Miguel Caball

For a century before steam, ships went where the wind let them. This video uses the CLIWOC database: more than 250,000 noon positions copied from Dutch, British, Spanish and French ships' logbooks between 1750 and 1855. First every voyage is folded into a single year, so the fleets move with the seasons. Then the tracks build up into the full century. The routes are wind routes. Ships bound for the Cape swung far west towards Brazil to get round the calms and the southeast trade winds, then ran east before the westerlies. Dutch ships for Batavia followed the Brouwer route through the Roaring Forties before turning north to Java. British ships fill the Indian Ocean on their way to India and China, and Spanish ships head for the Río de la Plata and the Caribbean.