runsforcelery wrote:...
I probably shouldn't say this, but in this instance you don't know what you're talking about.
First, yes, Charisian merchantmen trade almost everywhere, but that's almost everywhere. Do you think that the British admiralty had detailed charts of every bay and harbor on the entire planet in 1800? If so, I have some bottomland I want to sell you: just don't ask me what it's on the bottom of. Do not be thinking that anyone on Safehold has anything remotely like the maritime charting resources that we take for granted today...
I know where you're coming from BUT...As a a sailboat owner and avid reader of old charts, I can say that the Admiralty did, in fact, have charts of every major bay like where the battle occurred by 1880, or so. They had many very good charts in the 1700s. We still use late 19th century Admiralty charts to this day in certain areas where they were then and where no one with the resources has been since. This does cause wrecks from time to time especially with people who overrely on GPS and fail to use bearing sights and depth soundings to crosscheck including a recent minesweeper, as I remember, and certainly the yacht
Cork that wrecked during a recent round the world race.
So partly, I guess, it depends on where in the 19th Century we are!
As I said, I study historical charts regularly. Here is a chart of Deception Island that was published in 1829.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... nd-Map.jpg Note the difficult areas are well marked including shallow bar areas.
Cook produced wonderful charts of Newfoundland. On Page 18 of
http://collections.mun.ca/PDFs/cns/Jame ... 2_1767.pdfthe upper 2 charts, made in the mid 1760s, are charts of some difficult harbors I sail to regularly. Harbour Grace (upper right) if one expands the chart a bit shows a SEVERE mud/gravel bank below Bears Cove with sighting lines included so as to find the rather small channel on the northern edge of the entire bay. I recognize some of the rocks on the SW outer parts of the bay to this day. [added: Anyone just sailing there would NOT notice the bar at all under most sailing conditions. It just does not show on the surface.]
Trinity (upper left chart) has all sorts of problems, all well marked. These charts could be used--with caution!--to this day.
As I said, I realize where you're coming from, truly do, but navigators spent a LOT of time charting and recording those observations from early times. This is a _named_ feature. That is, it was a stable, known feature in the area. This is an important point, I think. A named feature such as was the case here is going to be logged at some level and should have appeared on their charts as there was trade before the war.
Now...If you are talking Sable Island off Nova Scotia, or some such as mentioned above like river deltas, as the analogue here, where the bottom can change greatly after every storm or tide there is a very good point to be made. But this does not seem to be a Sable Island sort of area.
Basically, I would have felt better had the feature not been a named feature.