The Atlas

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Every voyage is a verified sequence of places, dates, documents and confidence marks, from ocean crossings to journeys beyond Earth.

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18 voyages publishedEarth and beyondLogs available

Scenographia Systematis Copernicani — the same system staged as a scene, with the planets carried on their orbits.
1660·Andreas Cellarius·public domain·commons

Every voyage on Terraveler is verified before it sails: real routes, the navigators’ own words, sources cited. Choose a route and scrub through time.

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18 published. Search by place, navigator or era — and if the atlas does not hold it, that empty result becomes editorial signal for what it should hold next.

4th century · 1

Age of SailFaxian's Journey to the Buddhist Kingdoms (399-414)Faxian · 399–414Overland through Dunhuang and the desert to Khotan, over the Pamirs to Gandhara and the Ganges plain, years at Pataliputra copying texts, then Ceylon, and home by merchant ship…

7th century · 1

Age of SailXuanzang's Journey to the Western Regions (629-645)Xuanzang · 629–645Sixteen years on foot and by camel, out of Tang China against an imperial ban: the northern Silk Road, Samarkand, Bamiyan, and the years of study at Nalanda.

15th century · 3

Age of SailThe Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1492-1504)Christopher Columbus · 1492–1504The crossing of 1492 and the voyages that followed — reaching us not through Columbus's lost log but through Las Casas's abstract of it, quoting in places and summarising in others.

Age of SailBartolomeu Dias Rounds the Cape (1487-1488)Bartolomeu Dias · 1487–1488The voyage that proved the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean were one sea — and whose every record burned in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.

Age of SailVasco da Gama and the Sea Road to India (1497-1499)Vasco da Gama · 1497–1499The voyage that joined Europe to the Indian Ocean: a long arc into the open Atlantic to catch the westerlies, the Cape rounded ten years after Dias, up the Swahili coast past…

16th century · 6

Age of SailThe Conquest of Mexico by Hernán CortésHernán Cortés · 1519–1521From the Veracruz sands to the causeways of Tenochtitlan: the alliance with Tlaxcala, the massacre at Cholula, the seizure of Moctezuma, the flight of the Noche Triste, and the siege that ended the Aztec empire — extracted from Bernal Díaz's eyewitness memoir.

Age of SailThe First Circumnavigation: Magellan and Elcano (1519-1522)Ferdinand Magellan · 1519–1522The first voyage to circle the world: the strait that took Magellan's name, ninety-eight days of open Pacific on rotten stores, his death at Mactan, and one ship of five coming home under Elcano.

Age of SailPizarro and the Fall of Tawantinsuyu (1532-1533)Francisco Pizarro · 1532–1533Xerez was Pizarro's own secretary and stood in the square at Cajamarca. The march from Tumbez, the ambush, the room filled with the gold of Cusco, and a conquest recorded by the men who made it.

Age of SailJacques Cartier and the St Lawrence (1534-1542)Jacques Cartier · 1534–1541Three voyages into the Gulf of St Lawrence: the cross raised at Gaspé, a winter at Stadacona cured by an Iroquoian remedy, and the journey to Hochelaga beneath the mountain he named Mont Royal.

Age of SailDrake's Circumnavigation (1577-1580)Francis Drake · 1577–1580The second circumnavigation and the first by a captain who survived it: south to Port San Julián and the execution of Thomas Doughty, through the Strait, up the Pacific coast…

Age of SailLeo Africanus in Africa (c. 1510-1520)al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan (Leo Africanus) · 1514–1518North and West Africa described from inside it: Fez and Morocco, the Atlas passes, the Saharan crossings, Timbuktu and Gao under Songhai, the Niger, and eastward to Egypt — the…

18th century · 3

Age of SailThe First French Circumnavigation of the GlobeLouis-Antoine de Bougainville · 1766–1769Around the world for France: fifty-two days in Magellan's strait, Tahiti named New Cythera, hunger in the Louisiades — and home with only seven men lost.

Age of SailThe Voyage of La PérouseJean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse · 1785–1788France's answer to Cook: Alaska to Kamchatka to Botany Bay — then silence, and the secret of the sea solved at Vanikoro forty years on.

Age of SailThe First Voyage of Captain CookLieutenant James Cook · 1768–1771The Endeavour to Tahiti for the Transit of Venus, then south under sealed orders: the charting of New Zealand and the east coast of New Holland — the first voyage auto-extracted by Terraveler from Cook's own journal.

19th century · 1

Age of SailThe Second Voyage of HMS Beagle (1831-1836)Charles Darwin · 1831–1836A survey of South America that turned into something else: the fossil beds of Patagonia, the earthquake at Concepción, the Galápagos, and the coral atolls of the Keeling Islands.

20th century · 1

Age of SailThe Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917)Ernest Shackleton · 1914–1917A crossing that never began: Endurance crushed in the Weddell Sea, the drift on the floes, eight hundred miles in an open boat, and every man brought home.

Other worlds · 1

Other worldsApollo 11: The First MoonwalkApollo 11 (NASA) · 1969Two and a half hours on the Sea of Tranquility: the Eagle's landing, the first bootprint, the flag, the seismometer left running, and a walk out to Little West Crater before the climb back up the ladder.

Space voyages · 1

Space voyagesVoyager 2: The Grand Tour of the Giant PlanetsVoyager 2 (NASA / JPL) · 1977–The only probe to fly all four giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune — then on past the heliopause into interstellar space, still transmitting.

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