The Attelante on GoogleMaps

Another free Web mapping application is GoogleMaps Engine Lite. It allows rapid creation of a basic online GIS, with layers and attribute tables. One way of adding data layers is to upload an Excel worksheet, as long as it has no more than 100 records/rows or 50 columns/fields. Maps Engine Lite also has limited symbolization and other functions, compared even to the free, non-subscription version of ArcGIS Online I have been posting with so far. It does allow use of the GoogleMaps Satellite view, however, and its oblique, 45 degree perspective. Simply click the drop down menu beside Base Map in the legend and select satellite view; it will switch to oblique when zoomed in.

The Attelante was a Dutch Brig that sailed for New York City with a cargo of gin (jenever), copper, and white lead in July 1815, arrived in September, and returned to the port of Schiedam with a cargo of tobacco in December 1815. It actually arrived in November but could not get into the harbor due to thick ice on the river, Schiedam being a port on the Nieuwe Maas River and relatively far inland. Although Schiedam is not named as the departure port on the outbound voyage, it likely was because it was the return port and one of the principal producers of gin in the Netherlands.

Despite the brevity of the voyage, it still requires 127 records, necessitating splitting the worksheet into two, one for the outward segment and the other for the homeward one, and uploading them to the Web map as separate layers.

Still, the shortness of the voyage made the Attelante a good candidate to explore the capabilities of GoogleMaps for the type of data used in this particular project. Other vessels and voyages would have required splitting into more than two layers. Besides, I had not previously done a Web map of the Attelante voyage.