Tracks on the Ocean: A History of Trailblazing, Maps and Maritime Travel

Longlisted for the 2025 BSHS Hughes Prize

'Ingenious. Caputo picks out a fascinating path and leads readers along it with the confidence of a practised pilot' Felipe Fernández-Armesto, author of 1492

'Accessible and entertaining, as well as deeply erudite and constantly mind-expanding' Philip Ball, author of How Life Works

From their first appearance on Renaissance maps, linear tracks representing maritime voyages have shaped the way we see the world. But why do we depict journeys as lines, and what is their deeper meaning? Ferdinand Magellan's route to the Pacific embodied the promise of adventure and colonisation, while the scientific charts of the Royal Navy inspired others to plan conquests, navigate treacherous waters and establish settlements across the oceans.

In Tracks on the Ocean, prize-winning historian Sara Caputo charts a hidden history of the modern world through the tracks left on maps and the sea. Taking us from ancient Greek itineraries to twenty-first-century digital mapping, via the voyages of Drake and Cook, the decks of Napoleonic warships and the boiler rooms of ocean liners, Caputo reveals how marks on maps have changed the course of modernity.