
The age of sail, visualized - johndcook
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2012/04/the-age-of-sail-visualized.html
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twelvechairs
Why not link to the original (much more descriptive) article?
[http://sappingattention.blogspot.com/2012/04/visualizing-
oce...](http://sappingattention.blogspot.com/2012/04/visualizing-ocean-
shipping.html)

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tzs
Observations/questions:

1\. There are quite a few lines that terminate in the middle of the Atlantic.
Are those ships that went down?

2\. I'm surprised how much traffic to North America falls off after the 18th
Century. Is that real, or is this data biased toward sources that weren't
involved much in the North American trade?

3\. Most of the routes from Europe around Africa to Asia seem to swing much
closer to South America than I would have expected. Are there favorable
currents or weather or something that makes it faster or safer to take this
longer route?

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gvb
WRT #1, I suspect it was lost data, not lost ships. If the ship was lost, it
is quite likely the log (and all hands) would be lost with the ship.

The weird ones are the circles, typically in the Atlantic between Africa and
South America. Caught in a storm? It seems like too much distance and time to
be drifting in the doldrums.

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hristov
If they were caught in a storm it would be very unlikely that they could get
their exact location and put it in the ship's log. They are probably sailing
back and forth between different islands.

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kabdib
Or whaling?

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huhtenberg
Why were they sailing way down south and then to the east when going around
Africa? Predominant winds or currents?

    
    
      |    ______
      |   /      \__
      |  |          \
      |   \___       \_
      |       \       /
      |       |      /
      |       |     /
      V       |    |
      |        \__/
      +--->------------
    

* if you pardon my ascii art

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gaius
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_of_Good_Hope>

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bronson
So what's the answer to the gp's question?

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gaius
That little detour is because that is there.

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casca
This is very interesting - YT link for those who prefer to download and watch
at a faster speed:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=t...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tnqxrcfUMsw)

"Ben Schmidt used the R language and data recorded in by hand in ship logs[
__] to create the animation above. Like all good data visualizations, it's not
just fascinating to look at, it draws the viewer in to inspect the details and
wonder. For example, at around 3:25 check out the flotilla of Spanish ships
leaving the east and west coasts of South America in the early 1778 and
converging on Europe in the summer. I'm no history buff[*] and a little
Googling didn't reveal what this was all about -- does anyone know? Ben points
out other historical events, such as Captain Cook's exploration of the south
Pacific in 1772-1775.

In sailing, the weather certainly was a factor, which leads to another cool
detail: that bouncing month indicator isn't just there for show. The month is
positioned at location of the sun at noon in Africa - when it's near the the
south it indicates summer in the southern hemisphere, and summer in the North
when it's near Egypt. Ben has also created a seasonal version of the chart,
showing all of the voyages of the period by month. You can see that animation,
plus much more detail and commentary from Ben about the shipping data
themselves, at the link below."

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InclinedPlane
This is sort of cool but I think it's a bit too easy for people to be misled
on what this is. This is just a _sampling_ of route data for a tiny fraction
of all ship voyages at any given time. This means that you cannot make any
conclusions about, say, overall traffic levels or anything of that sort, this
is like looking at sail traffic through a straw, this is not in any sense a
complete survey.

~~~
vacri
It does give you an excellent indication of _where_ the ships went. Yes,
Spanish shipping is not shown much, but when it does pop up, it goes to
Spanish areas. Like Dutch shipping going to Curacao or the Dutch East Indies.
I was surprised at how far out from west africa shipping went when it was
going to India.

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InclinedPlane
Sorta kinda. You don't see stuff like the triangle trade represented well, or
at all. You also don't see things like fishing, whaling, or military actions,
which were a big part of sailing at the time.

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forgottenpaswrd
Obviously "English channel" centric.

You can draw more ships just taking the Spanish and Portuguese routes 200
years before saved for instance in the "Archivo general de Indias" in Seville.

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novalis
I was kind of wondering how the "age of sail" got its goal posts moved to
1750, doing away with the first endeavours to get to the Cape of Good Hope in
Africa, North and South America, India and China out of the data set reframes
it has "1750 to 1855 in heavy boating". Either way, through the youtube
channel it really is instructive to look at all the british corsairs almost
randomly sailing for loot in the furthest of places.

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RodrigoGil
Sorry but this not the age of sail ... The age of sail started around
1350~1450. 1700 was age of maritime trades at least.

The continent discoveries, for instances: 1492 of America and Brazil 1500, or
the discovery of maritime way to India in 1498. These fits better in the
concept of "Age of Sail".

You play too much civilization and read less about history :)

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lobster_johnson
The age of sail started in the 15th century (when ships rugged enough to cross
large seas the Atlantic in one piece became commonplace) and ended in the
19th. Trade was a major activity across the _entire_ duration of the age of
sail. Exploration, colonization and settlement was, for natural reasons, more
common in the beginning.

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RodrigoGil
It's true. My comment it's an old feud that I have with civilization or even
Sid Meyer... I love the game, but I am portuguese and in games like
colonization the portuguese are not included and is a major history failure in
colonization scope. Spain and Portugal, arrogantly divided the new world in
1494, the beginning of colonization...

So how can you refer to Age of Sail and you don't mention Portugal?!??!

Believe me it's not nationalism, it's history...

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MPSimmons
This is a great idea for a visualization. It needs to start WAY earlier, and
it needs to begin when there's almost no long-range sailing.

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carbocation
I'm seeing much less Africa <-> Caribbean traffic than I would have expected
due to the slave trade. Was the sampling random?

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mturmon
Yes, I expected voyages from the "Triangular Trade":

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular_trade>

Europe -> Africa -> Caribbean -> Europe with manufactured goods, slaves, and
sugar/cotton/tobacco, respectively.

You _can_ see what looks like round trips between Europe and the Caribbean,
which probably were about sugar/cotton/tobacco.

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nonfamous
Since longitude couldn't be measured accurately until the late 18th century,
it would be interesting to see if there's any change in the quality of the
data around that time.

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jacabado
It's a shame Portugal is missing there. Portugal was once the biggest empire
thanks to sailing and colonization. But oh well all we've left is a debt
crisis to solve now :)

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carguy1983
How typically Euro-centric.

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tylerritchie
Yeah, I hate it when someone takes data someone else has curated in their
native tongue and then makes nifty visualizations with it. Clearly, he should
have gone and tracked down, translated, cleaned and digitized the relevant
shipping logs from China, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, India and Russia and whomever
else before compiling and releasing any visualization. What a racist white
nerd.

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jgamman
slave and sugar trading visualised. i'm sadder than i was 5 mins ago.

