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During the Age of Sail, winds and currents determined trade routes and therefore influenced European imperialism and modern political geography. For an outline to the main wind systems see Global wind patterns. Pilotage or cabotage, in one sense, is the art of sailing along the coast using known landmarks.
The Roaring Forties were a major aid to ships sailing the Brouwer Route from Europe to the East Indies or Australasia during the Age of Sail, and in modern times are favoured by yachtsmen on round-the-world voyages and competitions. The boundaries of the Roaring Forties are not consistent: the wind-stream shifts north or south depending on the ...
The discovery, upon which the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade was based, is owed to the Spanish Andrés de Urdaneta, who, sailing in convoy under Miguel López de Legazpi, discovered the return route in 1565: the fleet split up, some heading south, but Urdaneta reasoned that the trade winds of the Pacific might move in a gyre as the Atlantic ...
The captain of a sailing ship seeks a course along which the winds can be expected to blow in the direction of travel. [5] During the Age of Sail , the pattern of prevailing winds made various points of the globe easy or difficult to access, and therefore had a direct effect on European empire-building and thus on modern political geography.
The Battle of Scheveningen, 10 August 1653, painted by Jan Abrahamsz Beerstraaten A ship of war, Cyclopaedia 1728, Vol 2. The Age of Sail is a period in European history that lasted at the latest from the mid-16th (or mid-15th) [1] to the mid-19th centuries, in which the dominance of sailing ships in global trade and warfare culminated, particularly marked by the introduction of naval ...
With the development of the sailing man-of-war, and the beginning of the great sailing fleets capable of keeping at sea for long periods together, came the need for a new adaptation of old principles of naval tactics. [7] A ship that depended on the wind for its motive power could not hope to ram.
Because of the prevailing winds at Suez, the canal is less suitable for sailing boats, so steamships got a competitive advantage when the canal opened. While the Cape Route remained useful for clippers for some decades, the opening of the canal was the beginning of the end of the Cape Route, as well as the Age of Sail as a whole.
A sailing craft's ability to derive power from the wind depends on the point of sail it is on—the direction of travel under sail in relation to the true wind direction over the surface. The principal points of sail roughly correspond to 45° segments of a circle, starting with 0° directly into the wind.