Les Premières Œuvres de Jacques Devaulxshowed the way to the New World in 1583.
Born in either 1555 or 1560 , the French sea dog Jacques Devaulx created one of the hunky-dory examples of navigational knowledge in the Age of Exploration . Les Premières Œuvres de Jacques Devaulx(The First Works of Jacques Devaulx ) contains 31 folios illustrate with sometime maps , instruments , and practical instruction in navigation and astronomy . TASCHEN recently published anew facsimile editionof the study .
In the 16th 100 , European voyages to the Americas were pregnant with danger for mariners , not the least of which was getting lost . Gallic insurance policy focused on establishingtrading postsin the New World , and to that end , a French prince commission Devaulx to raise a navigational guide to the Atlantic world . Les Premières Œuvrescombines Devaulx ’s scholarship with empiric observations . His maps distinctly show Europe , Asia , Africa , the Americas , and a hypothetical southerly continent ; he also indicatesterra incognitaat thesouth pole . But the work exhibit the bound of European geographical knowledge at the time , and there are also a bunch ofsea monstersfrolicking in the English Channel .
After creating two version ofLes Premières Œuvres , Devaulx embarked on atwo - year voyageto the Americas , where he surely put his long - distance navigational skills to make for . Aboard the shipLa Normande , Devaulx explore swop possibleness in the Amazon washbasin in Brazil , charted Caribbean islands , and voyage northerly along the Eastern Seaboard from Florida to Labrador in Canada .
pen conscientious objector - author Jean - Yves Sarazin in the book ’s introduction , “ [ Devaulx ] was zealous for modernity , an open - minded man with a real ebullience for undiscovered or little - known bailiwick and constantly on the picket for raw means and formulae by which marine scientific discipline could be develop . ”
1. Frontispiece
The frontispiece tole Premières Œuvresincludes miniatures of Devaulx navigating with the function of dissimilar pawn .
2. Cross-Staff, Rectification of the Pole Star, and Noctournal
A cross - stave , or Jacob ’s stave , was a tool for measuring the slant between two star and predates the scope . A nocturnal was an instrument that allowed bluejacket to find out the local meter while at ocean based on the positions of stars at night .
3. Astrolabe, Longitude, and Compass Variation
Astrolabes measured the altitude of supernal body , which helped account latitude before the far-flung use of sextants in the 18th century .
4. Map of the Atlantic Ocean
This function clearly depicts the Continent of North and South America , Europe , and Africa .
5. Table of Distances per Hour and Rhumbs
Arhumbcan refer to one of 32 stop on a grasp , or to an imaginary pipeline that crosses all meridians around the world at the same angle . Both were used to plat a ship ’s row .
6. CALCULATING DISTANCES; MOON AND CALENDARS
This illustration shows methods for calculating distances using angles .
7. Plan of Le Havre
This map shows Devaulx ’s hometown of Le Havre , a major port on the Norman coast .
8. Mappa Mundi II, Second Hemisphere
This map of the southern cerebral hemisphere depicts a hypothetical southerly continent . Europeans would n’t actually confirm the continent ’s existence until 1820 , when the Russian explorer Fabien von Bellingshausen sighted Antarctica .
These images are reproduced in the new edition ofNautical Works , publish by TASCHEN .
