HISTORICAL SEA CHARTS

'Visions and Voyages Through the Ages', nautical charts are visual tools which convey a plethora of information quickly. They help a navigator find their bearing, indicate possible dangers and obstructions and in many cases estimate distance. Charts employ a specific set of symbols and features distinctive from terrestrial maps born of centuries of development. The stories of how the styles and structures of charts have shifted over time are the work of this magnificent huge, illustrated volume. It shows the history of charts and nautical maps from the earliest known examples to today, with special focus on the mapmakers and methods of use from 1300 to 1900 which were designed not only with utility in mind, but also aesthetics. They were created as presentation items for patrons and institutions, or were made for a land-bound audience eager to understand more about the watery edges of empire and commerce. They were meant to convey the power and wealth of a company or state, and they suggest the centrality of seafaring trade and travel to human history. In the European context, which is the main focus of this book, navigation shifted from practice based on experience and intuition to one dominated by mathematics and instrumentation over the course of nearly a millennium. Currently it is undergoing another shift from mathematics and instrumentation to electronics and data analysis, but the modern charts in use today find their lineage in the portolan charts of the Mediterranean from the late Medieval period, as this book will show chapter by chapter and century by century. Chapters cover Dutch Hydrography in the Golden Age (1600-1700), National Hydrographic Services and Organisations, Private and Corporate Chart and Mapmaking in the 19th Century and The Continued Mapmaking Tradition of Sea Charts. They are indeed works of art in themselves, decorated with castles, lions, elephants and stars, flying fish and great galleons from the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa and the Philippine Islands to the Bahamas and 'Sincapour', the north of Japan to Macao as surveyed by Captain Peter Heywood's HMS Dedaigneuse in 1804. Katherine Parker is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a specialist in the history of maps and mapping and the history of the book. Charming and full of aesthetic appeal, these maps truly are a window to a past world, oceans, seas, rivers and ports. A magnificent heavyweight 208 pages, 27.4 x 31.5cm. Colour throughout, full page illus.