At the time the great maritime explorations of the 15th century began, the navigational methods practiced in the European waters of the Atlantic were identical to those used by pilots in the Mediterranean. When it became necessary to abandon the relative safety of the coastal waters in order to reach more distant places or take profit of the prevailing winds, it was realised that those practices were no longer adapted to the new circumstances. With the advent of astronomical methods, in the second half of the 15th century, the problems introduced by oceanic navigation were solved, making the trade and exploration missions safer and more effective. Having realised that the novel navigational methods were no longer compatible with the traditional nautical chart — the portolan chart of the Mediterranean — it had to be adjusted so that places were represented according to their latitudes. The new cartographic model, the latitude chart, developed by the Portuguese from ca. 1500 onwards, was universally adopted by the European cartography of the 16th century, having been permanently abandoned and replaced by the Mercator projection only almost three centuries later. This chapter describes the transitional process between the navigational and cartographic methods practiced in the Mediterranean and the coastal European waters, and those that were developed and improved from the end of 15th century onwards, as a solution to the needs of oceanic navigation. The role of cartographers and pilots in this process is emphasised, as well as the contribution of contemporaneous scholars. Finally, it is shown how the historical relevance of the 16th century’s nautical charts much transcends their use as instruments for navigation. These charts were also an indispensable source of geographical information of the large sumptuous planispheres and the printed maps and atlas, through which the new image of the world was conveyed to the Europeans.
...MoreBook Sánchez, Antonio; Fontes da Costa, Palmira; Leitão, Henrique de Sousa (2021) Ciência, Tecnologia E Medicina Na Construção de Portugal. 1: Novos Horizontes (Sécs. XV a XVII).
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