2 Sugar Routes (p. 21-22)

The central Atlantic ring of currents and winds had remained the main route for transatlantic travel from the days of Columbus. Nature's invitation to the Iberians was so obvious that later Spanish convoys made little improvement on the passage times of Columbus's expeditions. The same Canaries Current that drew Spanish galleons into the trade winds would also bring them back after an elliptical clockwise circuit that was almost the shortest distance to and from the New World. (See Figure 2.) This route had not been a sugar route of consequence for the Iberians. Indeed, when the Dutch, French, and English launched the Caribbean sugar industry in the seventeenth century, one of the incentives was that this sugar would be much closer to European markets than was the major Brazilian sugar industry. Caribbean sugar routes became the main Atlantic routes of the English and of their competitors.

Although nature invited the Spanish to the Caribbean and objected little to French participation, the English were not invited by the wind and waves of the Channel. Although the Palm Tree's great sailing circle was natural enough, it was traveled in peacetime and originated from Plymouth. English access to the central routes was objected to most persistently by the westerlies and most forcefully by French privateers in wartime. Both these objections were most effective in the Channel, but London controlled the English sugar trade despite the geography of Atlantic navigation. London's predominance derived from the power to raise capital, distribute goods, and influence government.

The Channel has been called "the highway to the ocean" but, with the currents running to the east and the westerlies reinforcing these 74 percent of the time with speeds averaging 14 knots in summer and 25 knots in winter,3 it might be better named the highway from the ocean. The westerlies launched Thames shipping, then becalmed it in the Downs. A wind from the eastern half of the compass, the once-famous "Protestant wind" more likely in winter, carried London's shipping into the Channel as surely as it brought French privateers out to harass them in wartime. Once in the Channel, the square-rigged sugar ships were likely to be stalled, if not threatened, by the westerlies. Many an outward-bound passenger lamented the irritating, lengthy, and expensive sojourns at Channel ports. The well-to-do tended to join their ship at Portsmouth and thereby avoid much of the delay. Letters, orders, and news were often sent on to Plymouth or Falmouth by post rider; even bad roads could be better than the narrow, choppy Channel waters, known to old tars as the "sea of sore heads and sore hearts."

As the Channel widened at Lyme Bay and Plymouth Sound to give sea room to the south, the westerlies became usable not only for nimble sloops and brigs with their fore-and-aft rigging but also for ships and barques like the Palm Tree. As the mail packets for the West Indies would demonstrate, vessels could operate out of Falmouth and Plymouth in all seasons with minimal delay for favorable winds. By contrast, Bristol ships had to fight the westerlies in negotiating the Bristol Channel although it was shorter and safer than the gauntlet run by London ships. Inland distribution and Irish trade advantages helped Bristol to remain the premier outport, even though both Plymouth and Liverpool ships could maneuver out of their home port much more effectively in the face of the westerlies. The advantages of the ports of the Southwest, the West Country, and the major Irish ports would give them a greater place in the seasonal distribution of news than in the distribution of sugar. In peacetime, these ports were one or two weeks closer to the West Indies than was London. During war, when London shipping paid for its nearness to government by convoy and embargo restrictions that were most effectively enforced in the Thames, the western outports benefited even more.