"Fritjof lived a long life, Frau Pam, longer than most who go to sea," the bosun told her in a tone of utmost kindness. "He is with his people now in the next world. Don't weep so."
Pam somehow ceased her keening cry and took a deep breath. She wiped her tears with her arm, her hands shaking.
"Come, good lady. Let us now help those who stay with us in this world." The bosun stood up, his movements those of one bruised and battered in cruel battle but still filled with strength. He took her trembling hands in his and lifted her to her feet. Pam embraced him for a moment, nearly knocking the wind out of the poor fellow, then released him to peer about the deck with tear-burned eyes. She shook herself, then spoke from an icy, calm place in the maelstrom of grief and disgust heaving about her mind.
"I'll go check on Pers. I think he's all right, just badly bruised."
The bosun saluted her, then turned to pull the blanket over the face of their fallen comrade.
Pam returned to the rail to see Pers was beginning to come around in the longboat. The boy was black and blue and he had a bloody nose but his eyes focused on Pam and his pupils weren't dilated.
"How do I look?" he asked cheerfully. Pam let out a laugh, more of a growl really, and told him, "You look like an elephant stepped on you, but you'll live. Stay put there and pinch your nose shut until I come back and tell you to stop." He did as she ordered while Pam went to join Dore where she ministered to Rask.
"Oh, dear. It is not good. A deep cut to the thigh here, and a gash to the side of the belly. I must find out how deep." No stranger to battlefield medicine, Dore went about her examination with the same deft swiftness she would preparing a chicken for the boil, ignoring the man's gasps and moans of pain. Pam was suitably impressed that Dore had developed such sophisticated first aid skills during her years as a camp follower. She knelt down to assist however she could. Under Dore's direction they made quick progress and stopped the bleeding.
Pam cursed under her breath and wished for up-time antibiotics. Back at camp she had a precious plastic bottle of Bactine, an over-the-counter antibacterial and mild local anesthetic she kept in her birding pack's tiny medkit for cuts and scrapes on the trail. She had been hoarding it, using it only sparingly, but she knew she would give it all if needed to help this man. With Rask stabilized and resting as comfortably as they could make him, they stood up wearily.
"I have some antibacterial medicine in my hut," Pam told Dore.
"Good, we will use it. Here come the men. Let us thank the Lord we have prevailed and pray that He welcome the souls of our brave men in His heavenly kingdom." Dore lowered her head and clasped her hands in silent prayer, a common pose for the upright German lady made utterly unearthly by her half-naked condition. This night Dore was a grass skirted and savage warrior queen with flowers in her hair, blood spattered and solemn as she sent the power of her unwavering faith to aid the souls of their fallen on their journey to Paradise.
****
To be continued . . .
Untying the Wind
In Macbeth (1606), the Second Witch tells the First, "I'll give thee a wind." (I, iii), and later Macbeth acknowledges their power to "untie the winds." Gustavus Adolphus "was said to have been aided by wind magic practiced by the Lapps and Finns in his armies." (Deblieu 34) Izaak Walton, in The Compleat Angler (1653), declared, "I wish I were in Lapland, to buy a good wind of one of the honest witches, that sell so many winds there and so cheap." (Watson 119).
Winds were important-windmills required winds that were neither too light nor too strong, and for sailors, the wind had to be from the right directions, too. In the new universe created by the Ring of Fire, the wind will aid or hinder aircraft and airships.
In this article, I will try to answer the following questions: (1) what did the down-timers know about the prevailing winds on the eve of the RoF? (2) what can they readily determine about the winds from the books of Grantville and from observation during the first few years after the RoF? (3) if an author needs to determine what winds prevail for a particular season and locale, what's the most efficient way of finding that information?
Pre-Rof Knowledge of Surface Winds
Before the RoF, mariners were already exploiting some of the world's major prevailing wind patterns.
At least since classical times, sailors have journeyed from East Africa to India on the southwest monsoon, and returned on the northeast monsoon (Deblieu 50). The monsoon alternation was even mentioned by Aristotle (Watson 41). The round trip from Rome to India took a year (101). When the Roman power ebbed, the Arabs took over. And once the Europeans circumnavigated Africa, they elbowed their way into this trade, too.
The pre-RoF trade route between Europe and North America likewise evolved to take advantage of favorable winds and avoid unfavorable ones. From Europe, the ships hurry as quickly as possible south through the variables, a region characterized by calms or light winds of no particular preferred direction. The down-timers called them the Horse Latitudes.
The sailors are pleased to reach the northeast trade wind zone, a region in which the winds blow steadily and strongly from the northeast. With this wind (more or less) at their back, they head westward, making landfall in the eastern Caribbean. They go about their business and then head northward along the American coast, passing through the Horse Latitudes a second time, and then arrive in the region of the westerlies. These are not as steady as the trade winds, but are still on average, favorable for the return to Europe.
The trade between Europe and South America is still mostly in Portuguese hands, although Recife in Brazil is occupied by the Dutch. The Portuguese ships head further south than those going to New Spain; if their destination is Rio or Bahia, they must cross the Doldrums (the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone) near the equator and enter the southeast trade winds for the westward haul. However, they have to work their way far enough south in the process so that, by the time they reach Brazil, they are in the southern hemisphere's variable zones, and can work their way along the coast to their destination.
Returning, they zigzag a bit. They descend to the westerlies (which, in the South Atlantic, are stronger and more reliable than their North Atlantic counterparts) and, cross back over the Atlantic. Nearing the Cape of Good Hope, they head north and pick up the southeast trades, which take them back northwest, above the triangular wedge of eastern Brazil. They make the difficult but fortunately short crossing of the Doldrums and then follow the North Atlantic return route to Europe. Note that they can't just round North Africa northward because they'd be fighting the northeast trades.
It is interesting to note that the Cory's Shearwater migrates from the northern to the southern hemisphere along this very route, and times its migration for when the African monsoon westerlies associated with the intertropical convergence zone are weakest (November). (Felicismo).
Those southeast trades also hindered the early Portuguese attempts at circumnavigation of Africa. The easiest (albeit not shortest) sea route to the Cape of Good Hope was by way of Brazil. However, once they developed that route, they were able to enter the Indian Ocean, and join the monsoon trade with India.
There is also a monsoon in the South China Sea, which dominates trade among China and the Philippines, and also affects trade with Japan, southeast Asia, and the Spice Islands of Indonesia.
In 1611, Hendrik Brouwer discovered that he could journey from the Cape of Good Hope to Java (the gateway to the Spice Islands) much more quickly by avoiding the monsoon belt of the Indian Ocean and instead taking advantage of its westerlies (the Roaring Forties). This route was made compulsory for the Dutch traders in 1616. Because you had to turn northeast eventually, to avoid Australia, it led to some inadvertent encounters (shipwrecks) with the Australian west coast when longitude was miscalculated.