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My old boss swore the 'sea' on a 1720s map was just a smudge, so I drove 4 hours to a library in Albany to prove him wrong
He kept saying the ink blot near the coast was water damage, and I almost believed him since he had 30 years on me. Then I found the same stretch drawn on a French chart from 1712 at the New York State Library, sea and all, so the smudge was real coastline the whole time. He never admitted it either, just said 'well, maps lie.' Now I want to know if anyone else has a former mentor who was dead certain about a map detail and totally off base.
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miller.eva27d ago
Did your old boss ever come around at all, or did he just keep digging in? A buddy of mine had a similar thing happen with a map of the Jersey shore from the 1800s. His mentor was sure this little inlet was a printing mistake, swore up and down no boat could ever use it. My buddy pulled a ship log from the same year that named the inlet and said boats went in and out of there all the time. The guy looked at the log, nodded, and then said the captain probably made the whole trip up anyway. Some people would rather trust their gut than a stack of old paper, even when the paper is staring them right in the face. Makes you wonder why they get so stuck on being right.
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