Found at Sea: Mapping Ships' Locations on the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic

How did ships move from Port A to Port B? What happened in the middle? This project uses ships’ logbooks and a computer-aided mapping approach to address these foundational, previously unanswered questions about the 18th-century Atlantic World. Depicting the human geography of the ocean opens the Atlantic to historical questions about the existence and characteristics of sea lanes, the effects of weather conditions on sailing routes, the frequency and nature of meetings at sea (friendly, hostile, and otherwise), the practice of maritime navigation, and captains’ decision-making in the context of these and other complex factors.