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Horse Latitudes

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A region of calms between 30° and 35° North; so called becuase ships laden with horses bound to America or the West Indies were often obliged to lighten their freight by casting the horses overboard when calmbound in these latitudes.

Nothing could have been more delightful than our run into the horse latitudes. Gales and dead calms, terrible thunderstorms and breezes, fair one hour and foul the next, are the characteristics of these parallels. Numbers of horses were exported from the mother country, and it was reckoned that more of the animals died in these … latitudes than in all the rest of the passage.”—Clark Russell: Lady Maud, vol. i. chap. vii. p. 186.

 

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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¶ Horse
Horse
Horse (in Christian art)
¶ Horse
Horse
¶ Horse
Horse
Horse-bean
Horse-chestnut
Horse-faced
Horse Latitudes
Horse-laugh
Horse Marines (The)
Horse-milliner
Horse-mint
Horse-play
Horse-power
Horse Protestant
Horse-radish
Horse-shoes
Horse-vetch