The above video shows a century’s worth of history. It has been condensed into one easy to watch minute. The video was created by Graduate student Ben Schmidt and it shows an animated map of Spanish, Dutch, and English journeys across the ocean from 1750 to 1850.
The video reveals fantastic amounts of historic information about the travel by ship during America’s colonial days and many of the years years afterwards. Each of the countries have dedicated routes, and naval traffic can be seen changing each month and I find it interested what routes where chosen each month throughout the history of sailing. We still plan many voyages on the dates that were used then.
There is a longer 12 minute video that was created by Schmidt that shows a lot more data a lot more clearly. If you watch closely, the video shows a number of historic events. For example, you can see a definite change in trade in the United States around the Declaration of Independence. Further, you can see the 1796 Battle of Saldanha Bay between the Dutch and the British, and Captain James Cook’s voyage through the South Pacific from 1772 to 1775.
