A Few Beautiful 19th Century Maps of Water

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

"A current such that, although they had great wind, they could not proceed forward, but backward and it seems that they were proceeding well; at the end it was known that the current was more powerful than the wind."--Ponce de Leon, the first to record the Gulf Stream, 1513

The first map of the Gulf Stream was created by the venerable Benjamin Franklin in 1769--a smart and busy man.  101 years later came this beautiful map, "Der Golfstrom im Winter (Januar) und Standpunkt der Thermometrischen Kenntniss des nordatlantischen Oceans & Landgebietes im Jahre 1870" by A. Petermann and published in Gotha by Justus Perthes in 1870.  It is highly detailed, and sumptuous, with a certain depth to it--which is a good thing, because it was showing a lot more data than its great grandfather map could possibly have imagined.  For as extraordinary as Franklin's map was, it was equally astonishing how much data was collected from the mid 19th century onwards, and the beauty of this map displays a lot of it, including the temperature of the water at its different depths, the direction and the velocity of the currents, including the depth of the water, and the like. 

 

 [Source: Antiquariat Reinhold Berg, here: https://www.bergbook.com/images/23212-01.jpg]

The next beauty is a depth and temperature map of the Atlantic, "Wärme-Vertheilung im Nord-und Südatlantischen Ocean. Nach den Messungen der Challenger Expedition von Portsmouth bis zur Capstadt 1872/3", again by A. Petermann, and published by Perthes in Gotha in 1874 (in Mihhheilungen us Justus Perthes Geographischer anstalt uber Wichtigue Beue Erforschungen, vol 20). 

  

And another, this found on the NOAA website, showing the first "realistic" bathymetric map, this generated from 3,000 soundings conducted by the USGS George S. Blake from 1873-1875. (Louis Aggasiz first noted in 1888 that this was  "the first realistic bathymetric map of any oceanic basin.".)

[Source: http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/events/survey/gulf_of_mexico.html]

I'll return to this thread after a bit--these maps are not only beautiful, but also packed with data.