Regimiento de navegacion (Madrid, 1606): a state-ordered rewrite of the Atlantic chart, instruments and pilots' examination
In 1599 the crown told the Casa de la Contratacion its sea charts were wrong. Andres Garcia de Cespedes, Cosmografo Mayor de las Indias, sat at Seville with its officers, cosmographers and pilots and brought back a new master chart and reformed instruments. The royal cedula that followed ordered charts made to the new padron, the regimiento printed, a practical version put in the pilots' hands, and the whole checked at their examination. The 1606 book is that standard.
Why this wins its question: English accounts of early modern navigation treat state-funded hydrography as something that began with the Board of Longitude, and the Spanish machinery that preceded it by a century is met, if at all, as the Casa de la Contratacion in the abstract. This object is written from the 1606 book itself and gives the whole cycle in documents a reader can check: a crown that states the charts are wrong; a cosmografo mayor sent to Seville to sit with the Casa's officers, other cosmographers, pilots and practical men; a new master chart and reformed instruments brought back and reviewed at court; a cedula of 3 May 1599 that orders charts made to the new padron, the regimiento printed, a cheap practical version put in the pilots' hands, the compass with movable irons carried, the variation instrument used - and all of it checked at the examination of pilots. Beside that it prints the human parts that survive quotation: an author who lists his own instruments' defects before anyone else can, who says many years of observations were compared and only the ones that agreed with other observers were printed, and who answers the objection that such precision is wasted on sloppy pilots with the sentence that whoever makes the rules is bound to make them true. And it carries a longitude for Mexico City fixed by a lunar eclipse timed at Valladolid, Seville and San Juan de Ulua on the same night.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The book announces on its engraved title that it is a commission, not an author's project. Between two crowned columns lettered PLVS VLTRA, above a ship under sail, the plate reads "REGIMIENTO DE NAVEGACION MANDO HASER EL REI NVESTRO SEÑOR POR ORDEN DE SV CONSEIO REAL DE LAS INDIAS A ANDRES GARCIA DE CESPEDES SV COSMOGRAFO MAIOR siendo Presidente en el dicho conseio el conde de Lemos". The pedestals carry the dedication in Latin, "PHILIPPO TERTIO HISPANIAR. REGI" on one side and "AC EIVSDEM SVPREMO INDIARVM SENATVI" on the other, and between them the tag "Oceanum reserans navis Victoria totum Hispanum imperium clausit utroque polo" - the ship Victoria, opening the whole ocean, enclosed the Spanish empire with both poles. The dedicatees are a king and a council, and the ship named is Elcano's.
The volume prints the royal cedula that ordered the work and put it into force, and the document describes a working committee. Addressed to the president and judges-officials of the Casa de la Contratacion of Seville, it opens: "ya sabeis, que aviendose entendido que avia algunos errores en las cartas de marear de la carrera de las Indias, y en los demas instrumentos, y usos de la navegacion: ultimamente fue a essa ciudad el Licenciado Andres Garcia de Cespedes, Cosmographo Mayor de las Indias a tratar de la enmienda dellos con vuestra assistencia, y la de algunos Cosmographos, Pilotos, y personas platicas, conforme a la orden que se le dio: y despues de aver assistido a ello algunos dias, ha traydo hecha una carta de marear nueva, reformada en muchas cosas, y tambien algunos instrumentos". The revision was then reviewed at court by order of the Consejo Real de las Indias "por personas doctas, y de experiencia". The cedula is dated Valladolid, 3 May 1599, and countersigned "Por mandado del Rey nuestro señor. Ioan de Ybarra."
The same cedula is a technical standard with an enforcement clause. It orders that charts be made from that time on conforming to the said padron; that the regimiento made by Cespedes for the use and government of the chart be printed and used; that what the pilots need be reduced and printed separately, "y que se imprima de por si", obliging them to carry the practical regimiento; that pilots carry the compass with movable irons even if they also carry one with fixed irons; that the instrument for taking the variation of the needle be used, "por ser bueno", together with the ballestilla the Cosmografo Mayor had made "por estar bien fabricada" and the instrument of the guards of the North and of the South; and that the use of his other instruments be left to whoever chooses them. It then closes the loop: "os mandamos que deis orden en que assi se haga, y que en el examen de los Pilotos, y en todo lo demas que conviniere en la navegacion de la carrera de las Indias se prevenga esto." The standard was to be checked where the licence was issued.
The dedication to the king states what was wrong, instrument by instrument, and does not spare the trade it serves. The pilot needs three principal instruments, chart, compass and astrolabe, with a fourth, the ballestilla, for taking the pole by night; and "todos estos instrumentos en los regimientos de navegacion que hasta agora se han usado, estan defetuosos". The chart needed amendment in longitude, in shoals it failed to show, and in the figure of the coasts. The compass was amended by setting movable irons, and instruments were made for knowing the variation, "que llaman Nordestear, o Noroestear, y es de tanta importancia saber esta variacion, que por ignoralla, se pierden cada dia muchos navios". The astrolabe needed amendment both in its fabric and in new tables of declination. The cross-staff was made somewhat larger, with a new mode of graduating it, and a new table of how much the pole star stands above or below the pole for each of the eight principal bearings of the guard.
The address to the reader is a statement of measurement ethics, and it answers an objection it expects. The labour of finding out what was needed "no lo puede saber, sino es quien a passado por ello, que aunque aqui no se pone, sino algunas observaciones, fueron muchas las que se hizieron, y por muchos años, y confiriendo unas con otras, se eligieron las que aqui estan puestas, por averlas hallado, ser mas precisas, y que conformavan con las que en este tiempo han hecho otros diligentes observadores, en diferentes partes de España." Only a selection of many years of observations is printed, chosen by agreement among independent observers. Then the objection: some will say so many observations and so much precision were unnecessary, "porque en mas que esso se yerran los Pilotos". The answer: "el que haze las reglas, tiene obligacion de darselas ciertas y justas, que si los Pilotos se erraren en tomar sus alturas, esto no lo puede remediar el que les da las reglas". The maker of the standard is not excused by the sloppiness of its users.
The book teaches the sphere to sailors and says so as a duty of the trade. Folio 1 opens: "SIGUESE VNA BREVE INTRODUCCION DE LA ESFERA. Porque en el arte de navegar se tratan muchas cosas, que sin tener noticia de la Esfera no se pueden bien entender, me parecio poner una breve introducion della, la qual qualquiera Marinero tiene obligacion de saber para mejor hazer su oficio." The definition and division of the sphere follow immediately, in Castilian, in a book a pilot was required to carry.
The volume contains a longitude for New Spain obtained from one lunar eclipse observed simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic. In the Hydrografia, at folio 141, the eclipse is recorded as ending at Valladolid at two hours and eight minutes after midnight, observed by Doctor Sobrino; at Seville at two hours and four minutes after midnight, observed by Rodrigo Zamorano; and "este mismo Eclypse se observo en San Iuan de Lua, y se acabo a las 7.horas y 50.minutos despues de medio dia". The difference of time between Toledo and San Juan de Ulua is therefore given as six hours and twenty-two minutes, "que reduzidas a grados, son 95.grados y 30.minutos, y tanta es la longitud entre Toledo y San Iuan de Lua". The meridian of Toledo to the city of Los Angeles, that is Puebla, was held to be 99 degrees, giving three and a half degrees from Veracruz to Puebla; Puebla to Mexico City is put at a degree or a little more, known from the road distance and from both lying almost on one parallel. "Pues siguese destas observaciones, que del Meridiano de Toledo al de Mexico, ay 100.grados de longitud."
The same page shows the error budget being handled rather than hidden. Between the observation at Toledo and that at Madrid there were four minutes of time difference; since Toledo is indeed west of Madrid, but not by so much, the author reasons that there must have been about two minutes of error between the two, "los quales no son de mucha consideracion para lo que se va tratando; antes es indicio que los observadores fueron diligentes". He then declines to print the rest: "No pongo aqui otras observaciones que se hizieron en las Indias, y en España, porque para lo que se va tratando no nos haze al caso." The existence of a wider set of paired observations in Spain and the Indies is stated; the observations themselves are not given, and this corpus has not seen them.
The Hydrografia bound with the regimiento is a working pilot book for the Spanish Main. At folio 179 the route is given from the passage between Dominica and Martinique: fifty leagues west-south-west in demand of the Cabo de la Vela, then west by south until reaching twelve degrees of latitude and raising the point of Coquibacoa or Bahia fonda, which the mariners put some two hundred and thirty leagues east and west from Dominica; then west by south for the Cabo de la Aguja, coasting to the river of Palominos in sight of the Sierras Nevadas and the sierra of Bonda above the port of Santa Marta; then west-north-west, then south-west by Morro Hermoso, the Buhio del Gato and the punta de la Canoa, prolonging the coast to Cartagena. From Cartagena to Nombre de Dios is about ninety leagues, "que se suelen tardar en navegar, tres o quatro dias". The wind regime is given with it: on that coast the vendavales are gentle almost always and little dangerous, and the nortes cross the whole of it and are bad, so that east-west navigation is always certain, easy and safe, and the contrary almost impossible.
The book took seven years to get from approval to sale, and the paperwork is printed with it. The aprobacion, by "el Dotor Ferrofino, Catedratico de Matematicas de su Magestad", is dated Valladolid 8 February 1602 and covers two books at once, the Regimiento de navegacion and the Hydrografia, judging that both contain doctrine "muy buena, y platica, que sera de singular aprovechamiento para el servicio destos Reynos" and asking not only that the licence be given but that the author be rewarded. The tassa, by Francisco Martinez, escrivano de camara, is dated Valladolid 10 February 1606 and fixes the price at five maravedis the pliego, with the certificate to be printed on the first leaf of every copy so that the price is known. The errata are signed by el Licenciado Murcia de la Llana. A royal order of 1599, an approval of 1602 and a price of 1606 mark out how long a state technical standard could take to reach print.
What this object does not establish should be stated as plainly as what it does. Only the pages listed in the source entry were opened, and the volume runs to some hundred and ninety folios across the two works: the tables of solar declination and of the pole star, the plates, the chapters on the instruments themselves and the rest of the Hydrografia were not read. Nothing here confirms that the reformed charts and instruments were in fact adopted at sea, or that the practical regimiento the 1599 cedula ordered printed for pilots ever appeared - that separate imprint was not seen. The longitudes are reported as the book prints them and are not checked here against modern determinations, so this corpus asserts that Cespedes published a figure of 100 degrees from Toledo to Mexico, not that the figure is right. Nor is anything asserted about the disputes between Cespedes and the Casa de la Contratacion, or about how his padron related to earlier ones: the treatment of the earlier padron rests on the crown's own account in the cedula, which is an interested source.