With previously unseen records from the Admiralty Library, the National Maritime Museum, the Pepys Library, UK Hydrographic Office and National Archives this book travels clockwise around the UK using historical charts and many accompanying illustrations which used to adorn traditional charts (and which were a worthwhile pasttime to create for many a sea officer).
The accompanying text is very historical and full of gems about how harbours developed and how the charts were created often with port authorities and mercantile voices urging charts to be created as soon as possible, as chart making and charts themselves became recognised. We learn how charts developed from the rutter, a roll of sailing directions which would be copied out for masters and handed down through families in an era when navigation was an obscure and valued skill.
With some charts dating as far back as 1580 this book celebrates the life-saving, ship-saving and time-saving art and craftsmanship of the early cartographers and the great names of Captain Greenvile Collins, John Dee, Lieutenant Murdoch Mackenzie, Graeme Spence and William Bligh, who created and perfected the way to survey and chart the complete coastal areas of the British Isles (and beyond!). In our modern minds, with mapping of sea, land and space at the click of a button on our smart phones it seems bizarre that anyone would not want good charts or charted features but Blake relates how the Vicar of Scilly – Rev Troutbeck led his congregation in not “overly thrilled” by a beacon being lit on the Lizard to warn ships in 1619… “Dear God we pray not that wrecks should happen, but if it be thy will that they do, we pray thee let them be to the benefit of thy poor people of Scilly…”
And that dear reader probably sums up why sailors love their charts so much!
The book is a good size for its subject at 280 by 240 mm but you’ll want a magnifying glass to glean some of the details from the reproduced charts – which are scanned very well so that even obscure details can be read. Leave it on the coffee table – it’s a great one for the occasional peruse.
Pub Adlard Coles, 2016, £18.99, 128pp, Paperback