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Modern explorer Nicholas Crane travels across eight maps that changed the face of Britain.

Modern explorer Nicholas Crane travels across eight maps that changed the face of Britain in a series of geographical challenges through some of today's wildest landscapes.

Map Man: Series 2

Nicholas Crane

Richard Maude

Michael Waterhouse

Map Man: Series 2: Episode 3: Mackenzie's Chart of the Orkneys (1748)

Episode 3

Episode 3: Mackenzie's Chart of the Orkneys (1748)

Series 2

Mackenzie's Chart of the Orkneys (1748)

BBC Two - Map Man, Series 2, Mackenzie's Chart of the Orkneys (1748)

Nicholas Crane tries to get to grips with Murdoch Mackenzie's methods.

Nicholas Crane travels across British historical maps. In the 1740s, schoolmaster Murdoch Mackenzie used revolutionary ways to map the sea.

In the 1740s, at the time of the Jacobite rising, young Orkney schoolmaster Murdoch Mackenzie decided that the treacherous waters around Orkney should be properly mapped. Hundreds of ships had been lost in the Northern Passage, the stretch of water between the north coast of mainland Scotland and Orkney, and it was no longer good enough to have sketchy, inaccurate charts. 

What Mackenzie soon discovered was that in order to map the sea, he needed to have an accurate map of the land. He used revolutionary methods setting up baselines on land, even on frozen lochs, and used triangulation along with the best instruments he could obtain. 

Can Nicholas Crane get to grips with Mackenzie's methods and navigate his way through the wrecks of Scapa Flow?

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Series 2

Episode 3: Mackenzie's Chart of the Orkneys (1748)

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