What was Mulek’s Course to the Land of Promise? – Part IV

Continuing from the previous post regarding how Mulek and those with him reached the Land of Promise and what route they took and what routes they did not take that are popular among theorists. The first three routes have been discussed in the previous posts. Below is the fourth of these possible four ways for Mulek to have taken.

The fourth and most accurate course, around Australia and across the Pacific, to the area of today’s Lima at an area called Pachacamac in Peru 

4. He left the Arabian Peninsula and sailed in the same direction that the Lehi Colony took, down through the Indian Ocean and into the Southern Ocean, picking up the Prevailing Westerlies in the West Wind Drift and eastward across the southern Pacific Ocean to the west coast of South America, then landing on the west coast of the Land of Promise.
    In this fourth course, Mulek followed the path of Lehi, sailing south and southeast through the Indian Ocean on the Indian Ocean counter-clockwise gyre and picking up the eastward-flowing Southern Ocean. These waters are the southern-most ocean that unimpeded circles the globe and the newest-named ocean basin. It is unbroken by any land mass and moves unrestricted around the world with its narrowest point the Drake Passage, whichvis 600 miles wide between South America and the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Red Arrows: The Southern Ocean circles the globe free of any land mass; Broken lined circle: the Antarctic Circle

To see why the Lord chose to send all three groups, the Jaredites, Lehi and Mulek, down around the Southern Ocean is best inferred when we understand the ocean itself and the currents involved on which a ship, “driven forth before the wind,” would be propelled forward.
    First of all, the flow of currents in the Southern Ocean is complex. Water cooled by cold air, outgoing radiation, and katabatic winds, or those that blow downhill or downslope because of gravity, often called gravity wind, off of the Antarctic continent sinks and flows northward along the ocean bottom and is replaced at the surface by an equal volume of warmer water flowing south from the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans.
    This process is most pronounced in calm air because winds mix the air and prevent cold pockets from forming. When this katabatic wind is warmed by compression during its descent into denser air, it is called a foehn—a warm and dry, gusty wind that periodically descends the leeward slopes of nearly all mountains and mountain ranges. The name was first applied to a wind of this kind that occurs in the Alps, where the phenomenon was first studied.
    It results from the ascent of moist air up the windward slopes; as this air climbs, it expands and cools until it becomes saturated with water vapor, after which it cools more slowly because its moisture is condensing as rain or snow, releasing latent heat. By the time it reaches the peaks and stops climbing, the air is quite dry. The ridges of the mountains are usually obscured by a bank of clouds known as a foehn wall, which marks the upper limit of precipitation on the windward slopes. As the air makes its leeward descent, it is compressed and warms rapidly all the way downslope because there is little water left to evaporate and absorb heat; thus, the air is warmer and drier when it reaches the foot of the leeward slope than when it begins its windward ascent.
    This means that the air in the Southern Ocean, that should be very cold, being so close to the Antarctic, is actually warmer as these effects take place, allowing for a milder passage on the Southern Ocean; at the same time where ancient, deep ocean water is upwelled to the surface and bringing deep nutrients upward, while modulating the water temperature between the warm tropical waters from the north and the cold arctic waters from the south.  However, such a passage is fraught with the stress and speed of the movement of the current.

Dotted Line: Mulek’s course to and around the Southern Ocean. Note how much shorter around the globe the red latitude is from the blue latitude or equator

The result is a quick movement across this southern Circumpolar Current, which is the world’s strongest ocean current, shortened even more by the fact that the globe is shorter around as the world diminishes toward the poles. With the Equator at 0º latitude, this means that the higher the latitude (50º south latitude), the shorter the distance around the globe. Rather than going straight across the Pacific around the equator as John L. Sorenson and other Mesoamerican theorists claim, or straight across the Mediterranean and Atlantic as Heartland and Great Lakes  as well as others claim, the distance in the Southern Ocean is far less and would require a much shorter route and voyage.
    In addition, those who claim Lehi and Mulek sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in the southern tip of Africa, then up and across the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico or eastern U.S. would be sailing even further, since there would be extra distance vertically and no benefit from a southern latitude.

Cape of Good Hope, originally called the Cape of Storms because of the turbulent weather and ocean currents

It should also be noted, as we have written in earlier articles, the waters around the Cape Peninsula of Africa is fraught with dangers. From the time of Eudoxus, who tried to sail around the tip of Africa, but found the difficulties too difficult land returned unsuccessful in 130 BC. On his second voyage, he and his ship were lost in the attempt to reach the other ocean beyond Africa.
    For centuries, the Cape has been considered a “Death Route” until steam and then diesel engines were used. When Bartolomeu Dias finally made the voyage from the Pacific to the Indian ocean in 1488, he encountered such tempestuous weather and counter currents, that he named the cape Cabo das Tormentas, the Cape of Storms. In fact, some storms in this area can last up to forty days and make sailing impossible. However, to encourage the exploration of Africa and the Orient in an effort to reinvigorate the Portuguese economy, king John II of Portugal renamed the cape (Cabo da Boa Esperança), Cape of Good Hope.
    However, as a symbol of the horrendous forces of nature in these waters that early Portuguese navigators had to overcome during their discoveries, and more specifically of the dangers Portuguese sailors faced when trying to round the Cape of Storms, poets and writers created numerous mythical figures. One of which was the Flying Dutchman, a ship crewed by tormented and damned ghostly sailors, doomed forever to beat its way through the adjacent waters without ever succeeding in rounding the headland of the Cape.
    Another was Adamastor, a Greek-type mythological character invented in the poem Os Lusiadas (Discovery of India) who was banished to the Cape where he appeared out of storm clouds and threatened to ruin anyone hardy enough to attempt passing the Cape, which was his domain. Adamaster became the spirit of the Cape of Good Hope, as a symbol of the forces sailors faced around the Cape and was a hideous phantom of unearthly pallor (Luis Vaz de Camoëns, Poem: The Lusiad, translated by William Julius Mickle, George Bell and Sons, London, 1877).

De Gama conversing with Adamastor sailing around the Cape of Africa

  
Of this it was written that Vasco da Gama, at the head of the Portuguese expedition, confronted the creature by asking "Who are you?" prompting Adamaster to reply:  

“I am that vast, secret promontory
you Portuguese call the Cape of Storms
which neither Ptolemy, Pompey or Strabo,
Pliny, nor any authors knew of.
Here Africa ends. Here its coast
Concludes in this, my vast inviolate
Plateau, extending southwards towards the Pole
And, by your daring, struck to my very soul.” 

— Camões, The Lusiads Book V

These stories and poems were meant to symbolize the extreme dangers associated with sailing around the Cape and any voyage in antiquity that attempted it would have been exceptionally dangerous, in fact the area was referred to as the Graveyard of Ships, where it is said hundreds of ships were lost. 
    It is easy today for one to look at a flat map of the world and traced a course with their fingertip, but the reality of any course, which is not shown or suggested on map, can be extremely difficult and often without merit simply because of a lack of understanding what is involved. The course Lehi and later Mulek took down to the Southern Ocean, past Australia, across the Pacific and up along South America would have been the simplest course and involve the least amount of navigation and sailing skill of the other courses, the most likely of success for an inexperienced crew.