Masters Research

 When I think about pirate and the sea there are two things and representations that instantly come to mind, the first being Disney's representation of the "swash buckling" pirate in the film franchise Pirates of the Caribbean. To me this representation is an interesting representation as it melds real world aspects, the British empire and East India company attempting to rid the seas of pirates. And other worldly aspects that of the black pearl and Davey Jones locker to name a few. The next representation that I connect to that of Pirates is the book Jamaica Inn written by Daphne Du Maurier, which is a story about Cornish smugglers and the very real history of smugglers and wreckers that existed along the Cornish coast. Wrecking was the practice of falsely steering ships towards rocks to purposely wreck and run aground, these ships would then be looted by the wreckers and smuggled in land where it would be sold. I think it would be worth looking into both these types of

Looking at these odd sea creatures dotted along the sea on the map sparked my interest in looking further into the sea creatures and exploring if there is a connection between love and fear of the sea if those feelings are manifested in the myths surrounding these massive bodies of water. I found this book by Jon Hackett and Sean Harrington that looks at the connection between sea creatures we have created and the cultural impact that they have had on our collective psyche, thinking about some now the obvious choice for an impactful sea myth is that of mermaids. Because they are seen as beautiful creatures that lure you in, this seems like a clear connection to the sea itself. Sailors and people alike see the sea as this beautiful place to be explored and enjoyed however it lures you in with this promise only to be much darker and scary than before. There was one chapter of this book that instantly drew my attention, it was about Thalassophobia. I had never heard of this sort of phobia

  I decided to go back to the map library to search for some more maps that either piqued my interest or had these odd sea creatures on them. What I found were these beautifully decorated and adorned maps, where the focus wasn't really on the map itself but rather the illustrations around the maps. Like with this one where they have these intriguing illustrations of people and animals and what seems to be angels in the skies above. I started to think about why all these maps I was looking at had these illustrations around them, maybe it was some kind of storytelling to do with something in the bible or other religious text or it could be simply to make the map more interesting as I found before mostly these sort of maps were used for decoration rather than actual navigation so is this what the illustrations are for. I love looking at all these sea creatures that are drawn onto the sea they are so interesting and other worldly that I wonder if they came from real creatures of the se

 I wanted to look at early maps of the sea and landmasses around the sea to see how early map makers interpreted the sea, I have an idea in my head that there are illustrations of monsters (here be monsters) in areas of the sea representing places they haven't mapped or explored yet. Thinking about this it might be interesting to explore this idea, thinking about myths that grew around the sea to explain the disappearance of ships and the legends that appeared with pirates that we now see on film like with "Pirates of the Caribbean". To get the maps I wanted I decided to visit the Map Library, there I asked the librarian for maps on coastal areas and the sea, thankfully he had loads of examples that I could look through along with a link to a website I could use to see even more maps. Looking at these was fascinating, the first one he showed me was dated 1610 and is full of interesting oddities that are used within the map. Like this where the map maker includes sea creat

  We then took the posters to a group session where I got feedback from my tutor and the rest of the class, this was a really useful session as it helped me to understand where I need to go and potential ways in which I could connect each project idea. At the start when I laid out all three posters people in the class were asked to pick which one was their least favourite, like me they picked the left poster "sea & plastics" to most of the class they just found this one the most boring and I would agree with this. While the subject matter of pollution and rubbish in the sea is very important I feel this subject has been done to death and adding my voice on top of the others would not make my project interesting, even if I had a different way of approaching the subject matter. Out of the two remaining posters, the class and the tutor were more interested and connected better with the "calming waves" poster. One of the reasons was because they liked the look of th