Marine Compass Card

Timeline

1. c. 1300–1500Italian ports · GenoaSailors in Genoa, Venice, and elsewhere divided the compass card into 32 points and marked north with a fleur-de-lis, with Italian wind names (tramontana, levante, etc.) inscribed around the rim, becoming the common course-reading system for Mediterranean merchant ships and warships.
2. 1561–1565Seville–Lisbon · SevilleSpanish and Portuguese navigation textbooks (such as Pedro de Medina's 1561 edition of Arte de Navegar) systematically set out compass card mounting, magnetic declination correction, and bearing recording methods, incorporating the compass card into imperial navigation education and standardizing course notation for Atlantic and Indian Ocean routes.
3. 1566–1570Zealand–Flanders coast · ZealandLow Countries chartmakers drew compass roses on port plans and coastal charts structurally identical to the shipboard compass card, marking the deviation between magnetic and true north, laying the foundation for the later Waghenaer atlases (1580s) and the systematic navigational charts of the Dutch Golden Age.