The Mapmakers (2004)

SBS Australia

Roadshow Entertainment

R4 DVD

Reviewer: Bob Estreich

This brilliant three-part series deals with the development of knowledge of the geography of the world and the importance of maps throughout history. It starts in the early days when maps were based on the Bible and purported to show Biblical places rather than seriously attempt to depict the world. It carries through to the specific use and importance of maps in the D-Day invasion of World War II. Cartography is a science that is largely ignored but this series shows in stunning detail just how important it is.

Early maps were glorious pictures supporting the Bible by showing the supposed locations of places named in the holy book. The so-called Mappa Mundi was not intended for navigation at all. An example kept at Hereford Cathedral in Britain shows Jerusalem at the center of the world. As Europe came out of the Dark Ages early books like Ptolemy’s Geographia were being rediscovered, translated, and run off by the thousands on the new printing presses.

Ptolemy’s Geographia was nothing less than a textbook on how to construct a map and it included geographical references for many important cities and sites. By the early 1500s most mapmakers realised there were errors in even in Ptolemy. The major problem was that Ptolemy thought the world was smaller than it was, and this for instance led Columbus to believe that the Spice Islands of the Indies would only be a short voyage to the west.

Part 1: The Waldseemuller Map

Waldseemuller and Ringman were cartographers at the Gymnasium (University) at Saint_Die. The late 1400s was an exciting time to be working on maps.

A sea route was necessary as the land route to the riches of Cathay described by Marco Polo was now blocked by the growth of the Islamic Empire. The Portugese travelled south to work around South Africa and made maps of their voyages. Spain looked to the west. In 1492 Columbus discovered the islands of what we know call the West Indies. All this new information got to Waldseemuller and Ringman for incorporation in their maps. As new information kept coming in their map was changed regularly.

One of Columbus’s captains, Juan de la Cosa, was the first to map part of the coast of the American mainland in the Central Americas in 1500 but he didn’t name it. He didn’t seem to know if it was part of Asia as Columbus insisted or something else. De la Cosa’s map included the Portugese discoveries along the African coast, the islands and coastline of Central America, and even the areas mentioned by Marco Polo. It was the most important map of its time and Waldseemuller and Ringman would have known about it and incorporated it in their new map. Although much of this information was supposedly secret it was passed to their patron by other aristocrats seeking influence with him.

In 1507 Waldseemullr and Ringman published their new map showing all the discoveries to date. Importantly they gave the new land a name – they recognised it as a continent, not just a group of islands or part of the Asian coast. They called it America after Amerigo Vespucci, the navigator who mapped so much of its coastline and proved its size. They also prophetically included a sea to the west of America between America and China.

Although Columbus is widely known as the discoverer of America, he did not actually find the continent – he found the islands of the West Indies. Until his death he still believed that he had found the East Indies. Waldseemuller and Ringman recognised this distinction and gave credit for the discovery of America itself to Vespucci. Critically Columbus never accepted that there was a fourth continent.

This has been controversial. Vespucci was believed to have embellished his accounts and the relatives of Columbus used this to do a character assassination on him in an attempt to restore Columbus as the discoverer of America, This was partly successful.

Although over a thousand copies of the map were printed the Waldseemuller map was long thought to be lost. Maps were usually glued to walls and as buildings were destroyed they were lost. The map was only known now from a small book produced by Ringman to accompany the map. Then a copy of the map was found, bound into a book, in Wolfegg Castle in southern Germany in 1901. For hundreds of years the Princes of the castle had been collecting maps and documents.

To Europeans it was a valuable piece of their mercantile history. To Americans it was the first mention of their continent and the map’s accompanying booklet Cosmographiae and the Waldseemuller map have been called “the Birth Certificate of America”. For the first time America is shown as a fourh continent. The booklet explains why Waldseemuller and Ringman chose to honour Vespucci rather than Columbus. The Americans had to have it. Negotiations took more than eighty years as the German government refused to allow the export of the map. Finally in 2003 the Library of Congress was able to announce that it had bought the map for ten million dollars and would be allowed to take it to the United States.

Part 2: The Mercator Atlas

In this episode we move forward to Britain in the time of Henry VIII. Henry had split with the Catholic Church and set up the Church of England. He had trouble brewing over the border in Catholic Scotland and the French and Spanish were being urged to take military control of England and return it to Catholicism. Henry needed detailed maps to show the best way to move his troops in case of invasion, where the ports were, and particularly where the Scottish nobles lived in case he had to take Scotland in case of an invasion there. He needed good mapmakers and in the case of Scotland, someone who knew the country.

Although he knew the risk of betrayal, he hired a Scottish mapmaker, John Elder, and two French mapmakers, Jean Rotz and Nicolas be Nicolay. Elder may have been just a mercenary but the two Frenchmen were almost certainly spies. All betrayed Henry or at best sold their services and their maps to others for higher pay. Elder mapped England and Scotland. He departed from the old pictorial style of map – Henry needed maps that could be used by his military, not pretty pictures.

Henry needed accurate scales so he could judge marching times between towns, gunnery ranges, and how far inland the guns of a foreign warship could reach. He needed to know where the local nobles lived and what sort of roads and bridges existed between the towns. He settled on a standard scale of one inch to 500 feet. Such information was incredibly valuable for military use both to Henry and to an invader. Elder sold copies of his maps overseas but at least he completed the map of Scotland. He was thus a traitor to his own people when Henry invaded and took Scotland. Henry’s invasion was only forced back with the help of the French.

The French mapmakers sent copies of their maps back to Henry’s enemies in France. These are possibly some of the first recorded examples of military espionage. When Henry died his map library was looted and many of the secret maps found their way to Europe. When Henry’s daughter Mary, a devout Catholic, took the throne and married Phillip of Spain. Elder changed sides again and promised his loyalty to Spain.

Gerard Mercator was a mapmaker who had invented a new way of displaying or “projecting” map information onto a flat surface with minimum distortion. This was exactly what was needed for a military map. He had aroused the anger of the Catholic Church for his Protestant leanings. He had narrowly escaped being put to death. When the powerful French Cardinal Lorraine sent him Elder’s maps and ‘requested” him to make copies he had no choice. His Atlas of 1572 shows England and Scotland in detail, but curiously Scotland is shown out of scale with England – the way the maps are presented it looks like a country as large as England and the map therefore gives a false idea of its size and influence. If Protestant England was to be invaded his maps would mislead the invaders. This could not have been an error as mercator was well aware of the need for accuracy of scale in a map. When copying Elder’s information into his own maps there were translation errors that a trained eye could use to pick Elder as the source of the stolen maps. Mercator’s maps included both sides of the Channel and they would have been just as useful to tthe English. Because of the highly secret nature of the information contained in the maps the Atlas was then hidden away for two hundred years and never used for its intended purpose of war.

A copy of Mercator’s atlas was discovered in Brussels in 1967 and the strategic importance of the maps was rediscovered. Mercator’s projection is still used on maps today.

Part 3: The D-Day Invasion Maps

Accurate detailed maps have never been quite as important as those issued to the invading Allied troops for the D-Day invasion of France. The existing French maps were from the 1890s and were to a 1:80,000 scale. They were mostly useless for military purposes. The Allies had to map the critical areas of the French coast from scratch. They needed detailed information especially on the construction details of Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall”.

It wasn’t just a matter of mapping roads and railways and towns. The captains of the landing ships needed to know what depth of water there would be at different stages of the tide. Tank commanders needed to know what areas would take the weight of their vehicles – many of the areas just behind the beaches had been flooded to make them impassable to vehicles. The naval gunners needed to know the location of every pillbox and bunker and the nature of its construction so they could use the right shells to penetrate the concrete. Even the calibre of the guns was necessary information.

Information was compiled from the local Resistance at great risk, from maps stolen from the Germans, even from tourist photos from peacetime. Fast planes constantly overflew the coast updating the maps. Flying an unarmed photo reconnaisance plane in a straight line at low altitude was an easy way to be shot down. Many pilots did not return from these missions. It was perhaps not as suicidal as the naval divers who carefully landed on dark nights and tested the quality of the sand on the landing beaches and checked for hidden reefs. Such information was needed to plot the exact landing point for the landing ships carrying heavy equipment. A landing ship stuck in mud would simply become a sitting duck.

Even the old-style pictorial mapping had its place. A strip of photos showed landing craft captains what the coastline looked like from the sea so they could land their troops in the correct place.

The story of how a Resistance fighter named Rene Duchet smuggled a map of the defenses and their construction from the German construction headquarters is heroism at its best.

The result was the most comprehensive set of military maps ever compiled for one area. Much of this information was compiled without any special surveying gear at all. Distances could be measured by the number of turns of the pedals of a bike that it took to get from one point to another. Directions could be worked out with only a compass.

The series is a fascinating look at a little-appreciated part of history. If I have a criticism it’s that I would like to have seen more.

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