One of the first things that Charles Darwin discovered, during his epic travels on board the Beagle, was a dramatic natural navigation clue. Darwin was exploring the island of Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands, as he recounts in ‘The Voyage of the Beagle‘,
‘Another day we rode to the village of St. Domingo, situated near the centre of the island. On a small plain which we crossed, a few stunted acacias were growing; their tops had been bent by the steady trade-wind, in a singular manner – some of them even at right angles to their trunks. The direction of the branches was exactly north-east by north, and south-west by south, and these natural vanes must indicate the prevailing direction of the force of the trade-wind.’
Darwin uses the acacias to deduce the direction of the trade-winds in this instance, rather than find direction, but having established this he could have relied on these acacias for the rest of his visit.
Tags: acacias, cape verde, Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, trade-wind, wind direction
