The Tasajo Voyages and Hurricane Season

One of the aspects of Atlantic commodity networks like the one that involved Catalan vessels and tasajo that interests me are their seasonal patterns. In what months did the various legs, or segments, of the voyage typically occur? What did seasonal timing have to do with the production schedules of the commodities, such as the months in which various crops were harvested? What did seasonal timing have to do with sailing hazards, such as the hurricanes that characteristically occur in the North Atlantic between early June and late November, with mid August through mid October marking the peak of hurricane season?

Because I am using the free, non-subscription version of ArcGIS Online, at least so far, I cannot implement the time function of my ArcMap version as a Web map. Nor can I do queries and filters with the Web map like I can on my computer in ArcMap. But another way to analyse such patterns in time and space involves applying symbols to represent months or seasons instead of cargoes.

To do that with the objective of visualizing patterns relative hurricane season, I saved the Web map from the previous post (Catalan Tasajo Voyages, 1837-1900) as Catalan Tasajo Voyages: Seasonality. Then I applied new symbols based on the Month field instead of the Cargoes field. For peak hurricane season (roughly August through October, or Months 8-10) I applied red. For the tail ends of hurricane season (June, July, and November, or Months 6, 7, and 11) I applied yellow. And for the rest of the year (Months 12 and 1-5, or December through May) I applied blue.

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The overall pattern indicates that most voyages crossed the North Atlantic during low hurricane season (December-May) or during the tails of the hurricane season (June-July and November). Still, out of fourteen voyages, five have red position symbols in the northeastern quadrant of the during peak hurricane season. By zooming in on the northeastern quadrant of the Atlantic and using the pop-ups to get more information on those five voyages, they become distinct. Two, the Romantico in 1864 and the Prudente in 1884, Left Montevideo bound for Cuba with tasajo in August and September respectively, entered the zone of hurricanes in October, and reached Cuba in November, at the tail end of hurricane season. Two others left Cuba bound for Europe during hurricane season: another voyage of the Romantico, in 1863, with a cargo of sugar and the Pepe in 1851. The Pepe crossed the North Atlantic in late October and November, during the tail of the hurricane season. The Romantico left imprudently in late July and crossed during the August peak of hurricane season. And one, the Acancia, left Cuba bound for Montevideo with a cargo of aguardiente in early August of 1893, sailing first eastward and then southward across the hurricane zone during the peak of the season.

The survival of the logbooks testifies to the lack of a fatal encounter with a hurricane on any of those imprudent voyages, but adding a hurricane layer to the Web map to examine any close encounters between vessel and hurricane will nonetheless be the task of the next post.