Roaring Forties in the context of "Southernmost settlements"

The middle latitudes, also called the mid-latitudes (sometimes spelled midlatitudes) or moderate latitudes, are spatial regions on either hemisphere of Earth, located between the Tropic of Cancer (latitude 23°26′09.3″) and the Arctic Circle (66°33′50.7″) in the Northern Hemisphere and between the Tropic of Capricorn (-23°26′09.3″) and the Antarctic Circle (-66°33′50.7″) in the Southern Hemisphere. They include Earth's subtropical and temperate zones, which lie between the two tropics and the polar circles. Weather fronts and extratropical cyclones are usually found in this area, as well as occasional tropical cyclones or subtropical cyclones, which have traveled from their areas of formation closer to the Equator.

The prevailing winds in the middle latitudes are often very strong. These parts of the world also see a wide variety of fast-changing weather as cold air masses from the poles and warm air masses from the tropics constantly push up and down over them against each other, sometimes alternating within hours of each other, especially in the roaring forties (latitudes between 40° and 50° in both hemispheres), even though the winds on the Northern Hemisphere are not as strong as in the Southern Hemisphere, due to the large landmasses of North America, Europe and Asia.

Abel Janszoon Tasman (Dutch: [ˈaːbəl ˈjɑnsoːn ˈtɑsmɑn]; 1603 – 10 October 1659) was a Dutch seafarer and explorer, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He was the first European to reach New Zealand, which he named Staten Landt. He was also the eponym of Tasmania.

Likely born in 1602 or 1603 in Lutjegast, Netherlands, Tasman started his career as a merchant seaman and became a skilled navigator. In 1633, he joined the VOC and sailed to Batavia, now Jakarta, Indonesia. He participated in several voyages, including one to Japan. In 1642, Tasman was appointed by the VOC to lead an expedition to explore the uncharted regions of the Southern Pacific Ocean. His mission was to discover new trade routes and to establish trade relations with the native inhabitants. After leaving Batavia, Tasman sailed westward to Mauritius, then south to the Roaring Forties, then eastward, and reached the coast of Tasmania, which he named Van Diemen's Land after his patron, Anthony van Diemen. He then sailed north east, and was the first European to discover the west coast of New Zealand, which he named Staten Landt. It was later renamed Nieuw Zeeland, after the Dutch province of Zeeland, by Joan Blaeu, official Dutch cartographer to the Dutch East India Company.

The clipper route was derived from the Brouwer Route and was sailed by clipper ships between Europe and the Far East, Australia and New Zealand. The route, devised by the Dutch navigator Hendrik Brouwer in 1611, reduced the time of a voyage between The Netherlands and Java, in the Dutch East Indies, from almost 12 months to about six months, compared to the previous Arab and Portuguese monsoon route.

The clipper route ran from west to east through the Southern Ocean, making use of the consistently strong westerly winds called the Roaring Forties. Many ships and sailors were lost in the heavy conditions along the route, particularly at Cape Horn, which the clippers had to round on their return to Europe.

The Brouwer Route was a 17th-century route used by ships sailing from the Cape of Good Hope to the Dutch East Indies, as the eastern leg of the Cape Route. The route took ships south from the Cape (which is at 34° latitude south) into the Roaring Forties, then east across the Indian Ocean, before turning northeast for Java. Thus it took advantage of the strong westerly winds for which the Roaring Forties are named, greatly increasing travel speed.

The problem with the route was lack of an accurate way, at the time, to determine longitude, and thereby to know how far east a vessel had travelled. A sighting of either Amsterdam Island or Saint Paul Island was the only cue for ships to change direction and head north. However, this was reliant on the captain's expertise. Consequently, many ships were damaged by or wrecked on rocks, reefs, or islands on the western continental shelf of Australia, which was virtually unknown to Europeans at the time.