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Echoes of the Ice Age (Pre-History)
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aurelius



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Oh, and the India Directory, Or Directions Sailing From And To The East.... is by er...James Horsburgh.
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aurelius



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Here's an idea. Go try adding this explanation to Wikipedia giving this Web site as your source. See what the gods of Wikipedia have to say about it.


I've never done this before but I might take up this idea when I have a moment. As you probably know I work in a library and though we have dictionaries of geography, slang and that sort of thing it is a sad fact that most only refer to the 'horses thrown overboard' theory let alone the other three that I have so far come across (they don't question the usefulness of horse meat if rations were running low in becalmed seas - though I suppose if they just threw the bones overboard it could still legitimise the attribution, for the northern hemisphere at least).

Printed dictionaries are quite good at adding new material, but not so good at re-assessing old assumptions properly. Thus the same old nonsense can get recycled over and over again. There is a lack of thoroughness in writing and publishing generally. Hence there remain myths and assumptions that Mick and others castigate or at least question in their posts and books.

At least Wikipedia is more accessible to spontaneous revision.

This I guess is an AE point and probably the first genuine one I have made so far!
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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aurelius wrote:
So here it is clear the phrase is referring to the currents rather than the (lack of) wind.


Indeed. Case closed.

darn

On the other hand, you have successfully solved that question of etymology. I encourage you to add it to Wikipedia with the supporting evidence.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Seems to me they are the same thing.

Horse play is time wasting, being becalmed takes time, ship being dragged off course by currents adds time.

Orthodox etymology links time/tide

This seems a measured variant... no doubt oars/hours/horse are part of this.

A sea vessel propelled by oars in fact moves like a horse. Oar power/horse power

In my opinion a book reference proves nothing. Language is transmitted orally.
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DPCrisp


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I'm not really here: just get to dip in from time to time -- catching up seems impossible -- but I thought I'd say what a lot of pony has been spoken about Horse Latitudes. And a trick reared its head that y'all seem to have missed it.

This period was called the "dead horse" time

>Sigh< You've just been paid, but your money is gone and you've got nothing to show for it: you've bought a dead horse. Not particularly a maritime expression.

Ships often became becalmed in mid-ocean... and they would throw the dead or dying animals overboard.

Often? Too stupid to provision ships properly after the unknown that befell them a few times became the known, expected and planned for? >Sigh<

a ship was 'horsed' if it was being carried on a strong current... "horsed around" in high tides... stiff breezes and a very strong tide... horsed them to the westward

Being thrown off course, of course, might be disastrous, but it's surely better to be shoved around by the power of the Ocean and go somewhere than to remain becalmed and know you're going nowhere.

the "dead horse" ritual... the seaman paraded a straw-stuffed effigy of a horse around the deck before throwing it overboard.

Could it be seen as an offering to the sea to provide a useful current?

Not just a favourable current -- the definition said "the horse latitudes are associated with variable winds mixed with calm" -- but where are you more in need of help, a guiding hand?

If you are becalmed, as if on a gentle sea rather than the wild ocean, who you gonna call? Poseidon, the Tamer of Horses -- he who harnesses, commands the power of horses, maybe?

(Breaking waves are 'horses': evidently ocean winds and currents are, too. I can't find my previous musings on the meaning of 'horse' -- probably on the old site -- but if I recall, it seems to refer to its utility as pack animal and motive force. [ A dead horse then, is especially useless. ] They don't know what 'oar' means, so why not 'horse' -- which might tie-in or might be a coincidence.)

Sailors are famously superstitious, right? You think they wouldn't maintain an ancient sacrificial ritual to ask Poseidon for his help or to thank him for it? (Carvings that say "this is the offering I promised I would make if I arrived back safely -- so thank you very much" are well known from ancient times.) They need not have known what they were doing.

So, Ish, what were you going to say about the Horse Latitudes?
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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I thought I already said it? I supposed "horse" might be an alternate pronunciation of "oars." But I'm satisfied that it refers to the currents.

As for what I have to say about them in my book, I've dropped the term at the moment. The terminology was superfluous. I'd just been reading the label in association with my research on trade winds and trade wind deserts.

Wish you would stay around. No one has greater expertise in etymology.
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aurelius



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Re. Horse Latitudes

Go try adding this explanation to Wikipedia


Done. Used the India Directory and http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-hor3.htm

which link I didn't put in during our previous exchange, but it is better.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Good job with the Wikipedia entry! It reads very well.

I followed your link and was quite puzzled by what I found. According to the referenced page, the throwing overboard of horses at the horse latitudes is a practice testified to, though not witnessed by, a mariner who accompanied no less a figure than James Cook on one of his voyages. One would think such a source dependable on maritime terminology. I tracked down the reference from the memoir written by George Forster, A Voyage Round the World in his Britannic Majesty’s Sloop Resolution, published in 1777:
[1775. July.][Tuesday 4.]On the 4th of July we met with squalls and calms alternately; and the next day had a dead calm, which lasted undisturbed during two days, and was intermixed with light airs for the two following days. The latitudes where these calms chiefly reign, are named the horse-latitudes by mariners, who frequently cross the ocean from Europe to America, because they are fatal to horses and other cattle, which are transported to the last mentioned continent; instances frequently happening, when the calms have lasted a whole month without being interrupted, except by light airs of a few hours duration.
--A Voyage Round the World in His Majesty's Sloop, Resolution, commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years 1772, 3, 4, 5., CHAP. VIII.
The claim made here is that "horses and other cattle" die spontaneously when the ships in which they are transported are becalmed for lengthy periods of time.

I am puzzled by this claim. Could it be that confusion over its origin had set in so early on in maritime history, and could an experienced ocean traveler have not heard the term properly used? I can only conclude that Forster was ill-informed, being a naturalist and journalist and not a sailor by profession.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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It's quite a common occurrence with anthropologists to be fed reasonably plausible but completely made up 'facts'. All too tempting for the objects of study to take the mickey, it wouldn't surprise me if the made up bits might be believed by the originators once they've been in print long enough.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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My thinking exactly. Someone was taking the piss of the egg-head. ;-)
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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Ishmael wrote:
I tracked down the reference from the memoir written by George Forster, A Voyage Round the World in his Britannic Majesty’s Sloop Resolution, published in 1777:
[1775. July.][Tuesday 4.]On the 4th of July we met with squalls and calms alternately; and the next day had a dead calm, which lasted undisturbed during two days, and was intermixed with light airs for the two following days. The latitudes where these calms chiefly reign, are named the horse-latitudes by mariners, who frequently cross the ocean from Europe to America, because they are fatal to horses and other cattle, which are transported to the last mentioned continent; instances frequently happening, when the calms have lasted a whole month without being interrupted, except by light airs of a few hours duration.
--A Voyage Round the World in His Majesty's Sloop, Resolution, commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years 1772, 3, 4, 5., CHAP. VIII.
The claim made here is that "horses and other cattle" die spontaneously when the ships in which they are transported are becalmed for lengthy periods of time.

I am puzzled by this claim. Could it be that confusion over its origin had set in so early on in maritime history, and could an experienced ocean traveler have not heard the term properly used? I can only conclude that Forster was ill-informed, being a naturalist and journalist and not a sailor by profession.


Did George Forster really say the horses "die spontaneously"?

As you are all landlubbers, the subtleties of the tale are probably lost in translation. For your benefit, Captain Boreades will translate.

A ship full of human crew plus horses and cattle has a large but still finite storage capacity for storing fresh water and fodder for the horses and cattle. If the voyage goes well, and no long periods of calm (or storms) are encountered, the human crew (plus horses and cattle) should get to its destination well-founded and without running out of the fresh water and fodder.

If, however, you do encounter extended periods of calm, or are delayed by storms, what happens if you do start running out of the fresh water and/or fodder? Apart from it being bigger than a lifeboat, the position you find yourself in is little better than survivors in a lifeboat with no food or water. In a lifeboat, with only humans available, you start drawing lots for who goes first. (Bags I the big fat lad, he'll keep us going for a good few days)

Back on board the main ship, you do have the relative luxury of having a few mobile sources of food and drink still available. That's the horses and cattle. One might assume the horses were more highly prized than the cattle, so it's the cattle wot goes first. But if you get desperate, those horses are going to go as well. They're not going overboard, they are going into the human crew's stomachs.

There's still a chance the official owners of the horses and cattle might kick up a fuss about their property being eaten. Better to have a cover story handy, like they jumped overboard while the kindly crew was exercising them on deck, or they "died spontaneously" and had to be disposed of, over the side.

Still, I suppose if you are a horse, and your throat is being cut by a member of the crew, you could be said to have died spontaneously.
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Ishmael


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Starting to make sense.

And you don't have "cow latitudes" because you're always eating cow. You know conditions are really bad when you start into the horse.
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Ishmael


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Parking this data point here as it is relevant to the pole shift discussion.
An equatorial bulge is a difference between the equatorial and polar diameters of a planet, due to the centrifugal force of its rotation. A rotating body tends to form an oblate spheroid rather than a sphere. The Earth has an equatorial bulge of 42.77 km (26.58 mi): that is, its diameter measured across the equatorial plane (12,756.27 km (7,926.38 mi)) is 42.77 km more than that measured between the poles (12,713.56 km (7,899.84 mi)). An observer standing at sea level on either pole, therefore, is 21.36 km closer to Earth's centrepoint than if standing at sea level on the equator. The value of Earth's radius may be approximated by the average of these radii.

An often-cited result of Earth's equatorial bulge is that the highest point on Earth, measured from the center outwards, is the peak of Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador, rather than Mount Everest. But since the ocean, like the Earth and the atmosphere, bulges, Chimborazo is not as high above sea level as Everest is.
--Equatorial Bulge
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aurelius



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Boreades wrote:

Did George Forster really say the horses "die spontaneously"?


No, of course they didn't, this is Forster's euphemistic shorthand for consumption back home. Note the diarist refers to 'Horses and other cattle' - all livestock were once referred to as 'cattle'.

He goes on to explain that many of these were being carried as 'gifts' to any natives they encountered. Where they did not reach their intended destination they may have perished thus:

"[Sunday 11.]On the 11th we crossed the line, after spending two years and nine months to the south of it. The calms which are usual in its neighbourhood did not retard our course, till we had gained near four degrees of north latitude, and lasted from the 14th to the 18th, when the N. E. tradewind set in, after we had amused ourselves with catching some sharks and a porpesse, which the crew feasted upon. Of a very numerous collection of live animals, which my father had collected at a great expence at the Cape of Good Hope, nearly one half perished before we reached these latitudes. Being desirous of preserving the rest, he was obliged to put himself to another expence, in order to rescue them from the malice of the sailors, who had slily and enviously killed most of those which he had lost before."
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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Aurelius, thanks.

Forster's record is not unique, but is one of the few that portrays the reality of live afloat. Yo ho ho and a bottle of scurvy, sickness and a rum end.
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