Sailing Directions are volumes published by various National Hydrographic Offices or Coast Guard Agencies which provide essential information to support port entry and coastal navigation for all classes of ships at sea.
Sailing Directions contain information on countries, navigational hazards, buoyage, pilotage, regulations, anchorages and port facilities, seasonal currents, ice and climatic conditions.
The other nautical charts of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, mostly handwritten on parchments called portolaniche, sometimes not bound, sometimes collected in atlases, were accompanied by extensive descriptive legends of particular features of the coast, and instructions for the seafarer.
The first portolan with nautical charts is De Spieghel der Zeevaerdt, published between 1583 and 1584 by the Dutchman Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer who, in order to expand the market for his product to all the navies of Europe, translated it into French, English and German.
Waghenaer's work was so well done that the English Admiralty commissioned a remake of it from Sir Anthony Ashley, who produced The Mariners' Mirrour, published around 1588 and later released in a French edition with the name Du Miroir de la navigation in 1590.
The text of this article originated from sections 402 to 404 of the American Practical Navigator, a document produced by the government of the United States of America and amended by marine analysts at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.