-Poul Anderson, "The Longest Voyage" IN Anderson, Winners (New York, 1981), pp. 97-140 AT p. 97.
Is this story fantasy or sf? Will the Sky Ship be a spaceship or something else? We have to read on to find out. It is soon clear that the story is not set on Earth. A strange planet is overhead.
When representatives of the crew ask the captain to turn back from their perilous voyage, he stands "...mute for a long while..." and:
"The stillness grew, until the empty shriek of wind in our shrouds, the empty glitter of ocean out to the world's rim, became all there was." (p. 98)
We notice that yet again the wind punctuates and comments on the dialogue. It is described not as wild or as gentle but as empty like the ocean which seems without end, especially to sailors who still think that their world is flat. We must read on to learn about the Sky Ship which we have temporarily forgotten while reading about potential mutiny.
19 comments:
That was a fictionalized version of Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the globe, btw, among other things.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: But educated people in Columbus' time knew the world was round, ever since Eratosthenes demonstrated that mathematically some 18 centuries before. In fact Columbus was criticized at the court of Ferdinand and Isabel for underestimating the size of the Earth.
Mr. Stirling: But it was the Spanish, in that expedition commanded by Magellan, who first circumnavigated the world, even if Magellan did not survive to return to Spain. Not these analogs of Elizabethan freebooters.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But the guys in "The Longest Voyage" are on another planet in the future.
Paul.
Also, their educateds do know that their world is round.
Kaor, Paul!
That is true. I should have brought that out more clearly. Maybe it's just a matter of me, aside from Shakespeare, disliking the Elizabethans.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Yes, Magellan was first, though he didn't make it back, but this is obviously an analogue of Drake and Elizabeth I.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. I was bothered by the perhaps erroneous implication that this Drake analog was the first in the known history of this world to circumnavigate the planet. And if we continue the analogy that would not be the case.
Only goes to show I need to reread "The Longest Voyage."
Ad astra! Sea
BTW, every educated European in the 1400's knew the world was round. That had been known for a long, long, long time.
There was even a fairly good estimation of the earth's diameter.
What Columbus did was -misinterpret- the calculation of the diameter, helped along by bad translations and differences between 'miles' and 'leagues' in different countries.
That's why he thought he'd reached Japan when he ran into the Caribbean -- it was the distance he'd (mis)calculated.
If there hadn't been a continent in the way, he and everyone with him would have died before they reached Asia.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Because Columbus' miscalculations would throw everything off--from the types/sizes of ships needed for such a long journeys (and the supplies needed).
Meaning his critics were right!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it shows the importance of sheer luck. Columbus went on believing he'd reached Asia for an implausibly long time!
What Columbus -did- show was that
a) there was land across the Atlantic within practical reach, and
b) there was gold (and other valuables) there, and
c) the natives weren't in a position to stop you if you wanted the valuables.
This was like hanging up a great big sign reading EASY LOOT HERE!
Note that the Portuguese ran into Brazil only about 8 years after Columbus (in 1500), on their way to Asia via the Cape of Good Hope.
This was because there's a -clockwise- wind/current pattern in the north Atlantic, and a -counterclockwise- one in the South Atlantic.
If you want to get to the Cape/Indian Ocean in a sailing ship from Europe, the way to do it is to drop down to the south coast of Morocco ("until the butter melts and turn right", as yachtsmen used to put it), then head southwest.
The winds and currents will take you across, then down the coast of South America, until you get south of the Cape, whereupon they turn east.
You -can- beat down the coast of Africa -- the original Portuguese explorers did that.
But it means heading into the teeth of the wind most of the time. Going southwest, then south, then turning east is much faster in sailing time and was routinely done after the Portuguese discovered the pattern.
Later on -- when sailing ships improved -- it was found that the fastest way to Asia was to drop even further south, into the "Roaring Forties" and head east there. There's a belt of continuous west-to-east strong winds there that circles the planet (and Antarctica) all the time.
But that required better ships than were available in Renaissance times. Those latitudes have frequent huge storms and really, really big waves and they're bloody cold.
In the 19th century clippers and windjammers from Europe taking that route could get to Australia in about 70-80 days, and to Canton in about 80+.
Coming back, it was often faster to drop down into the Forties again and pass the southern tip of South America before heading up along the western coast of Africa.
Columbus knew about this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volta_do_mar
and planned to use it to return from Asia.
IF he had been less confident about his calculations about the distance to Asia he could have sailed west until he had just enough supplies to get back to Spain (or the Azores if he was willing to deal with the politics of landing on Portuguese territory) then turn north to get into the prevailing westerlies.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Jim!
Mr. Stirling: Fascinating! And Columbus insisted, till the day he died, he had reached Asia.
Yes, the hope of loot and land was what drew so many of the Conquistadors from Spain to the Americas, first in the Caribbean, then Meso-America and Peru, etc. And once the Spanish and Portuguese understood the technicalities of wind patterns, sailing became much quicker.
Jim: Intriguing! Meaning Columbus could have circumnavigated the word, long before Magellan's expedition?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: "Meaning Columbus could have circumnavigated the word, long before Magellan's expedition?"
Not what I meant, and the he would have had to realize the Americas were in the way and the distance to Asia was much greater than his estimate.
However, anyone thinking there might be land to the west within M days sailing time could take 2M days supplies & use the trade winds blowing from east to west between the equator & 30 N for M days, then if disappointed, sail north of 30 N to get into where the winds mostly blow from west to east to get home safely.
However, as Stirling pointed out, given the actual geography the Portuguese sailing around Africa bumped into Brazil a few years after Columbus' trip. So without Columbus the history of the Americas wouldn't change much. Just different European countries would take over different part of the Americas than in the history we know.
Kaor, Jim!
Then I misunderstood you.
I still think Spain and Portugal might have been the first European nations to take a serious interest in the Americas. Others, like France and England, took a very long time to pay real attention to the new discoveries.
It might have been different if the Norse had founded permanent colonies in what's now the Atlantic provinces of Canada and the US state of Maine.
Or if the Chinese and Mongols had conquered the western parts of N America, as Anderson speculated in "The Only Game in Town."
Ad astra! Sean
"Others, like France and England, took a very long time to pay real attention to the new discoveries."
My impression is that was partly because for almost a century Spain had the power and the will to stomp hard on anyone else who tried to do anything in the Americas. That changed with such events as the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
Kaor, Jim!
That might have been the case, esp. during the later years of Elizabeth I, during the long war between England and Spain, but I still have some doubts. Because not a single one of the five Tudor monarchs between 1485-1603 took any real interest in the Americas. What engrossed their attention and energies were internal affairs and rivalries with Continental powers like France and Spain (with digressions in the Netherlands and various German states).
I also note how the sole attempt at founding a colony by the English in this period, Roanoke, was a failure and no further attempts were made till Jamestown was founded in 1607.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: The French did try to found colonies in the Americas in the 1500's, both officially and unofficially (the latter mostly French Protestants), and the Spanish destroyed them.
They'd have done the same to any English attempts.
Note that the English did attack and disrupt the Spanish shipments of treasure from the Americas -- and they made a very good thing of it. Ditto Drake's raids against Spanish settlements in Peru.
When he got back to England, they'd tossed all the stone ballast out of the Golden Hind and replaced it with silver ingots!
Elizabeth knighted him on the deck... not least because she got a substantial share of said ingots.
One Portuguese galleon taken in 1592 (Portugal was under Spanish rule at the time) gave, from the Royal share alone, the equivalent of 18 months of England's total tax revenues.
And that was after massive pilfering, before emissaries from the court brought it under control.
So the loot of the Americas financed the English war against Spain -- financed the new fighting ships that defeated the Armada, financed the massive cannon and powder works the English built in those years, financed the expeditionary forces in Ireland, financed the interventions in Scotland that got Mary Queen of Scots turfed out (and under house arrest in England), financed the English expeditionary forces in the Netherlands and the subsidies paid to the Dutch rebels, etc.
Elizabeth was a very, very canny ruler. Trying to colonize while Spain remained undefeated and strong would have been futile, especially after they seized control of Portugal.
She was clearing the ground for her successors to get the colonization movement going once Spain's wings were clipped, which the defeat of the Armada did, and in spades, as did the success of the Dutch rebellion, which couldn't have happened without English help.
Plus, of course, when she came to the throne the English (though already notable pirates) hadn't done any serious voyaging across the Atlantic.
Her policy drove that, too, and explorations/raids like Drake's, and technological developments in shipbuilding and naval tactics that made English warships the best in the world.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Trying to catch up. I sit corrected, as regards French efforts at colonization. I thought it was only until Quebec was founded in 1608 that France took a serious in N America.
Yes, but I thought Philip II of Spain, for nearly 30 years, tried to come to some arrangement with Elizabeth, never mind her provocations and intrigues with his enemies. My recollection, true or not, was that it was only until the 1580's that he lost patience and went to open war with England. Too many pirate attacks and raids by Elizabeth's buccaneers, which she did little or nothing to even pretend to stop.
You seem to underrate Spain's own strength and power. I recall reading of how, at this time, Spain probably had the best infantry in the world. One ex-US Army major I used to known online, Vernon Humphrey, said Spain might have conquered England if the Armada campaign had proceeded in two stages, with the first stage being seizure of the isle of Wight, off England's southern coast. That would be used as a base from which to invade the English mainland. It was Humphrey's belief that once a strong force had been landed, the "tercios" of the Duke of Parma (a nephew of Philip II and one of his best generals) would have easily swept away the inadequately armed shire levies that was all Elizabeth could raise.
Also, candidly, I don't like Elizabeth I. I'm not forgetting how she was a persecutor of the Catholic Church, which she had outlawed, and oppressed English and Irish Catholics. And there was no need to do so--the Catholics did not try to prevent her, despite her illegitimacy and cloudy claim to the crown, from succeeding Queen Mary.
Ad astra! Sean
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