Spanish Gallones

[conquistador]

Hi Everyone ! Does any one know of any information on just how far a Fleet of Spanish Gallones
were to sail just off the shore line? One mile? One and a half mile?

 

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[FISHEYE]

conquistador,

Are you asking about the florida east coast? If so the galleon fleets would have taken the gulf stream northeast.the Gulf Stream has a maximum width of about 50 miles.the gulf stream meanders sometimes as close as 15 miles offshore say down around west palm beach to as far as 50 miles offshore up around cape hatteras.if a hurricane came while they were in the gulf stream.they would have got blown out of it and ended up on the east coast reefs as did the 1715 fleet and many others.or blown towards tha bahamas depending on where they were at the time being hit by the hurricane or storms.

 

[stevemc]

I guess it depends on what shore they are sailing off of, but off the East and West coasts of Florida, there is the Gulf Stream and it is found at least several miles offshore. This moves the water faster than in shallower waters, which do move with it, but not as fast as actually in it. So I would say going up the East coast of Florida they were probably out 10 miles or more, so they could catch the current, plus it was safer and deeper. They would take this until Cape Canaveral then go offshore NE until Bermuda, then straight to Spain. Off the West coast maybe even farther out. I have seen the gulf stream with 3-4 mile an hour current. The galleons were slow, and mainly sailed with the wind(slowest point of sail), so a strong current would help them. They took currents and prevailing winds here and home.

 

[ivan salis]

normally they ran just off shore (within visible sight of land to aid in navigation) --- using prominent land marks to assist them in locating their longitude --until about 1730 - 1750 era --there was no way to do it properly (latitude they could do early on but longitude not till the mid 1700's era)-----so they used known land marks to know their whereabouts --in fact this caused a lot of the wrecks that occured to happen ---since the vessels that where sailing close to shore to be able to "navigate properly" often fell prey to a sudden rapid storm driving them into the shallow waters, reefs and shoreline and wrecking them

 

[rgecy]

Here is some info on the Voyage of Pedro Menendez Marquez and his evaluation of the coastline. Like stated above, the fleet would have used the currents whenever possible but would have stayed in site of land if possible. Especially in the Bahama Channel!