What circumstances led Benjamin Franklin to begin investigating the Gulf Stream?
Benjamin Franklin while in England in 1769 was told of complaints that westward mail from Europe to America took weeks longer than the east-bound ships from America. Franklin was the U.S. Deputy Postmaster General, so he was interested in the alleged complaint. A Nantucket whaler by the name of Timothy Folger said that the English ships had to buck the Gulf Stream. There are early maps, really charts, depicting the Gulf Stream, but Benjamin Franklin and Timothy Folger printed the first map of the Gulf Stream in 1769-1770. Copies remained lost for nearly 200 years until found in France. The map shown at the left was made by James Pousard but I have never accurately dated it. One clue is that it shows Florida as East and West Florida, something that the British did in 1773. The Franklin map shows only “Florida” therefore his one was later. The path of the stream is more or less the same.
