In the previous post I outlined a brief history of magnetism, the magnet, the magnetic compass, and its introduction into navigation with the inherent problems caused by magnetic declination or variation. The early history of navigation with the compass, and the discovery of declination was centred around the mariners of the Iberian Peninsula, the Spanish and the Portuguese. The English mariners lagged behind the Southern Europeans and had to play catch up. This process started around 1560 and the Brough Brothers, Stephen and William, played a significant role in setting it in motion.
Stephen (1525–1584) and his brother William Borough (bap. 1536–1598) were both born at Borough House, Northam Burrows, Northam in Devon the sons of Walter Borough (1494–1548) and Mary Dough. Northam Burrows is a saltmarsh and dune landscape, adjacent to the Torridge Estuary.
Stephen was largely educated by his uncle John Borough (c. 1494–d. 1570). John Borough was also born in Northam Burrows the eldest of four sons of Stephen Borough (c. 1474–1548). He served as master of various ships under Vice-Admiral of England Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle (d.1542), Lord Deputy of Calais under Henry VII. He brought an action in the High Court of the Admiralty in 1533 against a John Andrews, purser of the Michael of Barnstaple, concerning the theft of his sea chests. The court records show that John Borough’s possessed a cross-staff, a quadrant, a lodestone, a running glass, a Portuguese Ephemerides, a Spanish Rutter, an English Rutter compiled by himself, two Spanish compasses, two other compasses, and two charts, one being of the Mediterranean. This indicates that he was in the vanguard of English users of new Iberian navigational technology.
With his uncle, Stephen probably participated in the first measured survey of south Devon and Cornwall in 1538. Before he became a surveyor in the late 1530s working for Arthur Plantagenet, John had sailed on the Mary Plantagenet regularly from the south of England to Sicily, Crete, and the Levant. In 1539, John Borough was commissioned to survey possible sea passages to be taken by Henry VII’s future queen. The resultant rutter is the earliest in English to contain costal views and navigational. direction. As a child Stephen learnt navigation and pilotage skills from his uncle as well the basics of Spanish and Portuguese from the books in those languages which his uncle possessed.
In 1553, three vessels–the Edward Bonaventura, the Bona Esperanza, and the Bona Confidentia–set sail from London under the command of Sir Hugh Willoughby (d. 1554), on a voyage organised by Sebastian Cabot (c. 1474–c. 1557) and sponsored by The Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands, incorporated in that year, to search for a north-east passage to China. Stephen Borough sailed on the Edward Bonaventura as master under Richard Chancellor (c. 1521–1556), a tutee of Cabot and John Dee (c. 1527–c. 1608), who was second in command and pilot-general of the fleet. The three ships got separated and only the Edward Bonaventura sailed past Norway and along to coast of Northern Russia. It entered the White Sea and dropped anchor in the estuary of the river Dvina near Arkhangelsk (Archangel), where they overwintered.
Invited by the Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible (1530–1584), Chancellor travelled the thousand kilometres overland to Moscow, where he established trade and diplomatic relations between England and Russia. During his absence Borough was in command of the ship. In the spring they sailed the Edward Bonaventura back to London.
In 1556, Borough led a second expedition sailing beyond the White Sea in the Serchthrift a small ship with a crew of fifteen. He discovered the Kara Strait between the southern end of Novaya-Zemlya and the northern tip of Vaygach Island but couldn’t sail further because of ice and overwintered in Kholmogory on the left bank of the Northern Dvina. Here Borough learnt ninety-five words and expressions of Kildin Sámi, which Richard Hakluyt (1553–1616) published in 1558. The earliest known documentation of a Sami language.
On his return to England from 1557–58, Stephen Borough and John Dee worked on the technical problems of preparing a chart of the far northern waters explored by Broughs on his voyages. Because of the extreme distortion produced by the Mercator projection as one approaches the North Pole, Dee developed an azimuthal equidistant circumpolar chart, with the north pole at its centre and the lines of latitude at 10° interval as concentric circles. This is Dee’s Pardoxall compass (for more details see the post on John Davis) The azimuthal equidistant projection goes back at least to al-Bīrūnī (973–after 1050) in the eleventh century.
Following Chancellor’s death in 1556, Stephen Borough was now the English navigator with the most experience of sailing in Artic waters. Following the marriage of Mary Tudor (1516–1558) to Phillip II of Spain (1527–1598) covert diplomatic arrangements were made for the Spanish speaking Borough to visit the Casa de la Contratación (House of Trade) in Seville in 1558. Here he traded his knowledge of navigating in norther waters against information on the Spanish training for ships pilots.
When he returned to England, he brought with him a copy of the Breve compendio de la sphera y de la arte de navegar, con nuevos instrumentos y reglas, exemplificado com muy subtiles demostraciones (Seville, 1551) of Martín Cortés de Albacar (1510–1582). This book was commonly known as the Arte de navegar or the Breve compendio The Company of Merchant Adventurers, now known as the Muscovy Company, paid Richard Eden (c. 1520–1576) to translate the Arte de navegar into English. It was published in 1561 as the Art of Navigation, the first English manual of navigation. Later Richard Eden would produce and English translation of Jean Taisnier’s plagiarised version of Epistola Petri Peregrini de Maricourt ad Sygerum de Foucaucourt, militem, de magnete (Letter of Peter the Pilgrim of Maricourt to Sygerus of Foucaucourt, Soldier, on the Magnet) from 1269, (see Magnetic Variations – I) the most advanced scientific study of the magnet and the magnetic compass available, and this was published together with his Art of Navigation in 1579, giving English mariners access to the best available information on the compass for the first time.
Now acknowledged as one of England’s leading mariners Stephen served as Chief pilot for the Muscovy Company trading in northern waters. He petitioned Queen Elizabeth to replicate the organisation of the Casa de la Contratación in Seville. This wish was not fulfilled but he was appointed one of four keepers of the queen’s ships on the Medway in the 1560s. In 1572, he was elected a master of Trinity House. His election to master of Trinity House meant that his younger brother William took over his post of Chief pilot of the Muscovy Company and we now turn to his career.
William’s education as a mariner began when he was still as child. He sailed on ships with his brother, Stephen, under the command of their uncle John. According to his own account, he took part in the 1553, as a sixteen-year-old, in the expedition to discover the north-east passage to China in which Stephen served as master on the Edward Bonaventura.
As a fully qualified navigator William made a successful career, as a ship’s master trading in northern waters and as a cartographer making charts for various people, including William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520–1598), Queen Elizabeth’s chief adviser, who compiled a notable manuscript atlas, and who was behind Thomas Seckford’s sponsoring of Christopher Saxton (c. 1540–c. 15610) t o produce the first printed atlas of England and Wales. In the early 1560’s, William had received instruction from John Dee on how to draw and use his paradoxall compasses. Together with Dee he also advised other mariners making attempts to discover a north-east passage.
Stephen Borough was consulted about Martin Frobisher’s plans to attempt to find a north-west passage, but William had a negative view of the enterprise. However, he sold the Frobisher expedition a mariner’s astrolabe, a wooden cross-staff and several ruled -up charts.
As already noted, William succeeded his brother as Chief pilot of the Muscovy Company in 1572. In 1581, he published his A Discourse on the Variation of the Cumpas, or magneticall needle: Wherein is mathematically shewed, the manner of the obseruation, effects, and application thereof. This was largely plagiarised from Eden’s translations of Taisier’s plagiarised version of the Epistola Petri Peregrini and Martín Cortés’ The Art of Navigation. This was to be appended to The newe attractive: shewing the nature, propertie, and manifold vertues of the loadstone: with the declination of the needle, touched therewith under the plaine of the horizon of Robert Norman (fl. 1560–1584), (which we will look at in the next episode of this series). William’s A Discourse on the Variation appeared in new expanded editions in 1585, 1596, 1611 and 1614.
In 1580, William Borough was appointed to the post of comptroller of the queen’s ships. In 1582, he was appointed as clerk of the queen’s ships for life. In this post he was requested to undertake a detailed survey of all naval ordnance, saltpetre, and powder in the hands of the officers of the ordnance. Later he would make a similar survey of the ships. In 1581, he was appointed warden of the Trinity House of Deptford Stround and from served from 1585-86 as its master.
Despite his extensive administrative duties, he still took to sea, in 1583 he was involved in an action against pirates and in 1585 he took charge of a squadron sailing from Harwich to Flushing in the Netherlands to inspect the newly garrisoned port. In 1585 he sailed with John Hawkins (1532–1595) in the Golden Lion to the Azores. In 1587, he was notoriously arrested by Francis Drake for mutiny.
This was the infamous voyage on which Drake attacked the Spanish fleet in the Bay of Cádiz causing great damage. Borough had sailed with Drake, as vice-admiral, and master of the Golden Lion. Following the raid on Cádiz, Drake had decided to disembark in Lagos in the Algarve and attack the fortresses of Sagres, Baleeira, Beliche, and Cape St. Vincent. Borough thought the action unwise and criticised Drake’s plan. For this act of insubordination, Drake had him arrested and locked in his cabin. Borough’s criticisms proved largely correct as the attack was not successful. Meanwhile the crew of the Golden Lion mutinied. Darke put down the mutiny appointed a new master and sent the ship back to England.
Back in England Borough could prove that he was locked in his cabin when the mutiny took place and also that his criticisms of Drake were justified, so Lord Burghley acquitted him and appointed him master of the Bonavolia to patrol the Thames against possible invaders in 1588. He continued to serve in various capacities until his death in 1598.
The early hands-on training that they received from their uncle, John Borough, who was himself a leading English adept of the most modern navigation techniques of the times, meant that both Stephen and William Borough had very successful careers as navigators in the second half of the sixteenth century, helping to advance the knowledge of these skills in the English maritime world. Above all the literature that they brought forward on navigation and on the magnetic compass, Stephen being responsible for the introduction of the English translation of Martín Cortés de Albacar’s Arte de navegar and William with his A Discourse on the Variation of the Cumpas, which, although largely plagiarised, was highly popular, made the knowledge available for the first time in written form for English mariners.
The Renaissance Mathematicus 