NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: 1750-1850 cilimatological database world's oceans
From: Trevor Kenchington
Date: 2004 Aug 23, 21:44 +0000
From: Trevor Kenchington
Date: 2004 Aug 23, 21:44 +0000
Jim wrote: > This fascinating image from that website shows all the positions of the > available observations in the CLIWOC database for the period 1750-1854, > thereby indicating global "western nation" shipping routes and ship traffic > volumes of the era: > http://www.knmi.nl/cliwoc/images/all_ships0.jpg What a remarkable map! Not quite all the shipping routes, as it is only those for which the map makers had logbooks available, but still remarkable. 1850 was before Maury, so ships were running their easting down across the Indian Ocean in the 30s of latitude, instead of following Great Circle routes. It was also almost before the California trade took off in '49, while the very limited Australian trade still went home round Good Hope, not the Horn. Hence the Pacific was almost empty, save for the wanderings of the whaling fleets. Japan hadn't been opened to trade but it is interesting that so many vessels ran to Batavia but so few went on to China. Or maybe the opium clippers just didn't leave logbooks. The trade to Indian still ran mostly to Calcutta and Madras. Bombay's rise to dominance presumably came with the opening of Suez twenty years after the cut-off date for the map. Within the Atlantic, the dominance of European trade is still evident, before the vast economic expansion of the U.S.A. later in the 19th century. Pre-Maury, the New York to Liverpool or the Channel trade is seen following approximately the rumb line course, instead of getting north of the Gulf Stream and onto the Great Circle. Only two voyages to or from the Mississippi. Had the cotton trade from Mobile and New Orleans not developed by 1850 or have the logbooks just not survived? In the north, the route of the Hudson's Bay Company ships is easily seen, as are the voyages of the Spitzbergen whalers. But the map makers seem not to have consulted the logbooks of the Davis Strait whale fleet. But the lack of records from the Mediterranean, Baltic, English Channel etc. must result from the map makers deliberately excluding those areas. Fascinating! Trevor Kenchington -- Trevor J. Kenchington PhD Gadus@iStar.ca Gadus Associates, Office(902) 889-9250 R.R.#1, Musquodoboit Harbour, Fax (902) 889-9251 Nova Scotia B0J 2L0, CANADA Home (902) 889-3555 Science Serving the Fisheries http://home.istar.ca/~gadus