In 1879, Samuel R. Elson, Marine Pilot on the Hooghly River, published a rhyming pamphlet entitled The Sailor’s East Indian Sky Interpreter and Weather Book. Contained in its clever couplets was the experienced navigator's expert advice for his "brother sailors" on how to detect and avoid the notorious seasonal cyclones that formed in the Bay of Bengal.In devising his rules, he drew not only from his own practical experience but also from scientific research by local meteorologists, with whom he personally interacted in the course of his duties at the port of Calcutta. Composed a few years after the India Meteorological Department's (IMD) establishment in 1875, Elson’s verses open a window into the collaborative exchange of expertise between professionalizing meteorologists and skillful seafarers. This paper examines their late 19th-century alliance based upon mutual interest in mitigating the devastation of cyclonic storms; and for meteorologists, in the potential of these influential partners to win them political support and funding. It then describes the gradual attenuation of that special relationship, as storm warnings and physical models improved enough to avert most catastrophes, and meteorologists' priorities shifted to other scientific problems. It finally links this process to broader transformations in common sense notions regarding weather risks and responsibility, using the case of the unlucky S. S. Okarna in 1923 to illustrate that the IMD had, willingly or not, assumed the burden of duty to prevent storm tragedies (involving European lives and property), thereby excluding sailors from authorship of official cyclone science.
