Winds in the Age of Sail
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The captain of a steam ship naturally chooses the shortest route to nearby destinations. Since a sailing ship is usually pushed by winds and currents, its captain must find a route where the wind will probably blow in the right direction.
Asia
In East Asia: Sailing east from China, Korea, or Japan, sailors find only thousands of miles of empty ocean and a few tiny islands. The Kuroshio Current tends to push ships northeast into the westerlies and towards North America. There are records of unlucky Japanese fishermen being blown to North America, but no records of any who sailed home.[2] It is easy to sail south and link up with the Indian Ocean trade. North China had few ports and little coastwise trade. South China has a number of good ports, but the country inland is hilly or mountainous, which restricts trade.
Indian Ocean and the Monsoon Trade: There are no barriers to trade along the coast between the Red Sea and Japan. Local coastal routes soon were linked and extended to Indonesia. By about 850 trade was mostly in Muslim hands. This trade brought Hinduism and later Islam to Indonesia. A great advantage in the Indian Ocean is the monsoon which blows south in the winter and north in the summer. Someone in the Arabian Peninsula wishing to go to Africa or Indonesia would go south on the winter monsoon and return north with the summer monsoon. In Africa this trade extended about as far as Mozambique, at the southern limit of monsoon winds. Further south was a lee shore with no trade goods that could not be obtained further north. It is not clear how far south trade and geographic knowledge extended, but there is said to be a Chinese map of the thirteenth century showing Africa in roughly its true shape and there is a Venetian report from the mid-fifteenth century of a Chinese or Javanese junk seen off the southwest African coast.[3]
Eastbound from Europe
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/Cabral_voyage_1500.svg/259px-Cabral_voyage_1500.svg.png)
Northwest Africa: Those sailing from Europe leave the Strait of Gibraltar and soon hit the Canary Current, which pushes them southwest down the African coast. They soon reach the northeast trade winds, which also push them southwest. If they leave in late summer they will hit the trade winds sooner, since wind systems move north and south with the seasons. The problem was to get back again. The solution was the volta do mar, in which captains would sail northwest across the winds and currents until they found the westerlies and were blown back to Europe.
The coast of Northwest Africa might be described as the nursery of European imperialism.
Down the coast of Africa: The Portuguese reached the westernmost point of Africa in 1444 and in 1458 rounded
In 1497
Portuguese and Dutch in the Indian Ocean: After a few more voyages the Portuguese learned two things: that there was little market for European goods in the east, and the large Portuguese ships could outfight nearly any local craft. They therefore determined to take by force what they could not get by honest trade. Under the leadership of Afonso de Albuquerque they captured Goa in 1510 for their main base, captured Malacca in 1511 to control the Strait of Malacca, tried to block the mouths of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and built forts in Mozambique to pick up fresh water and wait for the summer monsoon. In 1513 they reached the Spice Islands and in 1519, the same year that Balboa first saw the Pacific, reached Canton. They continued to use the monsoon route — north with the summer monsoon and south with the winter monsoon.
The Dutch republic began its remarkable rise about 1580 during its war of independence from Spain. With
Westward from Europe
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9c/16th_century_Portuguese_Spanish_trade_routes.png/400px-16th_century_Portuguese_Spanish_trade_routes.png)
North Atlantic: Anyone sailing west from Europe is sailing into the wind. Further north, they are sailing against the Gulf Stream. It is not clear how winds and currents were used in this region.[5]
Caribbean: Columbus underestimated the size of the Earth and thought he could reach China by doing a grand volta do mar, going west on the trade winds and returning home on the westerlies. He had the right route but reached the Caribbean Sea rather than China. In 1513 Juan Ponce de León discovered the Gulf Stream while exploring the east coast of Florida. A few years later his pilot, Anton de Alaminos, used the Gulf Stream to push him north to the westerlies and return to Spain. This established the standard Spanish route to the Americas: south to the Canary Islands, west on the trade winds to the Caribbean, then beat against the wind north of Cuba using the Florida Current to the Gulf Steam, then use it to go north to the westerlies which led directly home. Since wind systems move north in summer and south in winter, there is a question of the best season, which is poorly documented. The Caribbean was the gateway to Spanish America, since it is the closest part of America to Europe as measured in sailing days. Nearby were the riches of Mexico and, by crossing Panama, the riches of Peru.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/ClipperRoute.png/250px-ClipperRoute.png)
Strait of Magellan and the Pacific:
Cape Horn: In 1616, almost 100 years after Magellan,
See also
- Volta do mar
- Clipper route
- Roaring Forties
- Antarctic Circumpolar Current
- Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact theories
- Age of Discovery
References
Citations
- ^ This somewhat unorthodox definition was proposed by J. H. Parry, 'The Age of Reconnaissance', 1963,page 98. Fernandez-Armesto uses 'cabotage' for Parry's 'pilotage'
- ^ Hayes, Derek, Historical Atlas of the North Pacific, page 52 and Exploration of the Pacific, footnote 1.
- ^ Fernandez-Armesto, Pathfinders, page 116
- ^ Felipe Fernadez-Armesto, 'Before Columbus', 1987 is a good account of this period
- ^ Fernandez-Armesto, Pathfinders, page 150 and 161, mentions 'brief spring variables' between the British Isles and Newfoundland, but does not give an adequate account
Bibliography
- Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe(2006), Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration.