THE WINDS 



These are fairly well defined, especially in the southern 

 hemisphere which comprises most of the world's sea- 

 surface and so is free from the disturbances and irregu- 

 larities of the land areas. 



At the equator there is a low-pressure belt, long known 

 to mariners as the doldrums. There are actually other 

 regions of the world where the winds are never very 

 strong, and where long periods of calm can be expected, 

 particularly at the poles and near the tropics, but the 

 calm belt near the equator has gained a reputation for 

 deadly calm and the name ''doldrums" has been asso- 

 ciated with it for more than a century and a half Yet a 

 companion word, "tantrums" would be more appro- 

 priate to describe the ''atmosphere" of the equatorial 

 area we are considering. For the doldrums do as they 

 please and are not only liable to fits of sulks but to out- 

 bursts of violent temper. It was in the doldrums that 

 the phantom ship of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner lay be- 

 calmed: "a painted ship upon a painted ocean", while 

 the pitch sluggishly oozed out of her heated seams and 

 food and water ran perilously short. In the pioneer days 

 of the Austrahan emigrant traffic, before steamers burst 

 their boilers on American rivers, the doldrums earned 

 the unhappy title of "the wayside grave"; for numbers 

 of passengers, becalmed in ships which had ineffectually 

 struggled to emerge from the merciless grip of the wind- 

 less calm, gave up the struggle and died in the placid 

 waters. 



The doldrums vary in size as well as in character. They 

 are about lOO miles in breadth in February, as an area of 

 deathly stillness, and 300 miles in breadth in August. Yet 

 the area may change, treacherously, to a region of storm, 

 vicious squalls, thunder, lightning and torrential rain. 

 In the old windjammer days a ship might drive through 

 the doldrums in a single day, lashed forward by spiteful 

 winds and buffeted by raging seas ; or she might hnger 

 there for weary weeks, "ghosting" a mile or so now and 



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