Cartographier des trajectoires maritimes incertaines du XVIII ème siècle

This article presents how ship trajectories have been built from historical sources dealing with maritime trade in the 18th century. It first summarizes the method for building the routes, and qualifying the uncertainty level linked to each of its segments. Then, it details how the geometries of these segments connecting two successive stopovers were automatically calculated in order to draw a map with maritime paths only. The algorithm, programmed with PL/SQL language, is available under an open-source licence (https://gitlab.huma-num.fr/portic/porticapi). Finally, an online tool for querying and mapping these routes with their associated level of uncertainty is exposed (http://shiproutes.portic.fr). We show its usefulness for historians, in particular for the control of the validity of built ship trajectories.