Overview

'Ingenious. Caputo picks out a fascinating path and leads readers along it with the confidence of a practised pilot' Felipe Fernndez-Armesto, author of 1492'Accessible and entertaining, as well as deeply erudite and constantly mind-expanding' Philip Ball, author of How Life WorksFrom their first appearance on Renaissance maps, linear tracks representing maritime voyages have shaped the way we see the world. But why do we depict journeys as lines, and what is their deeper meaning? Ferdinand Magellan's route to the Pacific embodied the promise of adventure and colonisation, while the scientific charts of the Royal Navy inspired others to plan conquests, navigate treacherous waters and establish settlements across the oceans.In Tracks on the Ocean, prize-winning historian Sara Caputo charts a hidden history of the modern world through the tracks left on maps and the sea. Taking us from ancient Greek itineraries to twenty-first-century digital mapping, via the voyages of Drake and Cook, the decks of Napoleonic warships and the boiler rooms of ocean liners, Caputo reveals how marks on maps have changed the course of modernity.

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9781788168823

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The cartographical track ... represented a peculiarly European, evolving sense of humanity's position in the world: notions of destiny, permanence and possession, heroic craft and odds-defying relevance. It portrayed the individual standing in front of the wild environment, wrangling it and branding it, tattooing the very image of the Earth with lines that say - I have been there -- Sara Caputo * Tracks on the Ocean *

The cartographical track ... represented an evolving sense of humanity's position in the world: notions of destiny, permanence and possession, heroic craft and odds-defying relevance. It portrayed the individual standing in front of the wild environment, wrangling it and branding it, tattooing the image of the Earth with lines that say - I have been there -- Sara Caputo * Tracks on the Ocean *

Author Information

Dr Sara Caputo is a Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge. A specialist in maritime and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history, she is the winner of numerous awards, including the Prince Consort and Thirlwall Prize. She has been a Visiting Fellow in Germany, California and at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

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