ABSTRACT
‘It is one of the chief points of a seaman's duty to know where to find a fair wind, and where to fall in with a favourable current.’ That remark is attributed by Admiral Robert FitzRoy, who in his younger days as Captain of HMS Beagle had invited Charles Darwin to sail as naturalist on a surveying voyage to South America, to Captain Basil Hall (1788-1844), but the importance of winds to navigation had been appreciated much earlier. We have inherited evocative names for the winds of the world: the Roaring Forties, the Horse Latitudes, the Trade Winds and the Doldrums.
