The nautical charts of the Spanish Mediterranean coasts in the 18 th and 19 th centuries: digital methods to compare the cartographical techniques of the main European Navies

Abstract

heritage; 18 th century. Summary Inside the frame established by the Council of the European Union about Digital Libraries, we are creating a complete and multilingual database on Spanish Ancient Cartography. The database includes digitised atlases, as well as maps at different scales, views and nautical charts, and is being associated to a GIS. The database allows to identify and to compare easily the cartographic documents of an historical period, as well as the different surveying and drawing techniques that have been applied in each case. An accurate knowledge of the coasts and the ports of the foreign nations has been an essential target for the different historical sea powers, whose naval war strategies mainly depended upon it. The Spanish Mediterranean coast has been particularly important since early times of the ancient historical cultures, that settled there their colonies and built fortresses until the 19 th century. We have focused our search on the spherical nautical charts of these coasts that were drawn at the 18 th and 19 th centuries, in order to compare those that were produced by the Spanish cartographers with those produced by other European naval powers as England, France and Italy. And as a case study we have chosen the series of the spherical nautical charts of the Javea Bay (Alicante, Spain). We have applied some modern GIS tools to the digital images of the charts such as the georeferencing, in order to superpose the different seashores and their depictions. This search has evidenced the particular targets of each Nation, their cartographical techniques and their accuracy. Through those comparisons we can expose some concluding remarks, as the strong accurate methods applied by Vicente Tofino de San Miguel in 1789 in his Atlas Maritimo de Espana (Atlas of the Spanish Coasts), where he applied the experiences of precedent French cartographers as La Hire and Picard.

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