page_title: Azores Voyage of 1589
section_title: Cartographic voyage
hierarchical_section_title: Azores Voyage of 1589 / Cartographic voyage
caption_attribution_description: English: English mathematician and cartographer Edward Wright's map "for sailing to the Isles of Azores", which was constructed according to the Mercator projection which Wright explained in his work Certaine Errors of Navigation (1599). The star-like grid of lines are loxodromes or rhumb lines.
context_page_description: The Azores Voyage of 1589, also known as Cumberland's Third Voyage, was a series of conflicts in the Azores islands between August and September 1589 by an English military joint stock expedition led by George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, during the Anglo–Spanish War. All the islands were attacked either for provisions or the attainment of Spanish and Portuguese prizes. A number of Portuguese and Spanish ships were captured and also included a battle at Faial which resulted in the capture of the fort and the main town, which was subsequently sacked and burned. The English were able to return home unmolested with a total of thirteen prizes - the expedition was a success and with a good profit for the investors although many lives were lost to disease and storms.
  The expedition was also a scientific one in that the eminent mathematician and cartographer Edward Wright carried out navigational studies that, for the first time, explained the mathematical basis of the Mercator projection.
context_section_description: The expedition's route was the subject of the first map to be prepared by Edward Wright - a prominent English mathematician and cartographer. Wright a fellow of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge University was requested by Elizabeth I to carry out navigational studies with the raiding expedition organised by the Earl of Cumberland to the Azores. Derek Ingram, a life fellow of Caius, has called him "the only Fellow of Caius ever to be granted sabbatical leave in order to engage in piracy".
  In 1599 ten years after the expedition Wright created and published the first world map produced in England and the first to use the Mercator projection since Gerardus Mercator's original 1569 map. Together this was published in Certaine Errors in 1599.
caption: Edward Wright's map for sailing to the Azores
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