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Dudley, Robert

Name: Sir Robert Dudley

Achievements: 16th century English aristocrat who advanced naval cartography.

Born: August 7, 1574; Richmond, Surrey, England

Died: September 6, 1649; Florence, Italy (Aged 75)

Field & Discipline: Exploration; Cartography

Language: English

Father: Robert Dudley, 1st earl of Leicester (1533-88)

Mother: Lady Douglas Sheffield

Siblings: Lord Edmund Sheffield (half-brother, by Lady Douglas); Robert, Lord of Denbigh (half-brother by Robert Dudley and his third wife, Lettice, Countess of Essex 1579-84)

Spouse: 1) Margaret Cavendish (m. 1592, d. 1595); 2) Alice Leigh (m. 1596-06, d. 1669); 3) Elizabeth Southwell, (m. c.1606)

Children: by Leigh: Seven daughters; by Southwell: thirteen children

Education: Tutor at Offington, near Worthing, Sussex (1580-88); Christ Church College, University of Oxford

Major Work:

“Secrets of the Sea” (1646-47)

Life & Times:

In 1592 Dudley married Margaret Cavendish, sister of the wealthy explorer Captain Thomas Cavendish. Dudley began to study navigation and seamanship, and in March 1592, after Cavendish's death at sea, Dudley inherited his two ships, paid for two more ships to be built and fitted out and prepared for a voyage round the world.

In 1594 he was instead ordered by [sent exploring by] Queen Elizabeth* to explore the Caribbean, and left with a squadron of four ships, the “Bear,” “Bear's Whelp,” “Earwig” and “Frisking.”

During his 40-day stay on Trinidad, in 1595,  Dudley made the first study of the Arawak tribe's language.  He also sent a boat to explore some distance up the Orinoco River, and spent some time destroying Spanish shipping around Puerto Rico and exploring Guiana, before arriving back in England in May 1595, where he learned that during his absence his wife had died of the plague.

During his first months back in England, Dudley wrote an account of his voyage to the West Indies, later published by the geographer [published by] Hakluyt* as "A Voyage . . . to the Isle of Trinidad and the Coast of Paria.”

Although he made plans to return to Guiana,  on an expedition there made by [sailed under] Raleigh*. Instead, in March 1596, Dudley received a commission as a naval captain, and was appointed to the command of a man-of-war of the Royal Navy, the 500-ton ship “Nonpareil,” as part of the preparations for an English action against Spain under the command of Sir Walter Raleigh, the[sailed under]  Earl of Essex*, [sailed under] Sir Francis Drake* and Lord Thomas Howard. In June the fleet of 120 ships sailed and after looting and sacking Cadiz, returned to England.  Dudley and his fellow officers were knighted by Essex.

Late in 1596 he married Alice Leigh, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, with whom he would have seven daughters.  Returning to the study of navigation,  he invented a new type of compass and an apparatus for finding the ebb and flow of the tides.

In February

1601 he became involved with the failed plot by Earl of Essex, to force Elizabeth I into

dismissing [intrigued against] Cecil* and Raleigh. Dudley was briefly imprisoned, but once the trial and execution of Essex and his closest supporters had been carried out (25 February), he was released and pardoned by the Queen.

In June 1605 Dudley applied for and was granted a three years' licence to travel abroad, and the following month he left England (and his wife and family) for good, taking with him disguised as a page, Elizabeth Southwell, Maid of Honour to the Queen.

This move caused scandal across Europe, particularly because he was now calling himself the Earl of Warwick and Leicester.  Orders were issued by the English government for Dudley's return in February 1606, and as he refused to obey,  his estates were forcibly sold, with some of the proceeds going to his legitimate family.

Meanwhile, in early 1606 Dudley had written to the Grand Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany, asking for his protection and permission to settle in Florence, stressing his practical experience in ship-building and naval affairs.

In 1607 he was received by Ferdinand and was immediately given control of the shipyards and arsenal at Pisa and Livorno.

After consultation with Ferdinand's architect and military engineer, [collaborated with] Buontalenti*, he then moved to Livorno, where he arranged for several skilled English shipwrights to join him to build war vessels for the Duke.

By the summer he had produced a large fleet, manned largely by experienced English exiles.  In 1608 Dudley persuaded Ferdinand to finance the fitting-out of a 400-ton galleon to continue the exploration of the Orinoco (1608), with the aim of establishing a Tuscan colony in the fertile Guiana lowlands.

In 1606, Cosimo II succeeded to the Dukedom and during the 1610s Dudley became involved in a number of other projects close to the new Duke's heart. Cosimo II took up his father's plans for developing Livorno into a free port.

Spurred by Dudley's vision and creative energy, and impressed by his engineering knowledge, in 1620 Cosimo began an expansion programme at Livorno under Dudley's direction, widening and dredging the harbour, and building fortifications, quays and a mole.

Dudley also began directing the drainage of the marshes around Pisa and along the Arno valley up to the Val di Nievole, to transform the whole area into a fertile plain. He made plans to bring fresh water to Pisa by aqueduct from Asciano, to provide a water link between Pisa and Livorno by diverting part of the Arno into a canal, the Naviglio. In recognition of his services, in 1620 Dudley was confirmed in the titles of Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland in the Holy Roman Empire by emperor Ferdinand II, although the titles remained invalid in England.

In 1621, Cosimo was succeeded by the young [served under] Ferdinand II*.  Dudley built himself the Villa di Castello, in Florence, and began writing his masterpiece, finally published when he was 73 as the “Secrets of the Sea” (three volumes, 1646-47), a huge treatise on navigation for which had begun collecting material (particularly maps) even before his departure from England.

A huge encyclopedia of knowledge regarding the sea, it included a major treatise on navigation (including designs for navigating instruments, and the essentials on nautical almanacs and the determination of longitude), a treatise on naval strategy and on building a navy of five classes of ships, a manual on shipbuilding, directions on building coastal fortifications, and a set of maps of the entire world.  

The 127 engraved maps, virtually without ornamentation and restricted to essential information, were the first to be based on the projections of [used material by] Mercator* and represented the most important sea atlas published since [improved on work by] Blaeuw’s* 1608 European atlas.

Dudley died two years after publication.

Assessment: His “Secrets of the Sea” was a major development in the history of cartography

Oneliner: Sir Robert Dudley, runaway explorer and cartographer

Bibliography:

Attachments