Mapping Exploration
Mapping Exploration
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In addition to scientific developments, maps reflect the ongoing efforts of explorers and navigators to chart the world, resulting in increasingly accurate renderings of different landmasses.
In addition to scientific developments, maps reflect the ongoing efforts of explorers and navigators to chart the world, resulting in increasingly accurate renderings of different landmasses.
Many of these exploration-oriented maps chart the routes of specific voyages, enabling map users to follow along. Documenting these voyages played an important role in the establishment of colonies. Countries claimed sovereignty over different geographic regions based on the voyages explorers made on their behalf. Maps were also used to legitimize claims of colonial power. The maps' association with science encouraged viewers to view them with objectivity.
Typus Universalis [Universal Type]
Sebastian Munster, creatorca. 1550MSM 1---1712This is among the earliest surviving world maps in The Mariners’ Museum Collection. Sea monsters and other creatures populate its oceans, symbolizing the danger and mystery associated with exploration. The map depicts the 12 winds as cherubs, and contains eight sea monsters. While its renderings of continents may appear inaccurate to us today, this map reflects the ongoing effort to explore and visualize an ever-expanding world.
Images of the 12 heads, representing the winds, surround the map's border.
Several sea monsters are seen in various waters in this map.
Mappe monde; ou, Carte generale de l'univers, sur une projection nouvelle d'un sphere oval… [World map; or, General map of the universe, on a new projection of an oval sphere]
Matthäus Albrecht Lotter, creator1782 MSM 1---0090Captain James Cook is best remembered today as the first European to make contact with eastern Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. Numerous maps showing his voyages were published during the late 18th century. This large, hand-colored map is among the more visually striking examples.
A New Map of the World, in Three Sections...
John Bayly, creator1782 MSM 1---0634This map shows the world view from three different vantage points: the northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere, and the regions between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer. It also incorporates the discoveries of British navigators.
Part of the southern hemisphere from the pole to the Tropic of Capricorn
Part of the northern hemisphere from the pole to the Tropic of Cancer
The region of the world between the two Tropics
A New Chart of the World, on Mercator's Projection
John Cary, creator1801MSM 1---0760The routes of several different 18th-century explorers, including Charles Clerke, James Cook, John Gore, Jean-Francois de Galaup, Constantine Phillip, Richard Pickersgill, and George Vancouver are shown on this map. Like others previously mentioned, this map uses the Mercator Projection. Since the Mercator Projection was designed for navigators, not general users, these maps distort the continents to make the *rhumb lines clearly visible. As a result, the Mercator Projection has been criticized for distortions that make the landmasses in the northern hemisphere appear larger and more prominent than they really are.
Occidentalior Tractus Mairs Mediterranei [Western Tracts of Mediterranean Sea]Reiner Ottens, creator1700MSM 1---0947
*A rhumb line is an imaginary line on the earth's surface cutting all meridians (lines of longitude) at the same angle. It is used by navigators to plot a steady course or line of bearing. On many Mercator Projection maps, such as the one shown at left, multiple rhumb lines are shown.
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