Researchers decode 200-year-old Red Sea navigational chart, revealing lost seafaring secrets

A 200-year-old navigational chart, once part of the Royal Geographical Society's collection, has yielded its secrets to researchers at the University of Exeter. The chart, created for Indian Ocean seafarers, offers a glimpse into an indigenous system of navigation in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden that predates modern instrument-based methods.

Acquired in 1835 by Alexander Burnes of the East India Company, the Kachchhi/Gujarati chart is one of the most detailed surviving indigenous navigational charts from the Indian Ocean tradition. It depicts over 180 islands, reefs, landmarks, and flags. Crucially, 66 of these locations were inscribed in Devanagari script and had never been properly identified until now.

Previous scholarly examinations in 1947, 1987, 2002, 2012, and 2022 largely overlooked the chart's navigational function, with many Devanagari names remaining unidentified or unlocated. However, the Exeter team has successfully identified these places and inscribed astronomical data. They have established latitude readings and sailing directions, revealing a document far more sophisticated than previously understood.

Professor John Cooper, who led the research, highlighted that the chart reflects a navigational tradition fundamentally different from modern cartography. "Although this chart doesn't look accurate to our way of thinking, it allowed seafarers with the necessary experience and knowledge of stellar navig," Cooper stated. The researchers have also created a spatial projection of the chart, similar to modern maps, and determined the purpose of its 29 rhumb lines, which served to establish coastline trends, indicate travel directions, and mark safe passage into ports.

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Today we are used to maps and charts that project space mathematically and to scale, making regions of the world visually familiar and accessible to us in a very particular way. Although this chart doesn't look accurate to our way of thinking, it allowed seafarers with the necessary experience and knowledge of stellar navig