Nautical Terminator – Doldrums

Ever feel like you’re “in the doldrums”— where everything seems bleak and colorless, and there’s nothing you can think of that sounds like fun? Yeah, me neither.

          The word comes from the old English dol meaning dull. Appended to this is the suffix drum, which is believed to have been borrowed from tantrum. As tantrums are fits of anger, doldrums are fits of dreariness. The term was used in this form by the nineteenth century, so in 1824 when Lord Byron referred to a ship as being “in the doldrums” in “light and baffling” winds, he was noting the ship’s forlorn behavior, not its location. 

          The first time the doldrums were connected to a specific place in the ocean was in The Physical Geography of the Sea, 1855, by the estimable Matthew Maury, whose detailed research formed the foundation of pilot charts: “The ‘equatorial doldrums’ is another of these calm places… a region of calms and baffling winds.” But this seems to have been the result of a misconception on the part of someone (not Maury) who, when told a ship was “in the doldrums,” thought this was a geographical area.

          The doldrums are now the Intertropical Convergence Zone, a title that is infinitely less poetic than its predecessor. The ITCZ consists of a band of light wind north of the equator that varies in latitude and width according to the season and any old whim that occurs to it. Many try to avoid it when sailing, and marine forecasters will give you a good guess about just where to cross it at its narrowest. Of course, by the time you sail to that spot, it will be the widest.

          I’m going to buck the crowd and put in a word for the doldrums. The wind has ceased, and you’re alone in a vast, primordial wilderness far from the chatter of civilization. It wasn’t easy getting here. The ocean is quietly resting, though you sense the uncanny power of her languid undulations born of distant, violent storms. In this desolate and dreamlike domain, you can read, contemplate, and swim in perfect serenity and solitude. Your cup and plate sit calmly on the table instead of unsociably flinging themselves to the cabin sole. The sunset beams across the anvil tops of thunderheads a hundred miles away. Soon enough, you’ll be in a city with all the normal folks. What’s the hurry?