Global Sailings (1662 - 1856, English, Spanish, Dutch, French) revisited

[Update: climate data (wind speed & direction) have now been added in short & long posts]

I originally extracted CLIWOC (CLImatological database for the World's OCeans) ship captains' logs ships locations over a decade ago, to demonstrate the processing of 250K+ points in ArcGIS desktop using then new File Geodatabase. Five years later I posted this on my old website with instructions how to use it in  old ArcGIS Explorer and KML, and then I put a layer package on arcgis.com - both related historic details like de laPerouse's demise below, the importance of data standards and metadata, and the interst it generated elsewhere - more recently I posted a time-based variation of same, where using a time slider helps clarifiy complex data on desktop GIS.

click image to enlarge or go direct to original 

I lately explored posting very large data-sets directly on Amazon Web services, such as global vector shorelines. That CLIWOC dataset is now posted on AWS  via the GeoCloud2 stack, and here is the same image above of the end of de la Perouse's voyage, direct on the web. Go to my new Mind the Map blogpost for more details on how this fantastic dataset is made directly accessible on the internet rather than the desktop.

click image to enlarge or go direct to map

Again, this is only the ships' location data: as per its name, there is scope to add climate data from CLIWOC direct-to-web, so important these days to document climate change using a global dataset from 150 - 250 years ago.