1676.
In 1676 the Greenwich observatory had been founded to attempt the rectification of lunar tables, then so erroneous that the calculations for longitude were still uncertain. In 1701 Edmund Halley had published his great variation charts. These dates will fix in the reader's mind the advance of scientific skill as applied to navigation and discovery. It will be well also to remember that in 1594 Davis published his Seaman's Secrets, the first manual in the English tongue, written by a practical sailor, in which the principles of great circle sailing were explained.
1583-84. Earliest marine atlas.
1592. Dutch West India Company.
1598.
The first marine atlas had been printed at Leyden in 1583-84; but the Dutch had not at that time taken any active part in the development of discovery in the New World. Their longing for a share in it, mated with a certain hostile intention towards the Spaniards, instigated the formation of the West India Company, which had first been conceived in the mind of William Usselinx in 1592, though it was not put into execution till twenty-five years later. It was claimed by the Dutch that in 1598 the ships of their Greenland Company had discovered the Hudson River, though there can be little doubt that the French, Spanish, and perhaps English had been there much earlier. It is also claimed that the straits shown in Lok's map in 1582 had instigated Heinrich Hudson to his later search. But the truth in all these questions which involve national rights is very much perplexed with claim and counter-claim, invention and perversion, in which historical data are at the beck of political objects.
1598. The Dutch on the North American coasts.
The English.
By the end of the sixteenth century the Dutch began to appear on the coasts of the Middle and New England States, and the cartography of those regions developed rapidly under their observation; but it was through the boating explorations of Captain John Smith in 1614 that it took a shape nearer the truth. It is to him that the northerly parts owe the name of New England, which Prince Charles confirmed for it. The reports from Hudson, May, and others instigated a plan marked out in 1618, but not directly ordered by the States General till 1621, which led to the Dutch occupation of Manhattan and the neighboring regions, introducing more strongly than before a Dutch element into the maps.