Pedro de Medina’s ‘Arte de Nauegar’, was first published in Valladolid in 1545, and soon became the fundamental work on navigation. “His knowledge of the New World was first-hand, having travelled with Cortés. Later he held the position of debriefing the returning crews from their voyages” (Burden 14).
As word spread through Europe of this extremely useful work, that could be used to navigate successfully to the New World, editions in other languages were seen as a publishing opportunity of a lifetime, grasped by one Nicholas de Nicolay (1517-1583), the Royal geographer sent by Henri II to Constantinople to join d’Aramont’s embassy in 1551, Nicolay travelled extensively in the service of the king, and “was well rewarded for his work, and a number of his observations and surveys were published. The first issue of [his version of] this work is dated 1553, but was actually published in 1554. There were further editions in 1554 (dated so, as here), 1561, 1569 and 1576” (Burden 19).
Most importantly, and impressively, the work contains Nicolay’s updated version of Medina’s map of the Atlantic Ocean, in much more detail than the earlier Spanish edition. It “clearly shows more knowledge of Cartier’s voyages up the St. Lawrence river than its predecessor, with many more islands in the Gulf. Along the eastern seaboard new nomenclature appears., ‘C.des maria’ represents the Carolina Outer Banks. ‘TIERRA DEL LICENADO AVLLOH’ refers to the unsuccessful attempt at a colony by Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon. ‘Aguada’ also appeared on earlier maps, notably Gastaldi’s ‘Nveva Hispania’ of 1548. The Bahamas are represented and the Yucatan is still an island. The Amazon River, on the Medina of 1545, delineated flowing west to east, is here south to north” (Burden). ‘Tierra de Laborador’, and the left-hand latitude scale correctly marked ‘50’, are also found.

The author
Pedro de Medina (1493-1567), was a mathematician, astronomer, and geographer. He started his career as tutor and librarian to the Dukes of Medina. He then began to practice cosmography, and became an examiner of pilots and sailing-masters in Seville in 1539. He was dissatisfied with the level of teaching and quality of the texts and charts he taught with, and wrote his ‘Arte del navigare’ to remedy the deficiency. This was the first European treatise on navigation, which is why de Medina “may be said to be the founder of the literature of seamanship” (Church). The work was very popular, being one of the three navigational texts that Sir Francis Drake took on his expedition. Much of the work was based on first-hand knowledge, as Medina had been with Hernando Cortés on his voyage of exploration to the New World. Later in his life, Medina, back in Spain, collected information from returning pilots, and thus was in an extraordinarily advantageous position to compose a state-of-the-art map for his navigational manual when it was published in 1545. By 1549 he had become ‘cosmografo de honor’ after Charles V asked him to make navigational charts