Pelagic Thoroughbreds | Hacker News Reader

Pelagic Thoroughbreds

newcriterion.com

28 pointsquickfox8 comments

“pelagic”, for those wondering, means “relating to the open seas”.

i’m mostly familiar with the term from “pelagic zone”, which is the upper stratum of the water column where most fish live.

Flying Cloud is a wonderful innovation story that connects to the larger story of Matthew Maury, who used US Navy datasets to transform how ships navigated. Gave a talk about this at the US Naval Academy a few years ago, build a bunch of visualizations since NOAA still hosts the data sets http://ondrejka.net/history/2014/02/28/maury.html

> Trade with China is as old as the republic itself, blossoming initially out of Salem, Massachusetts, and then later usurped by New York–based merchants.

No Transcontinental Railroad, no West Coast ports, no Panama Canal - so did they sail from Boston or New York, along the length of the Americas, through the Strait of Magellan, and then the long way across the Pacific to China? That's quite a trip. Or was there a portage in Central America somewhere?

The wikipedia article on US - China trade in the era prior to that of the clippers is rather interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_China_Trade

I had no idea that America bought opium from Turkey, or that ginseng was grown in Appalachia for export to China in the early 19th century!

Not through the straits. Around Cape Horn! An old British admiral started his career as a seaman on one of the last of the big square riggers that made that voyage in the 1920's, and brought along one of the earliest handheld video cameras. It's amazing photage (https://www.amazon.com/Around-Cape-Horn-Johnson-Sailing/dp/B...). It gives an amazing view of just how huge the waves are sailing there.

That was the China trade, though. That was bringing bat guano from Chile as fertilizer.

Online - i am definitely not keen to do this trip:

https://archive.org/details/IrvingMcClureJohnsonAroundCapeHo...

Superb video, and in the public domain. Thanks so much for the link!

For the Cape Horn trip in the age of sail, this is a must-read:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1D5O/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

Title left me thinking of horse-breeding (on boats) in international waters, presumably for legal or tax reasons.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com