The Samoa Hurricane, 15-16 March 1889

Analysing historical weather extremes such as the tropical cyclone in Samoa in March 1889 could add to our understanding of extreme events. However, up to now the availability of suitable data was limiting the analysis of historical extremes, particularly in remote regions. The new “Twentieth Century Reanalysis” (20CR), which provides six-hourly, three-dimensional data for the entire globe back to 1871, might provide the means to study this and other early events. While its suitability for studying historical extremes has been analysed for events in the northern extratropics (see other papers in this volume), the representation of tropical cyclones, especially in early times, remains unknown. The aim of this paper is to study to the hurricane that struck Samoa on 15-16 March 1889. We analyse the event in 20CR as well as in contemporary observations. We find that the event is not reproduced in the ensemble mean of 20CR, nor is it within the ensemble spread. We argue that this is due to the paucity of data assimilated into 20CR. A preliminary compilation of historical observations from ships for that period, in contrast, provides a relatively consistent picture of the event. This shows that more observations would be available and implies that future versions of surface-based reanalyses might profit from digitizing further observations in the tropical region.

Ein Forschungsreisender als Notbehelf: Hermann von Wissmann und der erste Überseeeinsatz des Deutschen Reichs (1889-1891)

When the German government faced for the first time an irregular war in German East Africa in 1888, it realised that it did not have the necessary means for such a conflict. Hermann Wissmann, an explorer, was therefore given the mandate to form and lead a force of mercenaries that was bound to him personally on the basis of contracts. Although Wissmann was successful in crushing the disturbances, the government of the Reich refused to give him a leading administrative position in the new formed protectorate subordinate directly to the Kaiser. It feared that the entrepreneur of violence, which had up to then been backed up, would not accept the regulations of colonial rule that should be implemented. Soon, however, it became clear that due to entrenched local views on sovereignty and legitimacy it would be difficult to transfer the western European concept of the monopoly of the state on violence to Africa.