[BITList] Plot Logbook Entries from 18/19th century ship logs and you get this amazing chart

[John Feltham]

From a correspondent…  

We'll dry off those M.M. seeds when they're ready, and yes please to your offer.

I thought this article would interest you. 
There are some good numbered links to explore, and the video at the end show the gradual increase in trade is worth watching.  I particularly noted the trade routes with Australia, and with Western Australia where most ships would probably have stopped at Freemantle - my Southern Oceans 'home' port (Kwinana). Interesting also for genealogists.



http://gcaptain.com/plot-logbook-entries-from-1819th-century-ship-logs-and-you-get-this-amazing-wolrd-image/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_campaign=0&utm_content=261222 <http://gcaptain.com/plot-logbook-entries-from-1819th-century-ship-logs-and-you-get-this-amazing-wolrd-image/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_campaign=0&utm_content=261222>

Plot Logbook Entries from 18/19th century ship logs and you get this amazing chart

June 4, 2015 by John Konrad <http://gcaptain.com/author/john/>
 <https://www.flickr.com/photos/10052187@N05/13516638735/>
Ben Schmidt’s world chart created with a blank screen and thousands of data points from old ship logbooks.

 <http://target.georiot.com/Proxy.ashx?TSID=9722&GR_URL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F098823601X%2Fref%3Das_li_tl%3Fie%3DUTF8%26camp%3D1789%26creative%3D390957%26creativeASIN%3D098823601X%26linkCode%3Das2%26tag%3Dgcaptaincom-20%26linkId%3DSN2V2XZBCLOYYN7I>
Related Book: Hell Around The Horn by Rick Spillman
Scan a large collection of 18th- and 19th-century ships’ logs (1 <http://icoads.noaa.gov/maury.html>), plot them on a blank digital canvas canvas, and you get this extraordinary world map.  This map was featureless to begin with, yet we can clearly discern the contours and shapes of the continents. That is the cumulative effect of significant numbers of coast-hugging vessels, generating enough data points to show the length and breadth of the land. 

“A map I put up a year and a half ago went viral this winter” says map creator Ben Schmidt  <http://sappingattention.blogspot.com/2014/03/shipping-maps-and-how-states-see.html>.  “The motivation for the series is that a medium-sized data set like Maury’s 19th century logs (with ‘merely’ millions of points) lets us think through in microcosm the general problems of reading historical data. It shows the paths taken by ships in the US Maury collection of NOAA’s ICOADS <http://icoads.noaa.gov/> database.”

Big Think blogger Frank Jacobs [2 <http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/636-painted-ships-on-painted-oceans-an-accidental-map-of-the-doldrums>] points out that some contours are notably absent: the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the eastern half of the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the northern shores of Siberia, Canada and Australia. Too few ships (or at least too few ships with log books) plied those waters before the construction of canals and steel ships. 

The most striking feature of the map, however, are the broad bands of traffic moving across the high seas. Their sheer volume reflects the economic importance of each transoceanic flow with the centre of gravity for global maritime commerce is the east coast of North America. Three thick bundles of traffic, each composed of countless individual ocean crossings, converge on the continent’s eastern seaboard.

At first glance, we see how commerce binds the world together – and which parts of the world more closely than others. Even more interesting when you compare Schmidt’s map with modern ship data like the following video compiled with the help of millions of satellite AIS plots <http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/p/satellite-ais>.

Wait…there’s more…

From a correspondent…  

Given your interest in this 21st century map, you might like to explore the late 18th century work of James Rennell, who was the surveyor for the East India Company, both on shore and at sea. The Company issued their captains with chronometers to measure Longitude, which was seen as a sensible commercial investment at a time when the Royal Navy still only issued one to each flagship. A chronometer cost one year's pay for a RN captain.

One of Rennell's claims to fame was for the first time to map ocean surface currents from the vector difference between a ship's displacement through the water (log and compass) and the displacement relative to the seabed (the differences in latitude and longitude). In 1795 he produced the first map of ocean currents (for the Aghulas Current off Southern Africa) using data he collected from the logs of East Indiamen. After retiring to London he went on to produce the first map of ocean currents across the whole of the North Atlantic Ocean. That was published in 1830.  Rennell is considered the first scientific oceanographer. The physical oceanography laboratory at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton is named after him.

James Rennell was also one of the founders of the Royal Geographical Society.  I know his descendent, Lord Rennell of Rodd, who lives in London.



ooroo


 
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