Why the Artificial Shapes for the Smaller Islands on the Portolan Charts (1330-1600) Help to Clarify Their Navigational Use
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WHY THE ARTIFICIAL SHAPES FOR THE SMALLER ISLANDS ON THE PORTOLAN CHARTS (1330-1600) HELP TO CLARIFY THEIR NAVIGATIONAL USE by Tony Campbell 76 ockendon Road London n1 3nW UK [email protected] Portolan charts have been studied for more than a century and a half, and intensively so in recent years. Yet several basic questions remain unanswered; indeed, some have never been asked. A detailed inves - tigation, focusing in particular on the place-names, and the shapes of the medium and small islands, has been carried out over the past few years. This has made possible a new understanding of the charts’ development and a fresh explanation of both their purpose and longevity. Portolan charts contain an unex - pected mixture of surprising geometric accuracy and apparently frivolous invention. Their toponymy was static enough to include in 1600 three-quarters of the names that can be seen 300 years earlier. Yet at the same time they were dynamic enough to introduce many hundreds of new, and subsequently repeated, names over that period, and to discard hundreds of others. It will be demonstrated that the portolan charts - leaving aside their land-based roles as decorative mercantile or prestige objects - were an essential tool for sailors. Their uneven ‘accuracy’ can be explained in terms of three distinct shipboard uses: first, when on a long sea passage out of sight of land, second, when working from headland to headland along a coast, and third, when picking a way through an archipelago - particularly those in the Aegean Sea. The strange, clearly unnatural shapes given to many of the small and medium-sized islands, especially in the Aegean, have been barely noticed by previous commentators. It is suggested that these should be seen as ‘mnemonic substitutions’, simplifying work for the chart copyist and providing the medieval helmsman with an easy way to memorise the position of scores of islands. That these shapes were neither random nor restricted to a single chartmaking family or production centre, but were instead standardised and wide - ly repeated, sometimes for centuries, provides evidence, in the author’s view, that the 14th-century chart - makers had the imagination to create a convention-defying cartographic device. This was apparently with - out precedent, and not imitated elsewhere. It is ironical that the charts’ continued relevance for merchant shipping can be attributed to the reverence with which every small hydrographical detail of the original workshop model was faithfully copied through perhaps ten generations, rather than to any adapt - ability in response to what we might have supposed were evolutionary pressures. only the vital, and ever-changing toponymy contradicts that statement. Les cartes portulans sont un objet d’étude depuis plus d’un siècle et demi, et de manière plus soutenue ces dernières années. Certaines questions fondamentales restent toutefois sans réponse ; d’autres n’ont jamais été posées. Une investigation approfondie, centrée en particulier sur les noms de lieux et la forme des moyennes et petites îles, a été menée au cours des dernières années. Elle a permis une nouvelle compréhension du développement des cartes marines et une explication toute nouvelle de leur finalité comme de leur longévité. Les cartes marines sont un mélange inattendu d’exactitude géométrique surpre - nante et d’invention apparemment frivole. Leur toponymie est assez stable pour inclure en 1600 les trois quarts des noms déjà présents trois cents ans plus tôt. La nomenclature est toutefois, pendant la même période, suffisamment dynamique pour introduire plusieurs centaines de nouveaux noms, et les conser - ver sur la durée, et pour en détruire des centaines d’autres. on démontrera ici - laissant de côté leurs usages terrestres comme objets marchands décoratifs ou de prestige - que les cartes portulans étaient essentiellement un outil pour les marins. Leur inégale « exactitude » peut être expliquée en fonction de trois usages distincts à bord des navires : premièrement, lors d’une longue traversée hors de la vue des terres, deuxièmement en cas de cabotage le long d’une côte, et troisièmement, en traçant une route au CFC (N°216- Juin 2013) 47 sein d’un archipel, en particulier dans la mer Égée.Les formes étranges, clairement artificielles, données à de nombreuses petites et moyennes îles, notamment en mer Égée, ont été rarement relevées jusqu’ici par les commentateurs. on suggère ici qu’elles peuvent être considérées comme des ‘substituts mnémo - techniques’ , simplifiant le travail du copiste des cartes et procurant au timonier de l’époque médiévale un moyen aisé pour mémoriser la position de très nombreuses îles. Que ces formes ne soient ni le fruit du hasard ni limitées à une seule famille de cartes marines ou un seul centre de production, mais aient été au contraire standardisées et largement copiées, parfois pendant des siècles, constitue une preuve, de notre point de vue, que les hydrographes du XIV e siècle ont eu l’imagination nécessaire pour concevoir une convention cartographique. Ceci fut apparemment sans précédent et ne fut jamais imité nulle part. Ironie des choses, il semble que la pertinence durable des cartes marines pour la navigation marchande puisse être attribuée au respect avec lequel chaque petit détail hydrographique du modèle cartographique était fidèlement copié en atelier à travers peut-être dix générations, plutôt qu’à une supposée capacité d’adaptation pour répondre aux pressions de l’évolution. Seule la toponymie – vitale et perpétuellement changeante- contredit cette affirmation. 1 Introduction needs to be explained. These brief comments on the dynamic nature of portolan chart toponymy are rele - The findings described here, which are set out in vant for the later consideration of the more static full in an ongoing series of webpages 1 would not have aspects of their construction. been possible without the 2007 publication by Ramon Pujades - written in Catalan, with an English version Much uncertainty still surrounds the charts’ origins. of the text 2. The accompanying DVD, containing When, where, by whom, how and why were they images of almost all the surviving charts up to 1469, created? But it may be possible to propose an ans - has opened up the subject in a way that could not have been imagined before. I may be the first to have wer to a question that is surely of comparable inter - used the Pujades DVD to make a range of systemat - est: « why were traditional portolan charts made, sold ic studies of the early charts - extended into the later and used by navigators for nearly 400 years after period by means of freely available scans taken from Vesconte ? ». The 1674 chart by Jean-François the web. Roussin is an example of a very late production, part of the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s marvellous Now that the early charts are available in legible collection and now available online (fig.2). Note the form, it is possible to carry out intensive research into traditional structure, with a hidden circle defining the their place-names. My recent study, expanding on points where the compass lines meet, in this case work done in the 1980s for volume 1 of The History of often embellished with a compass rose. Cartography , considered the names along the contin - uous coastline from northern France round to The evidence that I offer here comes from a close Morocco. Altogether, about 1,800 recurring names observation of those surviving charts that are avail - were involved; those are set out in an online able in reproduction. It focuses on elements, often toponymic table 3. small details, that have been ignored by previous researchers. However, that is not so surprising About three-quarters of the names found on the because these new studies only became feasible with earliest dated charts - Pietro Vesconte’s of 1311-1313 the Pujades DVD. Since we have no reliable informa - - were still present three centuries later. However, a tion about the way the early portolan charts were graph summarising the recent findings shows that a made, my underlying contention is that portolan considerable number were added or removed (fig.1). charts are a major, if not the primary, source for their Indeed, every one of the chartmakers working before own history . 1440 introduced at least one new name 4. Note how, after a steady decline in the number of fresh names, It was only when I was analysing the different there was a sudden increase in the second half of the colours for the islands that I began to be aware that 16th century, as well as many deletions. This still some had extraordinary, repeated shapes. The 1 Campbell, 2011 (a) ; 2011 (b). 2 Pujades, 2007. 3 Campbell, 1987 ; 2012 (a). 4 Campbell, 2012 (b). 48 CFC (N°216- Juin 2013) remainder of this paper concentrates on those, and starts with the modern outline, which reveals its very the implications that can be drawn from them. complicated coastline. One can well understand why the chartmakers might have preferred a simple alter - native. To the upper right is a pair of unsigned works 2 Why do the smaller islands on the that come, apparently, from the very early 14th cen - early charts have such strange tury, or conceivably even earlier (though Ramon shapes? Pujades’s contrary opinion on their dating appears elsewhere in this volume). Although it is always pos - We can easily understand why the early chartmak - sible to see, in the simplest outline, an attempt at ers, when faced with islands that were either entirely realism, these two would have been of no help to imaginary or badly misplaced, gave them fictitious anyone trying to find their way around Limnos. shapes, such as those to the north of the Canary 5 Islands (in the left panel of fig.3) Note the genuine The chart by Pietro Vesconte, on the next row, Madeira, with to the north of it mythical islands such appears to be more realistic, but comparison with the as St Brendan and ‘Brazil’.