I saw some reference to the Dutch using sail-driven carts, on the beaches o fthe Dutch coast. I can’t seem to locate any more on this…but it seems a neat idea. Anybody know how long these were used? Why did the practice stop?
Never more than an entertainment, I think. Landsailing is still popular (?) in some parts of the world; I don’t know whether they do it much in Holland any more, although some beaches there are described as perfect for it (by Dutch tourism officials, anyway).
Were you thinking of the sand-sailers featured in Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver? Those are real, and were the first sort-of-modern land yachts (sail wagons, sand yachts). They were built around 1600 for Prince Maurits of Orange, based on the descriptions of Chinese sail wagons by Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza. In Dutch, they’re called zeilwagen, and the sport is called zeilwagenrijden, or strandzeilen [“beach-sailing”].
I can’t find any more information on Dutch landsailing; I rather suspect that it was never much of a pastime there, but a recreation for royal guests. I found one reference to an able seaman who was captain of a zeilwagen in the 1640s, but why and for whom I don’t know. Some Dutch websites may have better information, but I can’t read them, and I can’t do good searches in Dutch.
Ice sailing was / is very popular in the Netherlands. I read about it in a 1930s travel book where the protagonist scoots along a frozen canal.
They have beaches?
I thought there were dikes there, to keep out the sea.
To prove there are beaches in the Netherlands, here is a picture :-
http://us.holland.com/e/35660/Dutch+Delight:+Beaches+of+Zeeland.php
Well, you can have all the beaches you want on the business side of a dike.
There’s sandy beaches all along the coast. Nice ones too, when it’s not too cold. Along parts of the coast, there’s dikes but along most of it, there’s actually dunes. The dikes that the Netherlands is famous for are mostly in-land where land was won by emptying a lake and making the lakebed (?) inhabitable.
Maybe it was popular but I’ve never heard of it and besides, we rarely have the ice for it, and whenever there is ice, we skate on it, we don’t sail on it.
I’ve heard of this beach sailing thing as an example of Dutch 17th century inventivity, I thought it was Christiaan Huygens who tried it but it appears that I was wrong. Still, I’m pretty sure it was someone famous who first had a go. The reason it never caught on, I guess, is that the wind has to blow along the beach, that is (roughly) from the south-west to the north-east or vice versa, or you’ll be blown into the sea or face first into a dune or dike. And even if the wind is blowing in the right direction, you can go from A to B but not back. As a means of transport, it seems that beach sailing is unreliable at best.
ETA: since I’m now a guest my location is no longer shown, but it is, in fact, The Hague, in the Netherlands…
Even in the 17th century people knew how to sail across the wind, and even somewhat upwind (the Dutch were rather good at it).
The ideal wind for beach sailing would be directly on-shore or off-shore, as this would make it equally easy to sail in either direction.
But only somewhat upwind. Account of sailing ship journeys often include periods of being windbound somewhere. And that’s with ships that can go anywhere on the water, as opposed to wagons that have to stay on the strip of flat sand between the water and the dunes.
So sure with the right wind, you could get from A to B and back on a sandwagon, if the beach was straight. But sith a real coastline, you’d quickly come to a little inlet or cape that would make you turn directly into the wind. And then you’d be screwed.
True. My post was in response to Švejk’s suggestion that the wind has to blow in the direction of travel.
Well, you’d be forced to forsake sailing and move your wagon by other means.
The only wind-powered wagon I’ve ever heard of was that helmed by Windwagon Smith.