The Becalming

"On one night during the Becalming, we could see the fires of five ships on the horizon. We may never know what happened there, but one can make an educated guess." - Airgetlám, Ard-Rí of Oileán Fiáin

Shortly after the destruction of Sange, the Great Ring was struck with a major disaster known as 'The Becalming'. For a period of several months, winds and currents around the Ring collapsed, and the waters became unnaturally still and viscous. Ships were stranded helpless, far from shore. Even oared ships found it difficult to move through the thick waters, requiring far more effort than would otherwise be needed.
During the first days of the Becalming, the stranded ships tried several methods to reach land, but with little success. At first, food and water were not a problem - many ships were supplied for journeys of days or weeks, and found that their ships were surrounded by dead and dying fish that were safe to eat. As days stretched to weeks, events became more desparate. Supplies of food and water ran low, and after the initial glut of fish there was little to pull from the waters. Many feared that the winds would never return, and more than one ship erupted into violence as fear overcame the crew.
As the crisis wore on, disease and famine ran rampant on the trapped ships. Scurvy struck along with starvation, and a host of other plagues. Some sailors turned to cannibalism as their only recourse. Rainfall was scarce during the Becalming, and many sailors died of thirst when their water supplies ran out. Some ships were trapped within site of land, and were gradually able to row their ships through the thickened water over the course of weeks, but many ships were too far from land to achieve this.
The end came after nearly five months, with a great storm that seemed to shake the sea loose. It seemed like all the winds in the world returned at once, and the ocean currents were unleashed from prisons below the surface. The end of the Becalming claimed as many lives as the stillness had, shattering the beleaguered and weakened vessels, and hammering the islands with gales and tsunamis. Wreckage from ships washed up on beaches for years afterward, and some claim that the Becalming is the single deadliest event in the history of the Great Ring.