Ork 1750 4

Mackenzie is also credited as a source for W. Blachford’s map of the “North Coast of Scotland including Orkney & Shetland”. At only 69% correlation of its locational errors with those of Mackenzie, its links to the latter have obviously weakened and it showed somewhat stronger affinities with the map by Brown than with any of the other potential sources studied.

The map by J.D. Miller (1868) in the second edition of Gorrie’s “Summers and winters in Orkney” was published for a local Orkney firm and lists Miller as the surveyor. The extent to which it represented a new survey is unknown but its outline showed its closest error correlation with Mackenzie’s map. In view of its local origin, it may present an indication of the contemporary spelling of place names.

Even though the map of Orkney by K. Johnston (1861) represents only a small portion of one covering the whole of northern Scotland, the accuracy of its outline represented a major improvement over any previous map. Indeed, simple rotation of the map by 2 degrees about Kirkwall produced a near perfect correspondence with the modern Ordnance Survey map. Clearly some major event had resulted in this improvement. Since the first OS survey of the islands was not carried out until the late 1870s, this could not be its origin, On the other hand, the first survey of the islands for the Admiralty was made by Captain Thomas and published in 1850 (Robinson, 1962, 5). This was a meticulous survey which not only produced an accurate outline of the coastline but also contained much place name information for coastal regions.

The error correlation between the Admiralty survey and the map of Orkney on Johnston’s map of Northern Scotland was only 69%,. However, once the maps are as accurate as these maps were, deviations from true are probably more caused by copying and drafting errors than by the survey errors which were the major factor in earlier maps. Indeed, the errors present in Johnston’s small scale rendering of Orkney are probably much less than present on many modern small scale maps of northern Scotland. Furthermore, 70% of locations common to both the map and Admiralty chart were spelt the same.

Finally the map by E. Stanford (1883) in Tudor’s “Orkney and Shetland” also shows essentially modern standards of accuracy but was published after the first OS survey of Orkney. Such errors as the map contains did not correlate significantly with the Admiralty chart nor did the place name evidence agree. Since Stanton is known to have had close links with the Ordnance Survey (Smith, 1985; 7) it seems likely that this was the basis for his map.

7. Smith, D. (1985) Victorian maps of the British Isles. p. 154. B.T. Batsford, London.