Currents That Moved History

Ocean Currents and History: Before engines, sailors had to follow the sea's conveyor belts of wind and water. Currents and trade winds decided which empires could reach distant shores, how fast news and fleets traveled, where fish and guano were found, and even how some peoples settled the Pacific.

Gulf Stream: Ponce de Leon noted its force in 1513. In 1770 Benjamin Franklin published a chart based on Nantucket whalers' knowledge after noticing that mail packets from England took longer than American merchant ships.

Christopher Columbus: His 1492 voyage worked because he sailed south to the Canary Islands to catch the trade winds west. For the return, he swung north to pick up the westerlies, a looping pattern that Spanish ships used for centuries.

Chincha Islands: Peru's Humboldt Current feeds seabirds whose droppings built up enormous guano deposits. The fertilizer became so valuable that Spain seized the islands in 1864, sparking the Chincha Islands War.

Otokichi: In 1832 a Japanese rice ship lost its rudder and drifted on the Kuroshio Current for 14 months across the Pacific. Only three of the crew survived, including Otokichi, and they reached the coast of present day Washington.

Vasco da Gama: In 1497 he took the volta do mar, a wide loop through the South Atlantic to catch westerlies instead of fighting the African coast. His fleet spent about three months out of sight of land.

Andres de Urdaneta: In 1565 he found the return route across the Pacific from Manila by sailing far north to catch the westerlies and the Kuroshio. It opened the Manila galleon trade that ran for over 250 years.

Hendrik Brouwer: In 1611 the Dutch navigator discovered that ships could ride the Roaring Forties across the Indian Ocean. The route cut the trip to Java dramatically and led Dutch ships to the coast of Australia.

Hippalus: This Greek navigator is credited in ancient accounts with revealing how monsoon winds carry ships from the Red Sea to India. Roman era trade then boomed on a predictable yearly schedule.

Horse Latitudes: Calm bands of high pressure near 30 degrees north and south trapped sailing ships. A popular story says sailors threw horses overboard to save water, though the origin of the name is uncertain.

Kon Tiki: In 1947 Thor Heyerdahl sailed a balsa raft from Peru on the Humboldt Current and trade winds, reaching the Tuamotus after 101 days. It showed such a drift voyage was possible, though DNA later pointed to Polynesian ancestry from the west.

Spanish Armada: After its 1588 defeat, the fleet fled north around Scotland and Ireland with contrary winds. Gales wrecked many ships on the Irish coast, and roughly a third of the fleet never returned.

Titanic: The cold Labrador Current carries icebergs from Greenland south into shipping lanes. In April 1912 an unusually heavy season of ice put Titanic in the path.

El Nino of 1877: Warm Pacific waters and shifted rains contributed to severe droughts and famines across India, China and Brazil. Historians estimate tens of millions died in the global disaster.

Drake Passage: When it opened tens of millions of years ago, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current began circling the continent. It isolated Antarctica from warm waters, helping its ice sheets grow.

Sargasso Sea: Columbus's crew saw floating seaweed in 1492 and feared shoals. The sea sits in the calm center of the North Atlantic gyre, and European and American eels travel there to spawn.

Hokule'a: In 1976 this replica Polynesian canoe sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti using traditional navigation by Mau Piailug, who read stars, swells and currents. The journey helped prove deliberate long range voyaging.

Middle Passage: Slave ships used the trade winds and equatorial currents to cross the Atlantic. Records show about 12.5 million Africans were embarked and about 10.7 million survived the journey.

Zheng He: The Ming admiral led seven voyages between 1405 and 1433, timing his fleets to monsoon winds. His treasure ships reached East Africa decades before Portuguese ships rounded the Cape.

Peruvian Anchoveta Collapse: In the early 1970s, El Nino warmed Peruvian waters and fish stocks crashed. A fishery that had landed over 12 million tons in 1970 collapsed within a few years.

Strait of Gibraltar: Surface water flows in from the Atlantic while denser Mediterranean water flows out below. German U boats reportedly cut their engines and drifted through with the current to avoid detection in World War II.

Ferdinand Magellan: In 1520 his fleet entered the Pacific and sailed for 99 days before reaching Guam. The calm winds and vast distance led him to name it the peaceful sea, while crews suffered scurvy and hunger.

Friendly Floatees: In 1992 a container ship lost thousands of plastic bath toys in the Pacific. Oceanographers Curtis Ebbesmeyer and James Ingraham tracked them for years, using the arrivals to refine models of ocean currents.

Wallace Broecker: The Columbia geochemist popularized the Great Ocean Conveyor in the 1980s. He warned that the global circulation could shift abruptly and affect climate, linking currents to past ice age swings.

Cape Horn: In 1788 HMS Bounty spent about 30 days fighting westerlies and currents off Cape Horn before Captain Bligh gave up. The crew sailed east around Africa instead, extending the voyage that led to Tahiti and the famous mutiny.