These regions of calms, found at 30 degrees N and S latitudes, may be so named because sailing ships carrying horses to America became becalmed and had to throw horses overboard in order to lighten the vessels and to take advantage of any slight breeze that did blow up. Yet the name may simply be a translation of golfo de las yeguas, “gulf of the mares,” which was the Spanish name for the ocean between Spain and the Canary Islands and compares the supposed fickleness of mares with the fickle winds in these latitudes.