Beaufort equivalent scales from the literature have been compared to find the scale that gives the most homogenous, internally consistent, combined anemometer and visual wind speed data from the Comprehensive Ocean–Atmosphere Data Set. Anemometer wind speeds have been height corrected using the individual anemometer height for each ship, where that could be identified, resulting in a more consistent dataset than that used in previous studies. Monthly mean 1° averages were constructed for visual and anemometer wind speeds separately from data between 1980 and 1990. The anemometer and visual means were compared where there were enough observations to give confidence in both means. The equivalent scale of Lindau was the most effective at giving similar anemometer and visual wind distributions from this mean dataset. The scale of daSilva et al. also performed well. The Lindau scale is, however, preferred because of its more rigorous derivation. The results for the different scales are in agreement with Lindau’s suggestion that the characteristic biases of earlier Beaufort scales could be explained by the statistical method of derivation.