1671 - The English Pilot

John Seller, 39 years old, a compass maker and a writer, already famous in the world of navigation for his handbook entitled Practical Navigation (1669), newly appointed as the Hydrographer to King Charles II, publishes the first volume of a collection of charts and of sailing instructions named The English Pilot.

This is a very useful work, if far from being original. One must say that many Seller’s charts actually are Dutch ones copied with English titles. With this endeavour, Britain tries nevertheless to make up for its delay in Hydrography, Geography and Cartography against Spain, Portugal and the United Provinces.

Cartography is a recent trade in Britain. The first of the registered chart makers was William Borough (†1598), originally an explorer, active from 1568 to 1587. The craftsmen have followed his tracks to meet the increasing needs of high seas travels which developed after the circumnavigations of Francis Drake (†1596) in 1577-80 and of Thomas Cavendish (†1592) in 1591-92, and definitely flourished with the creation of the East India company (1600). They have also met the needs of the privateers who have been chasing Spanish and Portuguese trade worldwide from the 1580s.

¤ The chart makers have been attached to the Merchant Taylors’ company. Cutting pieces of calfskin seems to have been considered by the civil servants in charge as the main attribute of their trade.

William Borough was the first home-grown chart maker but not the first Cartographer to King of England. Jean Rotz (†1560), from the school of Dieppe, held the office to King Henry VIII from 1542 for wages of £40 a year - worth £100 today. He was especially remarkable for his planisphere of 1542 which was complete to the point of displaying a fragment of the coast of a Terra Australis named Great Java – it is the land we name Nova Hollandia by now – sixty years before its ascertained recognition but twenty years after its secret and likely illicit discovery by Cristóvão de Mendonça (†1532). Jean Rotz also introduced the magnetic variation in navigation through a treatise of navigation which was not printed.

¤ During forty years, under the rule of Jehan Ango (†1551), Dieppe was the epicentre of a short-lived French impetus to exploration and privateering worldwide, which fed a school of cartography with charts stolen from boarded Portuguese and Spanish vessels and with fresh information collected by its explorers – as Giovanni da Verrazzano (†1528), or Jean and Raoul Parmentier (†1529). Beside Jean Rotz, the most eminent members were Pierre Desceliers (†1553) and Nicolas Desliens (†1566).

Astronomer Pierre Crignon went with the Parmentiers. He wrote a treatise of navigation around 1535, which was lost but was reported to deal with magnetic variation. It likely survived in Rotz' rule that he exposed in a treaty which was not printed either but circulated in the form of tracts. Rotz also produced the drawing of an instrument to determine variation between sun shadow, that is its true azimuth, and the one displayed by the magnetic compass? It seems that it was not built.

¤ A secondary French centre lied in Saint-Malo, from which England directly got the maps and notes of Jacques Cartier (†1557) thanks to Master Geographer Richard Hakluyt (†1616) who made the journey to recover them. Hakluyt became the promoter of exploration and colonization in England through books and a petition to King James I.

¤ A Portuguese, Mendonça nevertheless explored a region on the Spanish side of the world, as per the treaty of Tordesillas (1494) which split the world between Castile and Portugal by the meridian at 370 leagues west of the islands of Cape Verde and per the treaty of Zaragoza (1529) which split the antipodes by the anti-meridian of the Tordesillas one. But Mendonça’s travel took place around 1522-23: was it illicit then ? Anyway, the Portuguese cartographers and mariners kept it secret.

Afterwards, the most noticeable Seller’s forerunners were John Daniel, active from 1612 to 1642, and Nicholas Cumberford, active from 1626 to nowadays. They largely copied purchased, seized or stolen Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch charts. For instance, there were an ample set of charts for the East Indies on the carrack Madre de Deus captured in 1595, at a time two English explorers only had passed by the region.

The charts are planar projections designed on calfskin, often attached to a thin wooden plank to be stored stretched aboard the ships. They are enriched with rhumb lines, wind roses, meridians and parallels, and a latitude scale in general, as well as mermaids and fancy sea creatures. As one knows, the position of a coast in latitude and longitude is often questionable to say the least, especially longitude, so difficult to substantiate.

As already written in a previous chronicle, the Dutch East India company (VOC) has been carefully organised for long as for provisioning appropriate charts and navigation instruments to the ships according to their mission. The current and especially talented chief cartographer is Joan Blaeu, who replaced his father Willem in 1638. It is noteworthy that the VOC supplies charts in French and Latin for their foreign customers. Of course, the Dutch have imitated the Portuguese who have had a pioneering organization for two centuries and a half. Yet there is a fundamental difference: the Dutch sell charts instead of keeping them secret.

Everyone knows the semi-legendary Portuguese school of Sagres established in the 1420s by Prince Henry the Navigator (†1460) where he gathered charts from all sources, i.e. of Venice, Genoa and Majorca chiefly, and from eminent cartographers from the Majorcan chart-making school, amongst them, perhaps, the legendary figure of Jehuda Cresques (†1427).

The secret master chart of the discovered seas and lands, the Padrão Real, was drawn in 1501 for the first time. A copy was stolen by a Mr Cantino on behalf of Duke Ercole de Ferrare – a crucial copy from which stemmed knowledge of most of other geographers. Since then, the master chart has been preserved and enhanced at the Casa de India in Lisbon. It has been methodically updated and copied for the purpose of informing the Portuguese navigators sailing on high seas.

The Spaniards followed the Portuguese people in 1505 thanks to Nicolò de Caverio, a Genoan, who delivered a first world map, obviously incomplete though, for their master chart, the Padrón Real, kept at the Casa de Contratación in Sevilla – the institution in charge of every question of trade and of navigation on high seas. A new padrón was issued in 1523 after Magellan’s circumnavigation, likely by Diego Ribeiro (†1533), and a second issue in 1525 known as Salviati’s chart from its owner or receiver, but drawn by Nuño Garcia de Toreno (†1526) who had been Chief Cartographer since 1512, as well as an astrolabe maker. It is striking in that half of the chart is occupied by a huge blank where the Pacific ocean lies: nobody knew the Western coasts of America yet, of course, but ocean immensity had been recognised and rather correctly assessed in its dimensions, in degrees of course, obviously not in miles.

¤ In degrees of circumference but obviously not in leagues or miles. Measurement of distances at sea was and is still largely erroneous. Measurement of Earth has just be done but has to be accepted then converted to proper units. }

Afterwards the Spanish charts have been drawn and corrected under the supervision of Alonso de Chaves (†1587) then of Alonso de Santa Cruz (†1567), who attempted to establish the list of all the islands in the worlds, drew world charts, built navigation instruments and was the valuable author of the 'Libro de las longitúdines y manera que hasta agora se ha tenido en el arte de navegar, con sus demostraciones y ejemplos, dirigido al muy alto y muy poderoso Señor Don Philipe II de este nombre rey de España’ circa 1560.

There has always been a geostrategic stake in cartography. England is now taking a firm position in this field.

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IN RETROSPECT FROM TODAY

NOTE A - About the English Pilot.

It will be continued and updated through many editions until the end of the 18th century.

NOTE B - About Nova Hollandia, or Nieuw-Holland as originally named by Abel Janszoon Tasman (†1659), cartographer, explorer and discoverer of Tasmania and New Zealand.

It will become Australia in the beginning of the 19th century. In the first half of the 16th century, the school of cartography in Dieppe seems to have got information from Portuguese source, probably aggregated with information from Chinese source and from direct information through Desceliers who may have been acquainted with an informed witness, likely Crignon. Collected data were accurate enough to concur with modern ones – an outstanding score.

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SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eva Germaine Rimington Taylor - The Haven-Finding Art, A History of Navigation from Odysseus to Captain Cook - London, 1958

Luisa Martin-Meras Verdejo – Exploration et enjeux géopolitiques de la cartographie ibérique, XVe et XVIe siècles in L’Âge d’Or des Cartes Marines – Paris, 2013

Joaquim Alves Gaspar – De la Méditerranée à l’Océan, Nouveaux Problèmes, Nouvelles Solutions in L’Âge d’Or des Cartes Marines – Paris, 2013

Sarah Tyacke – Des Hydrographes au bord de la Tamise, XVIe et XVIIe siècles in L’Âge d’Or des Cartes Marines – Paris, 2013

Romain Bertrand – Les Grandes Déconvenues – Paris, 2024

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CREDIT

John Seller – Chart of the Western Atlantic Ocean - © Private Collection