Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T05:21:23.463Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Eva G. R. Taylor Lecture: The English Pilot: English Sailing Directions and Charts and the Rise of English Shipping, 16th to 18th Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2009

D. W. Waters
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the mid-16th century the English began to expand their merchant and fighting navies to sail beyond the waters of north-west Europe. This necessitated mathematical navigation, charts, and written and illustrated sailing directions; all, from the 1580s, were embodied in the printed ‘waggoners’ of the Dutch and were used in translation by the English seamen.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Navigation , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 317 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

1Taylor, E. G. R. (1960). Mathematics and the navigator in the thirteenth century. This Journal, 13, 1.Google Scholar
2Beaglehole, J. G. (1968). The Voyage of the Endeavour 1768–1771. Cambridge University Press, 392.Google Scholar
3Waters, D. W. (1967). The Rutters of the Sea. A Study of the first printed English and French sailing directions. New Haven, London:Yale University Press, 3, n. 1.Google Scholar
4Waters, D. W. (1967). The Rutters of the Sea. A Study of the first printed English and French sailing directions. New Haven, London:Yale University Press, 4.Google Scholar
5Wallis, H. (1981). The Maps and Text of the Boke of Idrography presented by Jean Rotz to Henry VIII now in the British Library. Oxford:The Roxburghe Club, 8.Google Scholar
6Ruddock, A. A. (1963). The Earliest Original English Seaman's Rutter and Pilot's Chart. This Journal, 14, 409. Figs. 2, 3 and notes 20, 24. Mr Peter Barber, Curator in the Map Library, British Library, has recently discovered that Aborough's ‘on-the-spot’ sketch of the Zuider Zee (British Library, Cotton MS. Augustus 1. ii. 29), reproduced as fig. 2 in Dr Ruddock's paper, was not that shown to King Henry VIII ‘wherewith His Majesty was marvellously inflamed’ (Dr Ruddock's pp. 420–421 and n. 24), but another, drawn by John Aborough from it, of the southern North Sea, Zuider Zee and eastern English Channel (B.L., Aug. 1. ii. 64). Thus, it was this chart, to which Mr Barber kindly drew my attention and whose origins and purpose he first perceived, that was ‘The Carte for the passage’ referred to the King for a final decision in 1539 (Dr Ruddock's n. 20, Harleian MS. 296, fo. 167). See, P. Barber (forthcoming), Monarchs, Ministers and Maps in England, 1485–1625;. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
7 For example, the Chart of the Northern Ocean by William Borough, reprinted in facsimile in Hakluyt, R. (1903). The Principal Navigations Voyages & Discoveries of the English Nation, III. Glasgow: Maclehose & Co. for The Hakluyt Society, 224 (British Library Royal Ms. 18. D. III – ascribed to (1568?).Google Scholar
8Waters, D. W. (1958, 1978). The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times. London: Hollis & Carter and New Haven: Yale University Press (1958). London, National Maritime Museum (1978), 63.Google Scholar
9Taylor, E. G. R., ed. (1963). A Regiment for the Sea, Cambridge University Press, for The Hakluyt Society.Google Scholar
10Robinson, R. H. W. (1962). Marine Cartography in Britain. Leicester University Press. Plate 6: British Library, Cotton MS. 08. 1. ii. 5 (now ascribed to Richard Polter).Google Scholar
11Waters, D. W. (1949). The Elizabethan Navy and the Armada Campaign. The Mariner's Mirror, 35, 90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12Smith, T. R. (1978). Manuscript and Printed Sea Charts in Seventeenth-Century London: The Case of the Thames School, printed in Thrower, N. J. W., ed. (1978). The Compleat Plaumaker. University of California Press, 45–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13Campbell, T. (1973). The Drapers' Company and its school of seventeenth century chart- makers, in Wallis, H. & Tyacke, S., eds. (1973). My Head is a Map. London: Francis Edwards and Carta Press, 81 – 106.Google Scholar
14Howse, H. D. (1978). The Earliest Printed Sea Charts 1485–1569. Printed in Maritime Monographs and Reports No. 36, Ingrid and other studies, Greenwich: National Maritime Museum, 9–20 (11–13).Google Scholar
15Bagrow, L., rev. and ed. Skelton, R. A. (1964). History of Cartography. London: C. A. Watts & Co. Ltd, 90.Google Scholar
Keuning, J. (1952), XVIth century cartography in the Netherlands, Imago Mundi, 9, 35–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16Howse, H. D. (1978), Keuning, J. (1952), XVIth century cartography in the Netherlands, Imago Mundi, 16.Google Scholar
17 Pieter van den Keere, Map of the Seventeen Provinces, 1602: Bodel Nijenhuis Collection, Leiden, includes engravings of twenty-eight named varieties of Dutch sailing craft in the Zuider Zee and off the North Sea coasts of the Netherlands.Google Scholar
18Alpers, A. (1983). The Art of Describing. University of Chicago Press. Especially ch. 4, ‘The Mapping Impulse in Dutch Art’, 119–168.Google Scholar
19Oppenheim, M. (1902–14). The Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson. Navy Records Society, 4, 31.Google Scholar
20 The proof of this is embodied in Koeman, C. (1970). Atlantes Neerlandici, iv, Celestial and maritime atlases and pilot books. Amsterdam:Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd, for there were barely half a dozen hydrographic publications of English origin in this period.Google Scholar
21 These estimates of population are derived from: Deane, P. (1975). The First Industrial Revolution. Cambridge University Press, 32;Google Scholar
Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S. (1981), The Population History of England, 1541–1871. London, 566–69, 576–77;Google Scholar
McCusker, J. J. and Menard, R. R. (1985), The Economy of British America, 1607–1789, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill & London, fig. 10.1 (for British America).Google Scholar
Hamilton, H. (1963), An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford: Clarendon Press;Google Scholar
Smout, T. C. (1963), Scottish Trade on the Eve of Union, 1660–1707, Edinburgh, London: Oliver & Boyd (for Scottish populations and seamen).Google Scholar
Scammell, G. V. (1970), Manning the English Merchant Service in the Sixteenth Century, The Mariner's Mirror, 56, 131–54 (134), gives English seamen in 1582;CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnett, G. E., ed. (1936) Two Tracts by Gregory King, Boston, includes King's numbers of English seamen in 1688; Admiralty Lists, National Maritime Museum, is a further source for estimating seamen totals, using peak numbers in the Royal Navy in wartime, as are numbers of merchant ships (fig. 6). For seamen, as for the populations, there are no certain figures, only reasonable estimates.Google Scholar
22 The chief sources for English ships are Davis, R. (1972), Oppenheim M. (1896). A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy. London, 176–177, and Scammell G. V. (1970); for Scottish ships: Hamilton H. (1963) and Smout T. C. (1963).Google Scholar
23Davis, R. (1967). A Commercial Revolution. English Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London: The Historical Association, 10.Google Scholar
24Davis, R. (1967). A Commercial Revolution. English Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London: The Historical Association, 11.Google Scholar
25Davis, R. (1967). A Commercial Revolution. English Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London: The Historical Association, 12.Google Scholar
26Adams, Thomas, R. (1985). The Non-Cartographical Maritime Works Published by Mount and Page, Occasional Publications of the Bibliographical Society, No. 1. London: The Bibliographical Society.Google Scholar
27Verner, C. (1969). Captain Collins Coasting Pilot. A Carto-Bibliographical Analysis. London: The Map Collectors' Circle.Google Scholar
28Thrower, N. J. W. (1981). The Three Voyages of Edmond Halley in the Paramore 1698–1701. London: The Hakluyt Society. Second Series, 156, 2 vols. Vol. 1 reprints Captain Halley's log books. Vol. 2 comprises reproductions of his two Isogonic charts and, in two sheets, of his tidal chart of the English Channel.Google Scholar
29Phil. Trans. (1731), 37, 185–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
30 Anne. Cap. 14.Google Scholar
31 Figs. 9, 10, 11: Chief sources: Nef, J. U. (1932). The Rise of the British Coal Industry, 2 vols. London:Routledge & Sons.Google Scholar
Hague, B. D. and Christie, P. (1975). Lighthouses. Llandysul, Dyfed. Gomer PressGoogle Scholar
fig. 12: chief source, Clemens, P. G. E. (1976). The rise of Liverpool, 1665– 1750. Econ. Hist. Rev., 29, 211–215, and Davis, R. (1972).Google Scholar
32Robinson, A. H. W. (1962), pp; 89–90, plates 34 and 35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33Blewitt, M. (1957). Surveys of the Seas. London: Megibbon & Kee, 26.Google Scholar
34Ritchie, G. S. (1967). The Admiralty Chart. London:Hollis & Carter, 18.Google Scholar
35Ritchie, G. S. (1967). The Admiralty Chart. London: Hollis & Carter, 19.Google Scholar
36Ollard, R. (1974). Pepys. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 228.Google Scholar