Sailing ships in these latitudes The area between these latitudes has little precipitation.
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- The horse latitudes are subtropical regions known for calm winds and little precipitation..
It has variable winds. Sailing ships sometimes while traveling to distant shores would have the winds die down and the area would be calm for days before the winds increased.
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Desert formation on Earth These warm dry conditions lead to many well known deserts. In the Northern Hemisphere deserts that lie in this subtropical high included the Sahara Desert in Africa and the southwestern deserts of the United States and Mexico. Two explanations for the name There are two explanations of how these areas were named. This first explanation is well documented.
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Sailors would receive an advance in pay before they stated on a long voyage which was spent quickly leaving the sailors without money for several months while aboard ship. Sailors work off debt When the sailors had worked long enough to again earn enough to be paid they would parade around the deck with a straw-stuffed effigy of a horse. After the parade the sailors would throw the straw horse overboard.
Second explanation about horses The second explanation is not well documented.
As far as I know horses live on land…. In times before sophisticated meteorological instruments and satellite communication sailors had to rely on the patterns of prevailing winds and currents when planning a route across the oceans.
So they learned that there is an area where variable and mostly calm winds prevail. These areas are also known as subtropical highs because they are under a ridge of high pressure which gives it too little air precipitation for a wind that could propel the vessels of medieval heroes from my pirate stories.
OK, now I understand that they feared floating helplessly in these areas with uncertain or no wind at all. But where did the horses come from in its name again? It comes from two origins , English and Spanish.
Difference Between Doldrums and Horse Latitudes
As sailors would be paid in advance , before they left the harbor, they would waste their money in local bars , often with dissolute women…. So their first month of the service has been already paid but not executed. At the end of the first month of the service they used to perform a ceremony onboard , mostly in the windless areas where they were free of work.
The ceremony consisted of parading along the deck with a straw-stuffed horse-like dummy before it was beaten and thrown overboard. On the other hand, Spanish sailors would take horses on their voyages to South America and West Indies.
Horse Latitudes | theranchhands.com
Their ships were very often becalmed in subtropical highs which prolonged the journey and caused shortage of water and food. Therefore, they would throw dead or dying horses overboard or even kill them in order to save some water. The names Calms of Capricorn in northern hemisphere and the Calms of Cancer definitely come from astrology and the star systems visible on the skies in these areas, not with crabs and goats for sure!