Exploring the Mystery of World Sailing丨Be careful! There is a "sea monster" ahead

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"Five Hundred Years of World Navigation: Special Exhibition of Maritime Relics from the 15th to 19th Centuries"

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China Maritime Museum

Are there sea monsters in the sea?

European nautical maps in the 16th century were rich in decorative elements, including sailing ships, various characters, local customs, and various strange sea monsters. The most eye-catching and curious of these decorative elements are the somewhat terrifying but grotesque and interesting sea monster images.

1597 Dutch explorer Willem Barents's Map of the Arctic Ocean

Hondius's Map of the East Indies, 1606

William Brar's 17th century map of Asia

In addition to maps that are sporadically decorated with images of sea monsters, there are also maps that specifically depict sea monsters in certain areas or sea routes.

1550 Illustration of the Münster Sea Monster

This map depicts various sea monsters that appeared on the sea route to China

The northwest corner of Olaus Magnus's 1572 chart

The most extensive and influential collection of sea monsters of the 16th century

Let's take a look at various sea monsters.

What does a sea monster look like?

What do the sea monsters in the map look like? What "magical skills" do they have? What kind of disasters will they bring to people on the voyage?

1. Strange Sea Monster

A two-winged sea dragon with giant rabbit ears from Gastaldi's 1561 Atlas of the World.

A ferocious sea monster from Gastaldi's Atlas of Africa, as in Ramusio's Navigazioni (1563).

A sea-pig-dog hybrid from Gastaldi's La descriptine dela Puglia (1567).

A humpbacked sea dragon in the South Atlantic, from Giovanni Francesco Camocio's Cosmographia vniversalis et exactissima ivxta postremam neotericorvm traditionem (1569).

A sea monster spraying with its trunk, from Gerardus Mercator's Europae description, emendate (1572).

A grotesque sea monster, based on a whale, with a bird-like face, spraying spray from its five trunks. From Gerardus Mercator's Europae description, emendate (1572).

A one-eyed sea monster. See the map of Cornwall, England, in the Burghley-Saxton atlas (c. 1579).

A bird-headed sea monster and a human-headed sea serpent, as seen in Antonio Millo’s 1582 chart.

A half-fish, half-bird sea monster, as seen in Cornelis de Jauder's atlas Novae Guineae Forma & Situs (1539).

Sea unicorn, see "Quivirae Regnum cum alijs versus Boream" in Cornelis de Jaud's atlas "Mirror of the World" (1539).

Two-headed seahorse with shell saddle, from the map of Africa in Giuseppe Rosaccio's Dell'Africa, e sue provincie (1594).

A flying turtle from Michaelis Tramezzini's 1558 Nordic map, Atlas of the Eastern Seas of Northern Europe.

The flying tortoise from Gerardus Mercator's Ptolemaic Atlas.

A siren admiring herself in a mirror, as seen in a 1550 map by Pierre Decellier.

The Patron Saint of Poseidon playing the viola, from Ortelius's Map of Scandinavia in his Cosmic Survey (1571).

2. Sea Monster Attack

Whales devouring ships off the coast of Norway. See Olaus Magnus's Chart of 1539.

Jonah is thrown overboard to feed the sea monster, as shown on the map of the Holy Land in Ortelius's Cosmic Survey. A similar image can be found in John Speed's Canaan in the Time of Abraham and the Kingdom of Israel.

In the Aegean Sea, a giant sea monster is attacking a large sailing ship, and the sailors are trying to drive it away with spears. See Nikolaos Sophianos's Totius Graeciae Descriptio

A whale in southeast Iceland was mistaken for an island and people built a fire on its back, as seen in Olaus Magnus's 1572 chart.

Do sea monsters really exist?

The sea monsters in European maps in the 16th century were mostly a grotesque combination of common land animals such as pigs, dogs, birds, horses, rabbits, and marine creatures such as fish, dolphins, and whales, as well as mythological images such as sirens and unicorns. Their harm was mostly limited to common marine incidents such as ship damage and capsizing, and people being swallowed. Therefore, sea monsters do not exist, and their images are just a concrete representation of people's fear of unknown seas.

Maps of this period are full of various sea monster images, mainly because people at that time had insufficient understanding and control of the ocean, lacked navigation experience and technology, and cartographers used imagination, decoration or showmanship. Although sea monsters do not exist, these sea monster images vividly show the unknown risks in finding routes, and also indirectly show the bravery and fearlessness of sailors in overcoming fear...