Reaching Mesoamerica from the East – Part I

To reach the Bay of Campeche and the area of present day Veracruz and northward to Tampico in Mesoamerica, where the Jaredites and Mulekites are supposed to have landed according to Mesoamerican theorists, a complicated sailing venture through either these Straits or Channel would have to be achieved. For inexperienced sailors in the Mulek party, or even experienced ones if Phoenicians were aboard (which is doubtful—see early posts about the Phoenicians), they would have to know there was land to the west of Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and San Juan islands, a stretch of land about 1300 miles long—about fifteen days of sailing (at the speed of Columbus’ voyages) to get around them, or even longer sailing in coastal waters (probably closer to three weeks or more).

The Caribbean Sea narrows from about 800 miles between Belize and Cuba to about 120 miles in the Yucatan Channel, a factor that discouraged Columbus from sailing north, and probably would any sailor in unknown waters looking at unknown land fall. The distance in the Straits of Florida, narrowing from thousands of miles of Atlantic Ocean to about 125 miles with small islands is another difficult stretch for a sailing ship “driven forth before the wind.”

In the three approaches to the Strait of Florida, the distance between Key West and Havana is about 80 miles, between Key Largo and the Bahamas about 100 miles, and between the Bahamas and eastern Cuba about 90 miles. This may seem like a great distance, but in sailing a ship in B.C. times “before the wind,” or relying on wind to drive waves to push the Jaredite barges above and below the surface, such distances are very narrow indeed and allow very little room for error. Nor are the winds and currents in these waters simple, with “gusts and wave lengths considerably high,” moving in the direction from the Gulf out into the Atlantic (in the opposite direction of a voyage toward the Bay of Campeche) as an extension of the Loop Current coming out of the Gulf and the Gulf Stream current working northward up the east coasts of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas before heading eastward out into the Atlantic.

Note the many islands that would be encountered before any vessel could reach Central America. It seems unlikely that any Phoenician voyage carrying the Mulekites would bypass these numerous islands and their lush verdure and enticing fruits, etc., to sail beyond to an unknown area.

In the Yucatan Channel, the winds can reach 100 miles per hour and the current moves through the channel northward, bending out through the Strait of Florida and into the Atlantic, or into northern Mexico. These currents would not take a ship “driven forth before the wind” or a barge dependent on current and wind flow, to the area of Veracruz along the southern coast of Mexico since these winds and currents move no further south than the Tropic of Cancer, some hundred miles north of Tampico and about 400 miles north of Veracruz. In fact, these currents actually flow into the southern coast of Texas from about Brownsville to Galveston.

A quick glance at any map of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea shows how crowded the area between these waters and the Atlantic Ocean are with islands, chains, and archipelagos. It is not that a ship could not find its way between them in open water, but it would take experienced mariners sailing in tight to coastal waters to make such progress through unknown areas. Columbus did this, but he lost one of his three ships doing it, which ran aground in such circumstances on an unknown and unseen reef.

It is rather flippant of scholars and theorists to point to this direction for a barge in 2200 B.C. and a ship in 587 B.C. to negotiate an approach to Mesoamerica and land along the coast in the area of Veracruz, along the southern coast of Mexico. The land mass obstacles that would have been encountered, the opposing winds and currents, and the inviting outer islands make this approach doubtful, almost impossible for a sailing ship in 587 B.C.

(See next post, “Reaching Mesoamerica from the East – Part II,” for an understanding of what those aboard a ship negotiating an east approach to Mesoamerica would have encountered)