The maps of helmsman and pilot Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer from Enkhuizen were not founded on exactly surveyed coast lines. They were rather drawings based on hearsay, opinion or other sources. The maps were in that sense not reliable like what we expect of a modern seachart. However many considerations for nautical practice were made. For example coastal profiles, anchorages, channels, navigation marks or shallows. Waghenaers work was the forerunner of Netherlands large sea-Atlases of the following century.

The book breathes, lives and mirrors the old seafaring romanticism in an impressive way. In a perfect manner we get an impression of old sea voyage ways, of the simple and yet so practical methods of how our ancestors found their way around the oceans and seas and about the appearance of their ships.