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Murdoch Mackenzie

Cartographer and hydrographer, whose maritime maps of the Orkney islands are still in use.

Plaque Inscription

Murdoch Mackenzie FRS
1712–1797
Schoolmaster, cartographer and hydrographer
His Orcades Sea Chart set new standards for maritime surveying

18th Century cartographic map of the Orkney Isles by Murdoch Mackenzie. Includes inscription: "To the Right Honourable Early of Horton, this map of Orkneyis humbly dedicated by his Lordship's most obedient and most devoted servant, Murdoch Mackenzie."
Map of Orkney Isles by Murdoch Mackenzie. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland' (Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Location

16 Harbour St, Kirkwall

Category

Inventors, Science

Year

2018

Murdoch Mackenzie was a Scottish hydrographer and cartographer, known for his survey of the Orkney Islands in the 1740s.

The maps drawn using his survey work are known as the Mackenzie Charts and are so accurate that they are still in use to this day. Mackenzie is also credited with the development of the station pointer, a navigational tool that preceded the marine sextant and chronometer.

Mackenzie was born in Orkney and returned there as a schoolteacher after studying in Edinburgh. He soon became fascinated with the art and science of surveying, his interest coinciding with a period of increasing shipping around the north coast of Scotland.

Aware that fog and foul weather led to many shipwrecks, Mackenzie decided that he would survey “all the rocks, shoals, soundings and courses of the tides”. He advertised in the ‘Caledonian Mercury’ and raised money through subscriptions before embarking upon the mammoth task.

He created a measured baseline and established station points along the shore to perform the triangulation equations for the survey. One consequence of his work in identifying hazards was the construction of a lighthouse at Dennis Head on North Ronaldsay.

Mackenzie's invention, the station pointer, worked by calculating the position of ships in relation to three stationary points on shore. The tool was first mentioned in Mackenzie’s ‘Treatise on Maritime Surveying’, published in 1774.

He also surveyed the north coast of Ireland and the west coast of Scotland, publishing the results in ‘Nautical description of the west coast of Great Britain from Bristol Channel to Cape Wrath’ in 1776.

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