Wind against tide?

[Rosa]

In one of my favourite watering holes around the Irish Sea we got into a heated and unresolved discussion about why do " tides run to, and winds come from"?
One point of view, which I hasten to add is not mine, is that there is a historic perspective to this, that originally sailors had named currents and winds after the direction they had come from. However, with the expansion of European maritime countries in the sixteenth century, these voyages discovered the great global currents that hitherto had only been experienced as the ebb and flow of tides. Great global currents that were totally consistent in their direction of flow. Within the great spirit of exploration destination suddenly became more important than departure, and riding these great ocean currents navigators, began to think forward to the eldorado these currents were carriedg them to.
Needless to say, it was these great navigators, with their political aspirations of fame and fortune, who made the charts and set the direction of flow, not the ordinary working sailor who took them there.
Personally, I have some reservations about this argument as my Geography teacher said you get persistant winds, such as Trade Winds. However, having just spent a weekend, fortunately in a favourite watering hole, watching the persistant Westerly winds of Northern Europe swing, with great gustoand velocity, around all points of the compass, I wonder if there could be an element of truth in this earlier argument?



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[johnsomerhausen]

Since Benjamin Franklin is credited with establishing the Gulf Stream's existence at the end of the 18th/beginning of the 19th century (by observing that the mail ships usually took less time to get to Euyrope than to come back to the United States), the knowledge of ocean currents must be of relatively recent origin,
john

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[jamesjermain]

My teacher used to tel us that you always knew where the wind was coming from but never where it was going to (although Donalt and his trooserrs might disagree). Currents, on the other hand had a clear destination.

I don't particularly believe this, but I hve no better answer. Incidentally, John Somerhaussen says the ocean currents weren't understood until the 19th century. Yet Portuguese, Spanish and British explorers used them quite deliberately in the 16th and 17th centuries and, according to Gavin Menzies, the Chinese had charted them by the early 15th century

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[Jacket]

The difference could be down to the people who first started talking about the wind and currents. Winds will have first been talked about by landsmen, who are interested in where the winds coming from, as it defines the character of the wind- North winds are cold, while west winds, having crossed the atlantic, are wet.

Meanwhile, currents will have first been defined by either sailors or early scientists. I think its unlikely that sailors would have defined the convention, as I'd have thought that they would have stuck with what they were used to with winds, and defined current direction as the direction that the current was flowing from.

However, scientists have always defined the flow of anything, be it liquid, gas or electricity (though they got that one wrong), as the direction the fluid is flowing towards. Therefore, if they were recording currents, its only natural that they would define the direction of the current as that in which it was moving.

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[vyv_cox]

Gas flow direction nomenclature

I thought it was called "North Sea" gas, not "gas stove" gas? :~)

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[Aeolus_IV]

Always thought the names refered to the direction you need to look for trouble ... With wind you look into the wind to see the weather advancing towards you, with tides/current where you are being taken.

Jeff.

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