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The tradewinds are winds which blow all the year through on the open ocean in and near the torrid zone. In the northern hemisphere they blow from the north-east, in the southern from the south-east. The regularity of the tradewind is interfered with by the neighbourhood of large land masses.
Tenerife, though considerably without the tropic, is so nearly within the limits of the tradewind that navigators generally steer to it from the eastward. The road of Santa Cruz lies on the east side of the island, at the end of a range of craggy hills, barren and very lofty, along with you sail west by south by compass into the road, with a sea unfathomable until near the shore.
Tie-wig. See Wig. Tradewind. See Winds. Transom. A beam across the stern-post to strengthen the after part of the ship. Traverse. To turn guns to the right or left in aiming. Wake. The track left by a ship. Warp. To move a vessel into another position by hauling upon a hawser attached usually to the heads of piles or posts of a wharf. To bring a ship about by putting the helm up.
Augustine: and though I told them that by that time we should get to about three degrees south of the Line we should again have a true brisk general tradewind from the north-east, that would carry us to what part of Brazil we pleased, yet they would not believe it till they found it so.
In our passage through the northern tropic the air was temperate, the sun having then high south declination and the weather being generally fine till we lost the north-east tradewind; but such a thick haze surrounded the horizon that no object could be seen except at a very small distance. The haze commonly cleared away at sunset and gathered again at sunrise.
The Canary Islands are, for their latitude, within the usual verge of the true or general tradewind; which I have observed to be, on this side the equator, north-easterly: but then, lying not far from the African shore, they are most subject to a north wind, which is the coasting and constant trade, sweeping that coast down as low as to Cape Verde; which, spreading in breadth, takes in mostly the Canary Islands; though it be there interrupted frequently with the true tradewind, north-west winds, or other shifts of wind that islands are subject to; especially where they lie many together.
We had 2 or 3 touches of them; and one pretty severe, and the ships ride there so near each other that, if a cable would fail or an anchor start, you are instantly aboard of one ship or other: and I was more afraid of being disabled he in harbour by these blustering winds than discouraged by them, as my people were, from prosecuting the voyage; for at present I even wished for a brisk southerly wind, as soon as I should be once well out of the harbour, to set me the sooner into the true general tradewind.
To proceed: having still a westerly wind I jogged on in company with the Antelope till Sunday June the 4th, at 4 in the afternoon, when we parted; they steering away for the East Indies and I keeping an east-south-east course, the better to make my way for New Holland: for though New Holland lies north-easterly from the Cape yet all ships bound towards the coast, or the Straits of Sunda, ought to keep for a while in the same parallel, or in a latitude between 35 and 40, at least a little to the south of the east, that they may continue in a variable winds way; and not venture too soon to stand so far to the north as to be within the verge of the tradewind, which will put them by their easterly course.
Satisfied that the tide had caught the rest of the fleet and that the stiff tradewind was doing even more to send the derelict boats out of reach from shore or from possible swimmers he turned the head of his unwieldy launch toward the mainland, pointing it northeastward and making ready to wind his course through the straits which laced the various islets lying between him and his destination.
At the same time we were also farther from the shore than we had presumed was necessary for falling in with the tradewind; but in this particular we were most grievously disappointed, for the wind still continued to the westward, or at best variable.