldom very violent’ and without ‘continued rains’. It was rather ‘frequently refreshed with agreeable and cooling showers … were it only one degree to the north it would be liable to hard and continued rains and gates of wind’. At Port Cornwallis in the Andaman Islands, he kept a weather journal from 8 March 1793 to 23 November 1794. This detailed record followed current scientific convention for keeping tabular sub-daily observations ‘beginning at six in the morning to ten at night’ and used a ‘Fahrenheit's thermometer’ protected from the direct sun by ‘a small wooden bungaloe with a painted canvas roof’.Footnote 19 Alongside the temperature, Kyd noted the wind direction, clouds and narrative descriptions of the weather. Comparing the climate of both islands he concluded that Penang had several advantages over the Andaman Islands, where the monsoon made for treacherous shipping. Within nine years of Company occupancy, Penang joined Madras and Bombay as a presidency. This elevation meant that Penang became the administrative and political centre for the Straits Settlements. The Andaman Islands, on the other hand, never attained the same status as Penang.Footnote 20

Weather observation and terrestrial magnetism

Although meteorology was still in its infancy – the practices of popular astrology and forecasting cast a long shadow over the developing science – Kyd's meticulous tabular weather observations would not have been unfamiliar to his contemporaries, as such practices had been promoted in scientific circles since the late seventeenth century.Footnote 21 Recording daily weather observations in a voyage logbook had been common practice in the English East India Company (EEIC) for instance, and by the 1790s hydrographer Alexander Dalrymple had ensured the standardization of logbook formats and the meteorological instruments used.Footnote 22 John Frederic Daniell, a chemist and physicist connected with the EEIC and the Royal Society, also argued the importance of making daily and sub-daily weather observations, as did John Herschel, and European men of science were working to improve reliability and standardization of observation.Footnote 23 Adolphe Quételet, for example, astronomer and director of the Brussels Royal Observatory from 1828, wrote extensively on the importance of statistical methodology for meteorology. He joined Alexander von Humboldt and Heinrich Dove (amongst others) in calling for extending sets of observational averages over time and space.Footnote 24

By the 1820s more monies were being channelled into meteorological exploration globally, often as a by-product of other researches, including astronomy and the study of the Earth's magnetic field. The first half of the nineteenth century was a critical period for the establishment of observatories, including at St Helena (1827);Footnote 25 Toronto (1839); Hobart, Tasmania (1840);Footnote 26 and Singapore (1841). This was also the period that witnessed the construction of one of the most significant of the colonial observatories at the Cape of Good Hope in 1820, where, fourteen years later, Herschel was to spend four years surveying the skies.Footnote 27 Contemporaneously, improvements in meteorological instrument-making and methods of long-distance communication, including the electrical telegraph in the late 1830s, enabled the identification of large-scale weather patterns by facilitating the rapid transmission of simultaneous observations at different geographical locations.Footnote 28

Early meteorological exploration in the Straits Settlements

The chronology of significant meteorological research in the Straits Settlements mirrored global patterns of colonial investment in the sciences, as well local political circumstances. As a presidency, Penang was the hub for scientific research and colonial development until Singapore became the centre for Straits administration in 1832. One project authorized at Penang during the 1820s was placed under the charge of Commissioner Ibbetson and Lieutenant (later Captain) Crooke of the Bengal Native Infantry. Ibbetson, with Crooke acting as surveyor and meteorologist, was tasked with visiting the major ports along the Straits of Malacca – especially those in Sumatra – with the purpose of establishing a ‘friendly and mutually beneficial commercial intercourse’ between Penang and each Sultanate visited.Footnote 29 Crooke's role was to keep a meteorological and topographical journal during their travels and to define the latitude and longitude at each place (essential in producing usable weather observations), as well as to map the coastline. They had at their disposal a number of mathematical and scientific instruments, including a thermometer, chronometer, sextant and theodolite magnetometer, and Horsburgh and Dalrymple's navigational charts of the Straits seas.Footnote 30 Instrumental observations were also taken on land at Penang and at Singapore from the 1820s.Footnote 31 However, the Settlements had only been established formally in 1826 and the administration, then based at Penang, was significantly underfunded. The abolition of trade dues at Georgetown by the government of Bengal the same year created an immediate shortfall in revenue that Penang's administration were hard pressed to meet. A transfer of administrative authority to the free-trade port of Singapore in 1832 changed the balance of power in the newly formed Straits Settlements entity: Singapore was in the ascendancy.Footnote 32 It is perhaps no surprise that Singapore was the favoured location for the observatory established in 1841.

The observatory experiment

The story of the Singapore observatory is a global one. In 1838, it was proposed that a committee be created to oversee the taking of simultaneous magnetic observations at different points around the world. This venture would fall under the auspices of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, who, in conjunction with the Royal Society, presented to the British government an ambitious plan for the establishment of global observatories.Footnote 33 The association was founded in 1831 and played a leading role in scientific publishing. It shared many members with the Royal Society, including John Herschel, David Brewster and William Vernon Harcourt. The committee in question was headed by John Herschel, Humphrey Lloyd and Edward Sabine, who, amongst others, coordinated the work of establishing new observatories in Dublin, Tasmania, Toronto, and the Cape of Good Hope, as well as in Asia during the early 1840s.Footnote 34 The operation required extensive coordination and planning, not least in the despatch of instruments around the world. Much of it was overseen by Sabine, and it required the joint efforts of the English East India Company, the British Admiralty, the Royal Society, and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich in order to manage the practical details of transporting instruments and staff, and to forward orders and communications.Footnote 35 The primary goal of the massive global operation was to advance ‘the science of terrestrial magnetism’, building on the efforts of the magnetic survey of the British Isles begun in 1834. An essential element of this undertaking was meteorological observation, especially of atmospheric pressure, and of the temperature of the earth and the air.Footnote 36 As Sabine argued, the better understanding of the Earth's magnetic fields was of critical importance to one of the greatest maritime nations, a mission of national importance.Footnote 37 The new observatories in Asia were proposed to be linked to a global network of ‘between thirty and forty stations in various and remote places of the globe, provided with magnetometers, and every requisite instrument’. Their observers must be carefully selected and competent to carry out at most, if not all the stations, a complete series of two-hourly observations, day and night’.Footnote 38 Herschel's 1840 committee report is revealing of the extent of cooperation between various bodies and countries, stating,

Of these observatories, that at Dublin, placed under the immediate superintendence of Professor Lloyd, has been equipped and provided for by the praiseworthy liberality and public spirit of the University of that metropolis. Those at Toronto, the Cape of Good Hope, St Helena and Van Diemen's Land, as also the two itinerant observatories of the Antarctic expedition, by the British Government; those of Madras, Simla, Singapore and Bombay, by the Honourable East India Company; to which are added ten stations in European and Asiatic Russia, and one at Pekin, established by Russia; two by Austria at Prague and Milan; two by the Universities of Philadelphia and Cambridge in the United States; one by the French government at Algiers; one by the Prussian at Breslau; one by the Bavarian at Munich; one by the Spanish at Cadiz; one by the Belgian at Brussels; one by the Pacha of Egypt at Cairo; one by the Rajah of Travancore at Trevandrum in India; and one by the King of Oude at Lucknow.Footnote 39

In addition, Herschel noted that the British government (at the behest of the Royal Society) should provide for a series of corresponding meteorological and magnetical observations at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. Meanwhile, the Royal Society was to help with the establishment of a similar observatory at Hammerfest in Norway by donating monies for the Norwegians to acquire instruments and registry books, amongst other items.

In the Straits Settlements, it was Lieutenant Charles Elliot of the Madras Engineers who, in 1840, was given the task of establishing and overseeing the observatory at Singapore. Elliot worked closely with Lieutenant Samuel Ludlow, also of the Madras Engineers, who was to set up the Madras Magnetic Observatory.Footnote 40 Direction came from the committee of Royal Society members, and was enacted on the ground in Asia by the Bombay government and officers of the Bombay and Madras observatories. These were closely involved in the logistics of transferring observational instruments from Aden, to Bombay, to Ludlow at Madras. The instruments were finally to be placed under the care of Elliot and the EEIC ship Minerva for their voyage to Singapore.Footnote 41 The instruments included a declinometer (compass for measuring the angle of declination), a ‘Horizontal for a Magnetometer’, telescope collimators,Footnote 42 an actinometer (invented by John Herschel in 1825), a vertical-force magnetometer, a ‘Dipping Brick with Needle’ (used in measuring the dip of the compass needle from the plane of the horizon); and a standard barometer and thermometer.Footnote 43 These instruments represented the cutting edge in contemporary magnetic and meteorological science. Elliot was concerned for their safe passage on the Minerva – commissioned to convey troops, not scientific instruments – and requested that the equipment be lodged in the ship's hold for safekeeping.Footnote 44 Whilst Elliot waited in Madras, he wrote to the military secretary at Fort St George about his progress and expectations:

I am sorry that the weather has not permitted my constant attendance at the Observatory as I could have wished – we have not had above one or two fine nights for the last six weeks, and it is probably in vain to look for settled weather for the next two months. I think it useless to stop more especially as the Minerva offers such a favourable opportunity to convey me to Singapore … most of the instruments committed to my charge have been taken and ranged side-by-side with Lieutenant Ludlow's … comparisons will be taken with all the instruments that are available, and thus a most valuable point of reference will be established between the two observatories of Madras and Singapore.Footnote 45

As well as providing an open channel to the Royal Society and Greenwich Observatory in London, the Madras–Singapore observatory relationship was pivotal in the exchange of scientific knowledge for the region. This relationship is clearly expressed in the letter of Lieutenant-Colonel Scudamore Winde Steel, secretary to the government at Madras, who wrote to Elliot in 1840 informing him ‘that copies of all the papers relating to the establishment of Magnetical Observatories in India have been forwarded to the Governor of Prince of Wales Island, Singapore and Malacca, with a request [to] afford you such assistance as may be required’. Elliot in turn was expected to furnish Madras with a ‘monthly report of your recordings after the establishment of the Observatory at Singapore … for transmission to the Honourable Court of Directors’.Footnote 46 Likewise, the architectural designs for both observatories were connected, based as they were on Humphrey Lloyd's plans for the magnetic observatory at Trinity College Dublin, finished between 1837 and 1838.Footnote 47 In Singapore, this entailed ‘determining the direction of the axis of the Building with regard to the Magnetic Meridian’ to decide the arrangement of the rooms, though Elliot made some allowance for the local circumstances by adding a veranda, which he argued was ‘necessary in this climate’.Footnote 48

Observations at Singapore commenced in December 1840, a remarkable achievement given that Elliot had still been in Madras in late August. Observations at Madras started under Ludlow's supervision four months later, in April of 1841.Footnote 49 The speed with which Elliot had begun work reflected his accommodating local building materials and needs into the plans, rather than attempting to emulate the neoclassical design of the observatory at Dublin, or the extensive works at Madras.Footnote 50 Elliot's practical, cheaply built building was situated a little way outside town and had ‘wooden walls and an attap roof [with] floors and pedestals … of granite’.Footnote 51 The structure facilitated essential and accurate work without extravagance. Nevertheless, the establishment of even a simple observatory – especially given the severe civic underfunding – was symbolic of British imperial reach and commitment to the region. As scholars including David Aubin and John McAleer have argued, the founding of an observatory was ‘indispensable in constructing elements of the modern Western state and society’ overseas, and indicative of the ‘cultural progressiveness among Britons living abroad’.Footnote 52 The building and the instruments it housed stood in stark contrast to the surrounding semi-rural, non-European setting.

Elliot remained at Singapore as superintendent of the magnetic observatory, as too did Ludlow at Madras. The global observatory scheme was a pilot, however, and there was no guarantee of longevity for any of the stations. Elliot's letters to his Company superiors at Madras reflect his frustration at the uncertain situation and his desire to convince them of the need for continued funding. It certainly appears that Elliot ran the whole operation on a shoestring budget, only able to operate at the most basic level required to maintain regular observations. Indeed, in 1843 he was to complain that although ‘the assistants at Singapore are zealous … their staff allowance is not enough for expenses’.Footnote 53 Elliot spent a great deal of his time travelling to supervise and carry out observations personally, convinced of the worth and exigency of extending the geographic reach of observations. In 1842, for instance, he had sought the permission of the Straits Settlements' governor ‘to proceed by the first opportunity to Borneo for the purpose of taking Magnetic Observations'. He explained, ‘it is perhaps the only opportunity I shall ever have of proceeding there and I am most anxious to avail myself of it’.Footnote 54 His request was granted and he spent two months in Borneo, albeit largely at his own expense and severely hindered by his lone responsibility for operations: ‘if he were to have 3 assistants he would be able to do far more’, he later demurred.Footnote 55

Elliot's time in Borneo enabled him to conceive of practical ways to extend his researches and, in early 1843, he communicated his plans to Fort St George:

I am anxious to extend the utility of the fixed observatory at Singapore as much as possible with no increased expense to the Honourable East India Company, this I can do at the same time as I proceed to other stations and procuring at the same time a set of observations, equal in value to those at Singapore. I propose to stop two months at one place and there take a series of observations simultaneous with those being undertaken by the other observatories … one object of the whole of the present system is to extend the range as much as possible of the observations – there are now more than 50 Magnetic Observatories in the world … I need not insist upon the increased value of the Singapore Observations if I were to increase the number of stations by ten or twelve.Footnote 56

Elliot appended to this letter the magnetic and meteorological observations he made in Borneo, with a full analysis of the daily magnetic variations, temperature and pressure.Footnote 57 Mindful of the need to convince the government of the value of his research, he further emphasized how his proposals for extending regional observations would complement ‘surveys … now being carried out in Canada and South Africa’. The ‘Malayan archipelago’, he argued, offered a ‘number of small islands’ with ‘advantageous positions’ alongside Malacca, Penang, the Tenasserim Provinces and Sumatra, as places to obtain observations ‘from a dozen to fifteen stations’.Footnote 58 His ambitious plan of work required significant personal commitment and necessitated the continued operation of the Singapore observatory. ‘It must be remarked’, he wrote, that the Borneo survey ‘derived its chief value from having been made whilst the Observatory at this station is in full operation – any survey made subsequently to the year ’45 when it is proposed to close all the observatories will not possess the same value’.Footnote 59 He therefore requested permission to ‘proceed to different adjacent stations for the purpose of taking a series of observations simultaneously with those taken at Singapore’.Footnote 60 The response from Fort St George was largely indifferent, stating that ‘the orders of your Honourable Court respecting the Magnetic Observations carried no authority for it’. Elliot was forced to change tack, petitioning the Royal Society in London directly. However, his petition was not received until 1844, by which stage there was no consensus over whether the station at Singapore should remain open beyond the planned closure date of 1845.Footnote 61 His request was not approved and there is no record of any further observations made in the Straits Settlements or Borneo for this period, even though the instruments were kept in situ.Footnote 62

By 1845 Elliot's careful ministrations had resulted in a complete set of meteorological observations for Singapore from 1841 to 1845 and for Sarawak, Borneo, for two months in the autumn of 1842. For Singapore these included hourly observations of barometer and thermometer with remarks on the weather at zenith and horizon,Footnote 63 and for Borneo hourly temperature and pressure from 5.00 a.m. to 9.00 p.m. daily.Footnote 64 Elliot's extensive notes also reveal his meticulous efforts in comparing the observations for autumn 1842 in Singapore and Sarawak.Footnote 65 Throughout Elliot's administration of the observatory he kept the Royal Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science continually appraised of his observations, and his records for 1841, 1842, 1843 and January to October 1844 were incorporated into Sabine's scholarly reports for the association's annual meetings and reports.Footnote 66 The full set from 1841 to 1845 were eventually printed and published.Footnote 67

The six-year experiment in establishing a global magnetic and meteorological network was almost at an end. The British Association for the Advancement of Science viewed the cessation of activities with understandable concern, citing the ‘high importance of the objects in view [and] the interest which they yearly continue to excite more and more in the public mind’.Footnote 68 The association called for a discussion document to be circulated amongst its worldwide members prior to a formal conference, asking for a response on two points: the perceived value against costs of extending the project, and the direction it should take were the project to be continued. Replies came in from all over the world, including from Elias Loomis (New York), A.T. Kupffer (Russia) and Heinrich Dove (Berlin), and all were overwhelmingly positive.Footnote 69 The majority of members supported continued magnetic and meteorological observation, vocally acclaiming the value of extended temporal and geographic reach. Eminent meteorologist Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, for instance, argued that ‘mean quantities can only be obtained after the elimination of periodical variations’. John Allan Broun of Makerstoun Observatory maintained that ‘the work of a few well-placed observatories in a few years will do more for science than all the scattered observations made loosely and irregularly for the last century’.Footnote 70 On meteorology specifically, Herschel responded by proposing improvements to the frequency and location of observations, types of instrument used and methods of comparison. He also offered his opinion that terrestrial and marine weather observations should be published in the public realm.Footnote 71

It is noteworthy that the observations collated at the various observatories during this experimental period were published and made available in libraries for the reading public.Footnote 72 Publication may have been a response to rising middle-class interest in making domestic weather observations with portable barometers and thermometers, as noted by Golinski.Footnote 73 It may also reflect what James Secord has highlighted as the Victorian passion for reading about and taking part in scientific endeavours.Footnote 74 John Herschel, for instance, avidly encouraged the public to engage with scientific education through greater access to books, stating at a public lecture in 1833 that the widespread practice of reading and the ‘reading of science’ in particular would be ‘a remedy for the country's social, political, and religious malaise’.Footnote 75 His call was acted upon by leading scientists during the 1830s and 1840s. In 1845, for example, Sabine contributed a stirring article to the Spectator claiming that the data acquired during the 1840s global observatory experiment, and their making public, were a great national good, ‘imparting a community of interest to various classes of men in the Mother-country and in the Colonies’. He continued, ‘In itself a pursuit adapted to elevate and refine the mind, it is at the same time one of those thousand links which form the chain of national feeling’.Footnote 76 More cynically, the reasoning behind making such experimental data available to the public may have been inspired by what Sabine alluded to in his letter to Herschel on 21 April 1845, that publication ‘affords a fair example of what these institutions accomplish’, with direct reference to justifying the cost.Footnote 77 Either way, the 1830s and 1840s saw meteorological observation become a science of significant public interest.

In June 1845 the General Committee of the British Association recommended, based on the resolutions of the Magnetic Conference headed by Sabine, to continue the magnetic observatories at Greenwich and Dublin. Moreover, it wished to extend until 1848 the operations of Toronto, Van Diemen's Land and St Helena, the last for ‘special meteorological objects’. Operations at Madras and Bombay were merged with the astronomical observatories, but those at Singapore and Simla were to be terminated by the end of the year due to lack of funds. Elliot, however, was kept on in a similar role, the association acting on his proposal to make a magnetic survey of the Indian Ocean region.Footnote 78 The purpose of Elliot's commission was to determine ‘certain magnetic lines … especially changes of the declination, of magnetic intensity, and of the barometer’ over a wide area covered by sixteen separate stations. Interestingly, the instruments used by Elliot at Singapore were kept in place in order to be occasionally utilized for comparative work during the subsequent Indian Ocean survey.Footnote 79

Future directions

The Magnetic Conference and subsequent report were to determine the direction of meteorological research for the next few decades. Whilst the expensive system of magnetic observatories was scaled back, weather observations could be more cheaply continued; the value of sub-daily readings over a wide temporal area during the experiments of the early 1840s was recognized. Indeed, Dove conducted extensive analysis on the observations taken by Elliot and his global counterparts during the 1840s. Dove's work enabled a more comprehensive picture of how the climate, including atmospheric pressure and monsoonal patterns in Asia, operated. His investigation of monthly mean values of temperature (including deviations), for example, was the basis of some of his most influential work in the field of longer-term climatic variation over extended areas, and on atmospheric dynamics. The magnetic observations taken during the 1840s and the continuing work at the remaining colonial observatories greatly extended knowledge about the magnetic relationship of the Sun and the Earth, solar spots, aurora borealis and magnetic disturbances.Footnote 80 The association's report recommended that additional forms of observation (including wind) be made – especially during unusual weather events – and adding wet-bulb hygrometer and thermometer observations at different heights (over- and underground), as well as increasing the number of rain gauges deployed. A change of direction was evidenced in the manner in which observations were to be taken. Rather than relying on expensive and geographically limited observatories, a commitment was made to widening geographic scope by improving self-recording meteorological instruments. This enabled more observations to be taken but with fewer skilled staff, and an order for the ‘pecuniary encouragement for the invention or improvement’ of the same was issued.Footnote 81

After the closure of the magnetic observatory in Singapore, weather recording in the Straits Settlements followed this lead. The making of observations did not cease but shifted towards incorporation in other institutions. Medical officers, for example, had commonly undertaken regular weather observations because of their interest in the tropical climate and the incidence of disease, and their reports had been the chief source of information on the weather and climate outside observatories for several decades. This practice was not specific to the Straits, but had been performed across the colonies. India is one of the best examples. The annual reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, for example, include India's meteorological returns taken by medical officers at different stations around the country, including at Bombay and Simla.Footnote 82 Likewise, influenced by David Brewster's work on mean temperatures,Footnote 83 the naval physician John Richardson and ship's surgeon John Simpson conducted extensive work on data collected during Edward Parry's 1820s Arctic voyages.Footnote 84 In the Straits Settlements, medical officers made readings and early observation stations were, more often than not, located in hospitals. Temperature and pressure observations were taken sub-daily, often in conjunction with data from rain gauges and general remarks about the weather. They were collated and tabulated as monthly means and sent to the chief medical officer of the Straits, who then submitted them as part of his annual report to the British government. Officers and staff stationed at the new lighthouses constructed in the 1850s and 1860s along the Straits of Malacca coastline near the ports at Penang and Malacca, as well as at the Straits of Singapore, were likewise expected to make meteorological observations.Footnote 85 So too were officers at the tidal observatory on Penang Island, in operation between 1842 and 1847. This station was under the authority of the government at Madras, and it was this authority that directed the coordinated making of tidal and weather observations on the coasts of India, Penang and Singapore and supplied the necessary scientific instruments.Footnote 86

The continued interest in observing the weather also stemmed from the interest taken by foresters and botanists in the mooted effect of deforestation on localized climates.Footnote 87 After a severe flood in 1881, for example, the Public Works Department reported that ‘the danger of disastrous occurrences of flood will only increase as the country gets cleared’.Footnote 88 The chief medical officer for the Straits Settlements, T. Irvine Rowell, observed in 1885 how forest destruction (referred to as ‘desiccation’) affected rainfall.Footnote 89 Even by 1912, the retired superintendent of public works was moved to write how, in his opinion, the annual rainfall had actually decreased as a ‘natural result of the removal of trees’ in the area.Footnote 90

By the late 1870s, the weather was being observed at eighteen different stations in the Straits Settlements. The 1880s, however, were to witness a sudden acceleration in this number. In 1883, Irvine Rowell recommended extending observations across the colony, ‘with the promise of important results’. The observation stations, he argued, should be located at medical facilities, but ‘if District Hospitals are not erected, the Police Stations at all events can be utilised so far as thermometers and rain gauges go … Next year I hope to see the area of observation greatly extended’.Footnote 91 His prediction was to prove true as, by 1883, observations were being taken not only at single stations in Penang, Singapore and Malacca, but also at several stations in each town. In Singapore, for example, stations operated at Kampong Kerbau Hospital Observatory and the General Hospital at Sepoy, and ‘besides those in town … at the new hospital at Dusan Durian Daunn, and the Kesang Station, 18 miles up country’.Footnote 92 Furthermore, in 1884, a new registering station was opened at the Quarantine Depot on St John Island. At Penang there were observation stations at the Central Prison Hospital and at Government Hill, and at four hill stations in the region of Province Wellesley and Malacca.Footnote 93 By 1885, Irvine Rowell was pleased to record that there were now twenty-nine ‘registering stations … being 18 over the number in 1884’, including a new one supervised by Nathanial Cantley at Singapore's Botanic Gardens.Footnote 94 In addition, a rain gauge was located at Singapore's Peninsula and Oriental (P&O) shipping company depot and another at the Waterworks Reservoir. The colonial surgeon had responsibility for further observation stations at the Leper Asylum at Pulau Jerajah, Penang, and one at Leper Island, Province Wellesley.Footnote 95 This sudden rise in number reflected growing international recognition of the importance of keeping regular, widespread records, but also technological advancements. The first British self-registering anemometer and rain gauge, for example, had enabled frequent observations to be made with a minimum of specialist staff.Footnote 96 The situation in the 1880s showed progress in climatological researches in many ways. There had been a gradual shift from sporadic observation to an understanding of the value of collating extensive, global data. The making of accurate records had become gradually embedded in everyday practice across the Straits Settlements.

Conclusion

The painstaking work of ordinary men like Elliot is perhaps less well remembered when compared with that of Royal Society scientists like Herschel, but their work is no less important. The dedication of Elliot in making sub-daily observations in a region where little had previously been known about the climate helped to reveal the value of extended meteorological investigation. Indeed, his detailed reports were for many years the only extant terrestrial observations available. Singapore too was, for a time at least, a key regional hub in a global scientific network, the only viable location for experimental meteorological science by the British in South East Asia at this time. By the 1860s the weather sciences were considered vital to British interests in the region, a fact emphasized by the inclusion of meteorological returns and analysis in the annual ‘Blue Book’ reports, the catalogue of all Straits Settlements’ economic and political activity sent annually to London from 1867. Science went hand in hand with commercial expansion. In the case of meteorology, an improved understanding of the tropical climate underpinned efforts for combating tropical disease and improving agricultural output and the colonial economy. Investment in meteorological and scientific research thus demonstrated Britain's long-term commitment to the region.

The story of the Singapore observatory also situates the Straits Settlements in the network of international cooperation and the exchange of knowledge across the globe. The British Empire was the template on which the network was hung, and the efforts of the Royal Society, the British government, the English East India Company and the Admiralty were all required to connect and disseminate the global experiment over five continents. Nor was the network limited to a scientific elite; medical, military and local men all had essential roles to play. As Sabine noted in 1845,

No fewer than twenty non-commissioned officers of the Artillery have been employed upon those observations, and have displayed extraordinary aptitude for scientific acquirement. The practice of occupying the men with such pursuits is an important step in the education of their class.Footnote 97

Sabine's claim also connects with contemporary arguments for opening the reading public to scientific discourse, in this case via the printing and distribution of Elliot's findings around the libraries of Victorian Britain and its colonies. The network was not limited to the British Empire. The discourse that surrounded the observatory experiments of the 1830s and 1840s reveals an incredible network of scientists and institutions in cities from Algiers to Zlatoust. This network was not only kept informed of the results of British magnetic and meteorological research but itself provided input and direction for the 1840s observatory experiment, and for British magnetic and meteorological policy after 1845.

Footnotes

1 A notable exception is Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells, Nature and Nation: Forests and Development in Peninsula Malaysia, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005.

2 Kathirithamby-Wells, Jeyamalar, ‘Peninsular Malaysia in the context of natural history and colonial science’, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies (2009) 11(1), pp. 337–374, 337.

3 See, for example, Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013; E. Le Roy Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate since the year 1000, Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1971; Pfister, Christian, ‘Climate and economy in eighteenth-century Switzerland’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History (1978) 9(2), pp. 223–243; T.M.L. Wrigley, M.J. Ingram and G. Farmer (eds.), Climate and History: Studies in Past Climates and Their Impact on Man, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985; Jean M. Grove, The Little Ice Age, London: Methuen, 1988; Wolfgang Behringer, A Cultural History of Climate, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007; Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, 1598–1648, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979.

4 See, for example, Vladimir Janković, Reading the Skies: A Cultural History of English Weather, 1650–1820, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000; or Jan Golinski, British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007.

5 Brant Vogel, review of J. Golinski, British Weather and the Climate of Enlightenment, H-Albion, H-Net Reviews, May 2015, pp. 1–4, 1–2.

6 Susie Protschky, Images of the Tropics: Environment and Colonial Determinism, Leiden: KITLV Press, 2011; D. Arnold, The Problem of Nature: Environment, Culture and European Expansion, London: Blackwell, 1996; Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

7 See, for example, Dane Kennedy, ‘The perils of the midday sun: climatic anxieties in the colonial tropics’, in John MacDonald MacKenzie (ed.), Imperialism in the Natural World, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990, pp. 118–140; Mark Harrison, Climates and Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India 1600–1850, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999; James S. Duncan, In the Shadow of the Tropics: Climate, Race and Biopower in Nineteenth Century Ceylon, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007; James Beattie, Empire and Environmental Anxiety: Health, Science, Art and Conservation in South Asia and Australasia, 1800–1920, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

8 Katherine Anderson, Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005, pp. 5–7.

9 McAleer, John, ‘Stargazers at the world's end: telescopes, observatories, and “views” of empire in the nineteenth-century British Empire’, BJHS (2011) 46(3), pp. 389–413, 389.

10 David Aubin, Charlotte Bigg and H. Otto Sibum (eds.), The Heavens on Earth: Observatories and Astronomy in Nineteenth-Century Science and Culture, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010, pp. 15–16.

11 Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain, London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 5–6. See also Roberts, Lissa, ‘Situating science in global history: local exchanges and networks of circulation’, Itinerario (2009) 33, pp. 19–30; Zoë Laidlaw, Colonial Connections, 1815–45: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005.

12 Kathirithamby-Wells, op. cit. (2), p. 338.

13 Golinski, op. cit. (4), pp. 108–9.

14 Lee MacDonald, T., ‘Making Kew Observatory: the Royal Society, the British Association and the politics of early Victorian science’, BJHS, available on CJO2015, doi:10.1017/S0007087415000023.

15 John van Wyhe, ‘Wallace in Singapore’, in T.P. Barnard (ed.), Nature Contained: Environmental Histories of Singapore, Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2015, pp. 85–109, 85–86.

16 National Archive of Malaysia (hereafter NAM), SEL.SEC.G 438/1935, ‘Weather forecasting in Malaya by C.D. Stewart, superintendent Malayan Meteorological Service, 1935’.

17 Clements R. Markham, ed., The Voyages of Sir James Lancaster, Kt., to the East Indies: With Abstracts of Journals of Voyages to the East Indies during the Seventeenth Century, Preserved in the India Office: And the Voyage of Captain John Knight to Seek the North-West Passage (1606), London: Hakluyt Society, 1877, pp. 10–11.

18 British Library (hereafter BL), India Office Records (hereafter IOR), G/34/1, Bengal Public Proceedings, unrecorded papers 726, instructions from the government at Bengal to Capt. A. Kyd to survey Penang, Jerajal and Phuket, 11 April 1787.

19 BL, IOR/G/34/1 Bengal Public Proceedings, 16 November 1787, unrecorded papers 726, 1 September 1787.

20 For more on this, especially early European settlers’ encounters with the ‘natives’ and disease, see Satadru Sen, Disciplined Natives: Race, Freedom and Confinement in Colonial India, New Dehli: Primus Books, 2012, pp. 291–292.

21 Golinski, op. cit. (4), pp. 79–80, 83, 101, 106; Anderson, op. cit. (8), pp. 6–7.

22 Brohan, P., Allan, R., Freeman, E., Wheeler, D., Wilkinson, C. and Williamson, F., ‘Constraining the temperature history of the past millennium using early instrumental observations’, Climate of the Past Journal (2012) 8, pp. 1653–1685, 1656–1657.

23 Golinski, op. cit. (4), p. 208.

24 Anderson, op. cit. (8), p. 154.

25 For more on this observatory see Mark Anderson, The Day the World Discovered the Sun: An Extraordinary Story of Scientific Adventure and the Race to Track the Transit of Venus, Boston: De Capo Press, 2012, p. 41; or McAleer, op. cit. (9), p. 405.

26 This observatory closed in 1853 due to lack of funds. Its director, Lieutenant J.H. Kay of the British Admiralty, continued working unpaid for one year after 1853: Green, Ronald, ‘Sponsored research in geomagnetism 130 years ago’, History of Geophysics (1984) 1, pp. 32–3.

27 David S. Evans, ‘Astronomical institutions in the southern hemisphere, 1850–1950’, in Michael Hoskin (ed.), The General History of Astronomy, vol. 4: Astrophysics and Twentieth-Century Astronomy to 1950: Part A, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 154–165, 154.

28 Golinski, op. cit. (4), p. 210; Anderson, op. cit. (8), pp. 1–2.

29 John Anderson, Mission to the East Coast of Sumatra, Edinburgh and London, 1826, pp. xviii–xvix, 364.

30 Anderson, op. cit. (8), pp. 368–369.

31 An early example includes BL, MSS Eur. D. 157, Caswell, J., ‘Abstract of the weather for 1828, showing temperature, rainfall and winds for each month’, Observations on the Medical Topography of Singapore, 1830, pp. 16–20.

32 For more on Penang's relationship with Singapore and its political position in the Straits Settlements’ administration see C.M. Turnbull, ‘Penang's changing role in the Straits Settlements’, in Yeoh Seng Guan, Loh Wei Leng, Khoo Salma Nasution and Neil Khor (eds.), Penang and Its Region: The Story of an Asian Entrepôt, Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2009, pp. 30–53.

33 Report of the Twenty-Fourth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1854, London: J. Murray, 1855, pp. 355–369, 356.

34 Report of the Tenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, August 1840, London: J. Murray, 1841, p. 428; Report of the Fifteenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, June 1845, London: J. Murray, 1846, pp. 3–4.

35 Tenth Meeting, op. cit. (34), pp. 430–1.

36 Twenty-Fourth Meeting, op. cit. (33), pp. 355–6.

37 ‘Sabine's magnetic observations at Toronto’, Spectator, 22 March 1845, p. 17.

38 Tenth Meeting, op. cit. (34), pp. 427–428.

39 Tenth Meeting, op. cit. (34).

40 BL, IOR/F/4/1906/81364, Board's Collections, Vol. 1906: Draft 670–1841, Collection 15, 13 April 1841, p. 2.

41 IOR/F/4/1906/81364, op. cit. (40).

42 The floating collimator was a relatively new instrument, invented in 1826 by Captain Henry Kater, who was a fellow of the Royal Society and in active service in Madras until the early 1800s. For contemporary use of the instrument see John Nixon, ‘XXXVII: Method of avoiding certain sources of inaccuracy in Kater's Horizontal Floating Collimator’, Philosophical Magazine, London (1828) 4, pp. 218–219.

43 BL, IOR/F/4/1906/81364, Board's Collections, Vol. 1906: Draft 670–1841, Collection 15, Point 3, 13 April 1841, p. 2. For more on how the instruments were used see Multhauf, Robert P. and Good, Gregory, ‘A brief history of geomagnetism’, Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology (1987), 48, p. 4; Airy, G.B., ‘LXXV: On an Extraordinary Magnetic Disturbance observed at Greenwich’, London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Supplement to vol. 19, 3rd series (1841), pp. 505–511.

44 BL, IOR/F/4/2026/91387, 1 August 1840, p. 45.

45 IOR/F/4/2026/91387, op. cit. (44).

46 BL, IOR/F/4/2026/91387, letter from Lieut. Col. S.W. Steel, secretary to government, to Lieut. C.M. Elliot of the Engineers, 25 August 1840, p. 69.

47 James O'Hara, ‘Lloyd, Humphrey (1800–1881)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, online edn, January 2008, at www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16840, accessed 30 July 2014, explains that the observatory at Dublin became the prototype for the series of observatories built thereafter in the colonies. See also Mark McCartney and Andrew Whitaker (eds.), Physicists of Ireland: Passion and Precision, London: Institute of Physics Publishing, 2003, pp. 47–48.

48 BL, IOR/F/4/2026/91387, 13 August 1840, pp. 71–76.

49 Fifteenth Meeting, op. cit. (34), p. 5.

50 For the building of the Madras Observatory see Kochhar, R.K., ‘Madras Observatory: buildings and instruments’, Bulletin of the Astronomical Society of India (1985) 13(3), pp. 287–301.

51 R. St John Braddell, One Hundred Years of Singapore, vol. 1, London: J. Murray, 1921, pp. 478–479. Attap is a traditional Malay thatch made from the fronds of the nipa palm.

52 Aubin, Bigg and Sibum, op. cit. (10), pp. 2, 4; McAleer, op. cit. (9), p. 412.

53 BL, IOR F/4/2026, 91387, f. 12, 7 January 1843.

54 BL, IOR F/4/2026, 91387, ff. 3–4, 15 November 1842.

55 BL, IOR F/4/2026, 91387, f. 12, 7 January 1843. See also Edward Belcher, Narrative of the Voyage of the HMS Samarang, During the years 1843–46: Employed Surveying the Islands of the Eastern Archipelago, repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 166.

56 BL, IOR F/4/2026, 91387, ff. 9–11, 7 January 1843.

57 BL, IOR F/4/2026, 91387 ff. 36–37, 7 January 1843.

58 IOR F/4/2026, op. cit. (57), ff. 34–36.

59 IOR F/4/2026, op. cit. (57), f. 34.

60 BL, IOR F/4/2026, op. cit. (57) No 27, f. 1r, 7 June 1843.

61 Royal Society (hereafter RS), MM/10/173, ‘C.M. Elliot, Singapore Observatory: Remarks on the manner in which the Stations adjacent to Singapore might be surveyed, with little, if any expense to Government, 1844’.

62 Elliot, C.M., ‘Magnetic Survey of the Eastern Archipelago’, Abstracts of the Papers Communicated to the Royal Society, vol. 6, 1850–1854, pp. 15–21, 15.

63 C.M. Elliot, Magnetical Observations made at The Honorable East India Company's Magnetical Observatory at Singapore, 1841–5, Madras: printed at the American Mission and Male Asylum Presses, 1851.

64 RS, MA/394, 1842, Meteorological Observations: Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia.

65 MA/394, op. cit. (64), 11 November 1842, p. 2.

66 Fifteenth Meeting, op. cit. (34), p. 8.

67 The Singapore Observatory Yearbooks are available online at the British Geological Survey website: www.geomag.bgs.ac.uk/data_service/data/yearbooks/sin.html.

68 Fifteenth Meeting, op. cit. (34), p. 9.

69 Fifteenth Meeting, op. cit. (34), esp. pp. 6–8, 14–73.

70 Fifteenth Meeting, op. cit. (34), pp. 28, 34. Makerstoun was an observatory in Scotland, and another temporary station, operating between 1842 and 1855.

71 Fifteenth Meeting, op. cit. (34), pp. 9–13.

72 Fifteenth Meeting, op. cit. (34). The Singapore observations took a decade to go to print because of a dispute over the cost. The actual price of printing at Madras (Rp 26,000) far exceeded the original quote (Rp 8,000) and progress was thus suspended whilst the next steps were debated. See BL, F/4/2234,11902, 4 May 1847 and 29 December 1847.

73 Golinski, op. cit. (4), pp. 108–109.

74 James A. Secord, Visions of Science: Books and Readers at the Dawn of the Victorian Age, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 8–9.

75 Secord, op. cit. (74), pp. 1–2.

76 Spectator, 22 March 1845, p. 17, available at http://archive.spectator.co.uk/page/22nd-march-1845/17.

77 Fifteenth Meeting, op. cit. (34), p. 57.

78 Fifteenth Meeting, op. cit. (34), p. 68.

79 Elliot, op. cit. (62), 15.

80 For Sabine's report on the same, ‘rendered accessible for the popular reader’, see Twenty-Fourth Meeting, op. cit. (33), pp. 355–369.

81 Twenty-Fourth Meeting, op. cit. (33), pp. 71–72. For more on the importance given to continuing research on self-registering meteorological instruments see the report compiled by Baron Senftenberg at pp. 108–112.

82 Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, vol. 22, London: J. Murray, 1853, pp. 252–260, esp. 252.

83 David Brewster's published hourly observations made between 1826 and 1827 at Leith Fort formed the basis of the general formula for calculating mean temperature. His methodology for hourly and sub-daily calculation influenced subsequent work undertaken at Greenwich, especially during the 1840s: G. Biddell, ed., ‘Greenwich observations, 1840’, in Greenwich Observations in Astronomy, Magnetism and Meteorology made at the Royal Observatory, London: J. Murray, 1842, pp. 1–80.

84 Journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London, vol. 9, London: J. Murray, 1839, pp. 331–380; and Report of the Twenty-Seventh Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, London: J. Murray, 1858, pp. 159–184.

85 For further information on the construction of the Raffles Lighthouse at Singapore see National Archives of London (hereafter NA), Colonial Office (hereafter CO) 273/2, 1858 to June 1859, ff. 231r, 241r, 5 February 1858; for proposals regarding a lighthouse at Selangor in 1861 see NA, CO 273/5, ff. 132v–r, 1861; or for correspondence regarding the proposal to erect the Horsburgh Lighthouse on Pedra Branca, in particular the opinions of the Court of Directors on the subject of funds, see NA, Military Department Bengal, Cons., No. 12 K. W. & 13, 17 March 1849.

86 For papers relating to the tidal observatory see BL, IOR/F/4/2025/91360, December 1842–January 1843; BL, IOR/F/4/1934/83527, December 1837–November 1841; BL, IOR/Z/E/4/46/S590, tidal observations, 1842–1845.

87 Logan, J.R., ‘The probable effects on the climate of Pinang of the continued destruction of its hill jungles’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia (1848) 2, pp. 534–436, cited in Van Wyhe, op. cit. (15), p. 92; or ‘Climatic effects of destruction of forests in Penang’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago (1851) 2, p. 534.

88 NAM, 50/82, ‘Report of the Superintendent of Works regarding the recent 1881 flood at Kuala Lumpur’, 29 December 1881.

89 Rowell, Thomas Irvine, ‘Meteorological report for the year 1885’, Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1889) 16, pp. 385–412.

90 NAM, 1358/1912, 23 January 1912, pp. 1–2.

91 Proceedings of the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements for the Year 1883, vol. 1, Singapore: The Govt. Printing Office, 1883, E. 17, Appendix, C281, Items 97–98.

92 Proceedings, op. cit. (91).

93 Proceedings of the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements for the year 1884, vol. 1, Singapore: The Govt. Printing Office, 1885, E. 18, Section vii, Items 229–238.

94 Proceedings of the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements for the year 1885, Singapore: The Govt. Printing Office, Appendix C, Item 18, 1886.

95 Proceedings, op. cit. (94), items 19, 20.

96 This instrument had been introduced in 1837 but was not trialled successfully until the 1850s by A. Follett Osler in Liverpool: Report of Twenty-Fifth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1855, London: J. Murray, 1856, pp. 127–142.

97 Spectator, 22 March 1845, p. 17, at http://archive.spectator.co.uk/page/22nd-march-1845/17.