I see that the UN has approved a map showing Africa its actual size as apposed to the Mercator projection. Togo was apparently never told that a Mercator projection does distort land masses and its purpose is for navigation.
Maybe political correctness is more important than mariners knowing where they are.
Throughout history maps have been highly political. Navigational accuracy didn’t matter to princes and pretenders. Prestige and power did.
There were experts charting the Great Southern Land (in their imaginations) long before anyone checked it out.
I’m pretty sure anyone using the kind of maps this decision is primarily intended to change for navigation is pretty lost even before they set sail…
From here: Source Maps and the Social Studies -1994
No one disagreed that Mercator’s projection was out of place anywhere but on a navigator’s chart table. In 1943 the New York Times called for the abandonment of the projection in the schools, and as Robinson states in his 1985 rebuttal o Peters’s map, the Mercator projection “is rarely seen any more in textbooks and school atlases, at least in the United States.”
More about the NYT 1943 article:
The twentieth century brought several new developments. Ocean travel popularized the Mercator projection, and it was used to some extent in early American school atlases. In 1943 a New York Times article suggested that “Mercator’s flat projection of oceans and land masses still serves the ship master, but the time has come to discard it for something that represents continents and directions less deceptively.” The article further suggested, with great insight, that “Because all the long-distance navigators from Columbus down sailed more or less east-west we have divided the earth into eastern and western hemispheres. The airplane forces us to think of northern and southern hemispheres because seven-eighths of the land lies north of the equator. We are still sea minded.”
From NPR report…
“The United States was the only country to vote against it.”
Was US concerned that the next resizing topic might be presidential hands?
Buy yourselves a globe and get the true size, direction and perspective by sitting there and spinning it around to wherever you want.
Otherwise, all maps have distortions. Simply explain the distortions and use whatever one takes your fancy.
I’ve used many different projections for different purposes and even a globe to illustrate various concepts to students.
That a Mercator chart was not a colonial concept designed to belittle African nations but something that enabled Plain Sailing is left unexplained. I suppose, with the use of ECDIS or even chart plotters on trailer boats, constructing a plot on a black sheet of paper is another redundant skill.
Yes. And a piece of string to go with it!
I suspect that if we used fewer Mercator projections outside of navigation, we’d probably have better international relations with Denmark right now…
This issue has nothing to do with navigation. It’s about wall maps. Mercator wall maps do often confuse people.
One winter trip we were getting ready to depart Japan for the West Coast. I told the chief engineer the weather looked favorable for a GC route south of the Aleutian Islands.
Next time I saw the chief he said the engine crew wanted to know “why I didn’t just go straight”. There was a large Mercator wall map taped onto the bulkhead in the engine control room.
I made a copy of this for him to show to the engineers.
Chief said it helped, and we had a good crossing.
Pity they didn’t notice ,that straight or curved , both are below Alleuts chain.
Next time say : the shortest and most economic route with fine weather prediction.
Destination was not San Francisco, it was Port of Vancouver BC, Canada.
Rhumb Lines and Map Wars A Social History of the Mercator Projection
By Mark Monmonier · 2010 - An overview of the book.
That engine room crew was a little deficient in solid geometry. Somewhere along the way they should’ve learned a sphere is smaller at the ends than in the middle.
My thoughts also.
Had couple of dozen Chief Engineers in my life and all confirmed that in academies, schools or whatever traing facilities hawse pipers included, they were given some basics abt the cartography and basic differences btw rumb line and gc just like us deck folks had to learn abt some basic stuff about machinery ops , me , purifiers etc, etc, etc.
May be Herr @Kennebec_Captain crew was transfered as emcy replacement on his merchant deep sea vsl from shrimp boats, river tugs or other small littoral craft, hence the confusion and need for pictorial presentation for the idea to sink in.
Their speciality and type of work do not require such deliberations and debates.
One can understand the lack of comprehension from a landlubber but seasoned crew? Beats me.
Looks like not EVERYBODY participated in the UN approval of the new map projection:
The UN cannot change immutable facts even if a huge majority votes that way.
I see your “Polar Gnomonic” and raise you a “Lambert Conical”!
(both common in naval aircraft in Northern waters)
I see your cartographers and raise you Lewis Carroll.
Actual true size mapping:
“That’s another thing we’ve learned from your Nation,” said Mein Herr, “map-making. But we’ve carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?”
“About six inches to the mile.”
“Only six inches!” exclaimed Mein Herr. “We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!”
“Have you used it much?” I enquired.
“It has never been spread out, yet,” said Mein Herr: “the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.
. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.
