45 • Maritime Cartography in the Low Countries during the Renaissance Günter Schilder and Marco van Egmond The Mediterranean was the cradle of European marine contain coastal profiles and/or charts). In Dutch, the term cartography, just as it had been the junction for commerce for a rutter is leeskaart. Quite literally, it means “a book and transport as well as the center of sciences since the to be read as a chart” (lees meaning read and the syllable Middle Ages. When the focus of commerce and navigation kaart denoting a chart), and it should not be confused moved to western Europe during the fifteenth and six- with a drawn chart. teenth centuries, new navigation centers were created. The Along the coasts of western and northern Europe, the tradition of navigation that had developed in the Mediter- information in rutters was provided by experienced sea- ranean spread to the western European coasts. As the men familiar with small sections of the seas from many world was divided into a Spanish and a Portuguese sphere years of personal observation. As a result of the large tidal of influence, both of these countries played major roles in range and shoals, the North Sea and the Atlantic coasts of the area of transatlantic voyages, and they helped the art France and Great Britain were more difficult to sail than of navigation to flourish. In the beginning, the active range the Mediterranean, and consequently rutters used in those of Dutch seamen was restricted to the European coasts, seas were more sophisticated and more necessary. The old- but from 1580 onward, this range was extended. est specimen of a rutter for the North Sea and the Baltic is The rise of trading and shipping in northwest Europe, the fifteenth-century German manuscript “Seebuch.” 1 focused on the Flemish ports and the Hanseatic cities, The oldest known printed rutter, Le routier de la mer by made nautical aids increasingly necessary. Nautical tradi- Pierre Garcie (sometimes called Ferrande), from 1483 or tions and practices that had been developed in the 1484, describes the coasts of England, Wales, France, and Mediterranean were continued in the northwest in the fif- Portugal from the Schelde to the Strait of Gibraltar.2 teenth century and, following the example of the Italian Apart from written information on courses, distances, portolanos covering the Mediterranean Sea, sailing direc- and landmarks, sailing directions also gave precise infor- tions were written for the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. mation on how to enter a port, often a delicate maneuver Production of and trade in nautical maps, pilot guides, due to shoals along the North Sea coasts. Landmarks, in- and maritime atlases began to develop as an independent dispensable because buoys were rare in the first half of the branch within commercial cartography by the middle of sixteenth century, were shown as illustrations for the first the sixteenth century. There is little that points to any de- time in Garcie’s expanded edition, Le grant routtier cisive influence from the large atlas publishers in the fol- (1520).3 The rather crude woodcuts represented hilltops, lowing century. At the peak of their rivalry in atlas pro- dunes, mountains, remarkable steeples of churches, and duction, Willem Jansz. Blaeu and Johannes Janssonius made only small attempts to expand their world atlases with their own nautical maps, although both were active Abbreviations used in this chapter include: AN for C. Koeman, At- lantes Neerlandici: Bibliography of Terrestrial, Maritime and Celestial in publishing pilot guides. Blaeu intended to publish a sea Atlases and Pilot Books Published in the Netherlands up to 1880, atlas for his Atlas maior, but he never did. However, 6 vols. (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1967–85), and MCN Janssonius’s sea atlas formed part of his Atlas novus from for Günter Schilder, Monumenta cartographica Neerlandica (Alphen 1656. Furthermore, within the realm of maritime cartog- aan den Rijn: Canaletto, 1986 –). raphy, there was no southern Dutch period to speak of. 1. Manuscript preserved in Hamburg, Commerzbibliothek. See W. Behrmann, “Über die niederdeutschen Seebücher des fünfzehnten The occasional nautical map was published in Antwerp und sechzehnten Jahrhunderts,” Mitteilungen der Geographischen during the sixteenth century—the printers in Amsterdam Gesellschaft in Hamburg 21 (1906): 63–176; reprinted in Acta Carto- at the time lacked both knowledge and experience—but graphica 15 (1972): 20 –136. the author and designer was invariably from the northern 2. The only copy known is in the BNF (Rés. Z 2747). See also David Low Countries. Watkin Waters, The Rutters of the Sea: The Sailing Directions of Pierre Garcie. A Study of the First English and French Printed Sailing Direc- Sailing directions, in their broadest sense, include both tions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). rutters (sailing directions that may contain coastal pro- 3. The only known copy of the first edition of the larger work (1520) files) and pilot guides (books of sailing directions that is in the Bibliothèque de Niort. 1384 Maritime Cartography in the Low Countries during the Renaissance 1385 castles. Improved illustrations, finely cut and very de- who were handy with a pen and drawing instruments. tailed, were introduced by Cornelis Anthonisz. in later They indicated the routes and distances between harbors Dutch sailing directions around 1543.4 and capes and included the pilots’ own practical findings From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, portolan from their travels as well as information provided by the charts of the Mediterranean and adjacent coasts were local population—mainly regarding sailing in difficult needed in addition to written and pictorial information to waters— on landmarks, tides, and so forth. Sometimes, visualize and plot distances and courses. Less necessary they were illustrated by simple sketches of the capes and than rutters and pilot guides for short-distance sailing, coasts, so the notes and map sketches served as aids to where ships kept close to shore, they were indispensable orientation for the next journey. These rutters may be for long-distance navigation because ships were away seen as precursors of the sea chart. from land for several days and nights. The text of the rutters of northwest Europe began at the The marine cartographers of the Low Countries suc- Flemish coast and followed the coasts of Holland, Fries- ceeded the Italian, Majorcan (or Catalan), and French land, the Deutsche Bucht, Denmark, and the Baltic. A chartmakers. They added detailed depictions of the North separate chapter dealt with the Zuiderzee, and the rutter Sea and the Baltic and met the previously unsatisfied often concluded with a chapter on maritime law, the so- needs of merchants and skippers in the ports of the called sea law of Wisbuy.7 northern countries. Adequate charts of the coasts and Printed rutters appeared during the first half of the six- seas of northern Europe by the chartmakers of the Low teenth century (see appendix 45.1 and fig. 45.1).8 Pub- Countries did not appear until approximately 1550. Para- lishers in Amsterdam, such as Jan Seversz. and Jan doxically, printed charts appear to antedate manuscript Jacobsz.,9 printed them in response to the favorable com- charts in the Low Countries (as in Scandinavia and Ger- mercial climate and the increasing need for navigational many), with no known manuscript charts dated prior to aids. Initially, these little booklets in duodecimo size cov- about 1588. The general trend in the history of the ered both the Western and Eastern navigations but did graphic arts shows transmission from Italy and Spain into not include any land explorations as illustrations.10 France, but no farther, which also applies to the illumi- nating of manuscript charts. Moreover, manuscript charts on parchment were simply too expensive for a pilot’s 4. Cornelis Anthonisz. of Amsterdam is generally accepted as the in- novator of the style and format of printed sailing directions wherein the purse. The paper products of the printing press, however, coastal profiles play a dominant role. brought printers and customers together. A full-fledged 5. C. Koeman, “The Chart Trade in Europe from Its Origin to Mod- manuscript chartmaker’s school, like the nearby Dieppe ern Times,” Terrae Incognitae 12 (1980): 49–64; reprinted in C. Koe- School, did not flourish in the Low Countries until the man, Miscellanea Cartographica: Contributions to the History of Car- last quarter of the sixteenth century.5 tography (Utrecht: HES, 1988), 349–64. 6. A good insight on this subject is found in Arend W. Lang, In 1584, Lucas Jansz. Waghenaer of Enkhuizen pub- Seekarten der südlichen Nord- und Ostsee: Ihre Entwicklung von den lished the Spieghel der zeevaerdt, for the first time incor- Anfängen bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts (Hamburg: Deutsches Hy- porating charts in a book of sailing directions. Waghe- drographisches Institut, 1968). naer’s charts were clearly intended for pilotage, for 7. The so-called sea law of Wisbuy is a corpus of juridical provisions entering ports, and for sailing along the coasts of western regulating the relations between ship owners and masters, between ship owners and the cargo, and between port authorities and the ship mas- Europe, and not for ocean navigation. This book, so dif- ters and pilots. This corpus has been composed from rules and provi- ferent from conventional pilot books, soon became sions first written down in the fifteenth century at Visby on the island known as a waggoner whether Waghenaer published it or of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. It occupies a chapter in various editions of not. In addition to the waggoners, books comprised ex- the Dutch rutter Die kaert vander zee. clusively of sea charts were published in the seventeenth 8.