Development history of the nautical chart
Nautical charts have existed in their current form since the end of the 18th century. Only in the course of the 19th century did the nautical chart (until then only a supplementary aid) replace sailing instructions as the most important part of a ship's navigational equipment . Modern nautical charts were made possible by the development of precise angle measuring instruments that enabled positions and landmarks to be determined using bearings .
Early forms
As a means of navigation since the 4th century BC. Well known sea route descriptions or sailing instructions ( Periplus from the Greek : Periplous - Umseglung ) are used. The sailing instructions contained descriptions of coastlines, ports and landmarks and distance information (in the average daily output of galleys at that time ). In addition, information on anchorage, shoals , fresh water intake, cities and population was common. Cartographic work and related theoretical considerations played a major role in ancient times. Anaximander (approx. 610-546 BC) is considered to be the first draftsman of a nautical chart . However, his maps and those of his direct successors were not used as an aid for seafaring, but merely to represent the world that could be settled.
Marinos from Tire (around 114 AD) described the then explored world from Ireland and the North African coast in the west to the Chinese coast in the east and is said to have given over 7,000 positions. The information was given in the form of coordinates (of 8 parallel and 15 longitude circles or meridians ). The coordinates should have been determined by analyzing land and sea routes. It is not known whether Marinos constructed a map from his description. A large part of the Geographia of Claudius Ptolemy is based on the work of Marinos, which among other things contained instructions for creating maps. Marinos had encountered the problem of the correct representation of the conditions on a sphere (earth) on a drawing plane. Ptolemy proposed two different projection systems , one in meridian lines pointing north-south, one with curved lines. Ptolemy's maps were also not nautical charts in the modern sense. They could only give seafarers an overview of the location of countries in relation to one another and of the main coastlines.
Almost nothing is known or preserved about Roman cartography. The Tabula Peutingeriana , a Roman road map, served more as a travel guide than a means of navigation. In the European Middle Ages the work of Ptolemy and his representation of the world was largely unknown. His work was always well known in the Arab world and came back to Western Europe through Byzantine scholars at the beginning of the 15th century. With the translation created by Jacopo d'Angiolo around 1410, a Latin edition of the text was printed for the first time in 1475. After its rediscovery, the work of Ptolemy determined the cartography of the entire epoch.
The map of the Ottoman admiral Piri Reis is dated to 1513. In addition to regions of Western Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa that have long been known, it also shows the coastlines of West Africa and North and South America.
middle Ages
Bike maps (TO maps)
From antiquity to the 13th century, no significant progress in cartography has been passed down. In the Middle Ages , maps were created that did not serve to depict the world as precisely as possible, but rather that of the Christian worldview. The explored and habitable part of the earth, ecumenism , was represented as a circle, while other parts surrounded the circle. Jerusalem as the religious center was placed in the center of the map during this period. The land masses of the three known continents were divided so that a T was created and surrounded by the ocean ( O ). Europe occupied a quarter of the world, Africa a quarter , and Asia the remaining half . This three-way division of the world was traced back to the Bible , more precisely the distribution of the sons of Noah . On Sem accounted Asia, to Ham Africa and Japheth Europe. East, where according to the medieval view the Garden of Eden lay, was up on the maps. This schematic representation, the Mappa mundi , was of no value for navigation. Maps of this type are called cycling maps or TO maps. TO cards were primarily made by monks , who sometimes depicted legends and fantasy stories on them. At the beginning of the empirical cartography are the maps of the Arab al-Idrisi in his book for Roger, the King of Sicily, from the year 1153.
Postage cards and isolarii
| Abbreviation (Portolankarte) | German | |
|---|---|---|
| c. | cavo, cabo | cape |
| f. | fiume | flow |
| G. , g. | gulffo, golfo | golf |
| M. | monte | mountain |
| p. | porto, puerto | Port, port city |
| R. , r. | rio | flow |
| S. , s. | San, Santo, Santa | before saints names |
| i. , j. | illa, Jlla, ylla | island |
In the Mediterranean area, a map type developed that is considered the first form of sea maps in today's sense, the so-called portolan maps (Italian: '' portolano '' - the port map). Postage cards were first mentioned in 1270. (The oldest surviving specimen is the Pisan map named after its place of discovery . It was created around 1275.) A certain standard developed: The maps were mostly north-oriented, had no meridans or parallels and were not created by projection. To determine the course, the maps contained a network of partially multi-colored lines that started from the center of the map and 16 or 32 points ( compass roses ) evenly distributed on a circular line . A knowledgeable seaman was able to set a course to his destination. Locations, bays, estuaries and landmarks were indicated on the coastlines (often with the help of abbreviations). Certain colors gave information about the quality of the harbor. For the first time symbols were used for reefs, shoals and anchorages . The distance information on such maps was based on the experience of the seafarers. Sailing instructions in text form were part of postage cards. The compass roses were still imprecise, and the compass in its former form (a magnetized needle that was inserted through a stalk or a piece of cork and floated in a vessel with water) was very imprecise. The isolarii are a further development of the portolan cards . The first guaranteed representatives are wood prints from 1485 by Bartolomeo Zambertis Isolario. The maps included a compass rose, ruler, and symbols. Isolarii are considered to be the first printed nautical charts.
illustration
Maps were drawn on large animal skins, leaving the neck area free. This part was placed to the west. Since a large area was available, it was designed graphically. The lines drawn on the map have not been touched. Images were inserted geographically (so that land and water could be better differentiated) and artistically appropriate. Initially, pictures of port cities, coats of arms, flags or animal figures were usually attached to the free areas of the nautical charts. As long as seafaring was restricted to domestic waters, the marine world was depicted true to life. Only after reports from southern European waters, in which there was talk of water-spitting whales and gigantic fish, did they begin to draw monsters from hearsay. In the 15th century, free spaces began to be filled with scenes from the life of Jesus and the Virgin Mary with Child or Christ on the cross. By the end of the 15th century, nautical charts had developed in two main directions of decor: religious representations for a pious, educated audience and illustrations based on the spectacular reports of seafarers. Strange whales, seals, sea lions, polar bears and crustaceans dominated the nautical charts of the North Atlantic from the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 15th century, after the introduction of better compasses, more and more compass roses were drawn in with increasingly complex patterns. The north arrow was given the shape of a lily and a cross was occasionally drawn in the east (based on the location of Golgotha ). From the 16th century, special emphasis was placed on the representation of the coast as an aid to seafaring. Coastal cities and port facilities were carefully drawn accordingly. For reasons of space, these views were moved to the edge of the maps. The main direction of the wind was often symbolized by a blowing wind god.
Colors of historical nautical charts
In the Middle Ages, water was typically depicted as purple. The reason for this was, in addition to the high price of suitable blue or green dyes that had to be imported from Asia (for example indigo from India or ultramarine from powdered lapis lazuli from Afghanistan), the occurrence of the purple snail in the sea. Substitute colors from domestic plants or minerals ( e.g. azurite ) hardly played a role in the representation of water. In the 16th century, colors were used sparingly so as not to cover the lines of printed maps (in copper engraving ). Furthermore, the uniform design of water surfaces was difficult. Usually only details and the coastlines were colored. Rivers and lakes have been marked with blue paint. Later (until the 18th century), water areas were drawn in green and thus true to nature. Green and blue dyes could be obtained from copper and were considered interchangeable. It was not until the 18th century that coloring became cheaper because chemical substitute colors were available.
The voyages of discovery
Shipping made rapid progress in the so-called Age of Discovery , in the 15th century. The centers of this development were Portugal , Spain and the Netherlands . Under Henry the Navigator , the African coast was explored and Cape Bojador was circled by Gil Eanes in 1434 . The motivations of Henry the Navigator were of different nature: He hoped to eliminate the Arabs in the trade in pepper , gold , ivory and slaves and to promote the spread of the Christian faith. Heinrich was looking for the legendary priest king Johannes , who was suspected to be in Asia or Africa and with whose help Islam should be pushed back. Leading Portuguese scientists and captains gathered in Sagres in the Algarve to develop new tools for navigation and geography.
In the second half of the 15th century, the Portuguese used quadrants to determine latitude by the height of the pole star . Tables were developed to correct the observations and the widths were indicated on the maps. Maps of the voyages of discovery were immediately made and collected in the Casa da Índia in Lisbon (which checked all maps and sailing instructions). The voyages of Vasco da Gama are an example of this approach . Map publishers were not allowed to look into the documents prepared, as they were kept secret. Around 1595, when the Netherlands undertook trade expeditions, the Portuguese monopoly was broken. The Netherlands also kept the results of their expeditions a secret. The Dutch East India Society was responsible for collecting and managing the maps and sailing instructions . The Spanish center for the collection and administration of nautical charts was the Casa de Contratación in Seville , where, among other things, the results of Christopher Columbus's voyages were collected.
Reasons for the rise of the Netherlands to the center of cartography
After creating the mathematical, geographical and astronomical foundations of modern cartography and the art of printing as a means of dissemination, the Netherlands developed into the leading center of sea cartography in the 16th and 17th centuries. The reasons for this development were varied. The southern European sea powers Spain and Portugal had an economic interest in keeping the maps of the countries and sea routes they discovered secret. In the Netherlands, which was under Spanish rule at that time, knowledge of the voyages of discovery became available due to its maritime location and its function as a trading hub. In the Netherlands, due to difficult fairways off its own coast, mapping of sea routes began early on, which resulted in cartographic experience. (The map of a sailing route published on behalf of Amsterdam, the Caerte van oostlant from 1543, is the first map of the Baltic Sea with sea routes drawn.) Another driving force behind this development was the search for alternative routes to the lucrative ones by the countries that were not involved in the discoveries Overseas territories. An example of this is the search by the Netherlands and England for a north-east and north-west passage .
The Mercator projection
If a seaman entered his course as a straight line on the flat map of a large area with equidistant lines of longitude and latitude, major errors occurred. The Portuguese scientist Pedro Nunes demonstrated in 1537 that a straight course line or loxodrome on such a flat map, when transferred to a globe , spirally approaches a pole without reaching it. Own astronomical observations and maps differed greatly, especially regarding the course of the ships. Gerhard Mercator succeeded in solving this problem in 1569 when he constructed his 1.31 m × 2.08 m large map of the world for use by seafarers . He used the Mercator projection named after him : the map had increasing latitude distances starting from the equator . It was a cylindrical projection in which a cylindrically rolled up map sheet of the world was attached to the equator. The procedure allowed the seaman for the first time to connect widely spaced points with a straight line that intersected all longitudes at the same angle. The map was triangular instead of true to area. Courses could be read reliably, while the determination of distances was prone to errors. Today's nautical charts still have a Mercator projection (except near the poles).
The role of England
English sailors and explorers drew their own maps or captured Spanish manuscripts on their voyages. The first sea atlas Arcano del mare by Sir Robert Dudley (1573–1649), completely drawn in the Mercator projection, comes from England . The sea atlas was published in Florence in 1646/1647 and for the first time covered the entire explored world. In the second half of the 17th century, John Seller, royal hydrograph under Charles II. And James II. , Started his own chart edition of England. The rise of England to the leading naval power gave navigation and hydrography a strong impetus.
The problem of length measurement , i.e. determining the location in east-west direction, was still unsolved . Various methods were tried out (for example, the calculation according to lunar distances), but the required equipment was too complicated and prone to errors, especially on the moving sea. The problem of calculating length was solved in the 18th century with the help of suitable clocks. The Englishman John Harrison designed a suitable chronometer . James Cook successfully tested a copy of this watch on his second voyage. The development of angle measuring instruments such as octant , sextant , reflection circle and theodolite made it possible to measure coasts and coastal aprons precisely, so that nautical charts could be created on the basis of precise measurements.
Development after the 18th century
After the 18th century there were no more major innovations. The precision of the maps has been further increased by modern measuring methods. Map symbols, names, colors and reference points are regulated internationally as uniformly as possible. Details can be found in the article Nautical Chart .
See also
Web links
- A virtual exhibition of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (in French)
