Mallpassat
"God protect us from the still water, because we free ourselves from the wild."
Mallpassat is a nautical term for adverse wind and weather conditions in a not-too-wide strip around the equator between the two trade zones .
The importance of Mallpassat derives from the Dutch forth in which the adjective times translated into German crazy , twisted , foolish or mad is. Colloquially, the word mall emerged from this in Low German with the same meaning . In the Platt-German dictionary by Johann Carl Dähnert , which appeared in Stralsund in 1781 , mall is described as imprudent and wild , and also: He is mall in't Hövd. His head is very confused.
With this term the seafarers mean that the Passat is twisted or crazy and they had every reason to do so (especially in the days of great sailing ships). Because when they came within a few hundred kilometers of the equator with their ship, the weather conditions suddenly changed suddenly: The steadily blowing trade wind had suddenly disappeared - it was suddenly going crazy, had become mall - and a long lasting one occurred There was no wind, which of course made progress very difficult at the time. In addition, the seafarers had to endure tropical temperatures and several times a day strong thunderstorms with downpours and stormy gusts from changing directions. Most sailing ships will probably have taken weeks until they finally crossed the area and came to the next trade zone, where this wind was finally "normal" again.
This region, which is so unpleasant for the seaman, is meteorologically referred to as the intra-tropical convergence zone . Because of the calm that often prevails, it is also called Kalmen . Other names are doldrums , breastfeeding belts and mallungen .
literature
- Emil Ludwig: Handbook for marine engineers and marine machinists , Viehweg Verlag, Braunschweig 1960
- Joseph Krauss: Weather and marine science for seafarers , edited by Heinrich Meldau , Springer Verlag, Berlin 1963
- William HS Jones: Storm Drifted , translated from the English by Siegfried H. Engel, Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 1968
- Konrad Reich , Martin Pagel: Heavenly brooms over white dogs, words and idioms, stories and anecdotes ... , Hoffmann and Campe Verlag, Hamburg 1987
- Johann Carl Dähnert: Platt-Deutsches-Wort-Buch according to the old and new Pomeranian and Rügischen dialect , printed by Christian Lorenz-Struck, Stralsund 1781