Historyshrimp Case #2: How Big Is Salem?

[pistolshrimp]

A note on why I made this thread:

Store Competition:
$50.00 in Store Credit to the player who posts the nerdiest thread on the Salem forums.

Seriously tho, despite understanding that few people will find much use from this information I compiled it for a number of reasons, some personal and some for the game. I really enjoy history and story and I believe this information can be used as context and a launching off point for creating Salem fiction which I would love to read. I'm hoping that adding additional map points might be helpful, although as you will see most are all in the same area. I've also made the boundaries map in the hopes that it could possibly fuel rationalistic disputes in the future. Purely selfishly this let me read up on the history of some towns I'm not familiar with, as well as practice both my map and GIMP skills.

Starting Information:

1) Each tile is a Meter

Obtained from the Flatness Tool

I actually think this might inaccurate, for instance the MayFlower, a very typical cargo vessel of the time was 100 feet long, the map tool puts it at 23 only 75.459 feet, considerably smaller. If we assume this craft is 100 feet long that would make each tile 4.35 feet. However, for all my measurements I will assume 1 tile = 1 meter.

2) Each map tile is 100 meters.

This information was supplied by Murphy, thank you. http://forum.salemthegame.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12593#p182829

3) Each Pixel on the map represents half a map tile

This information was found in this post by Tammer. http://forum.salemthegame.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12662&start=80#p184464

Taking this information further we see that each pixel is 50 meters or 164.042 feet, meaning that 32.1868789700199 pixels is a mile.

The Map is 1497 x 1500 with roughly 32 of that width being ocean. So 1497 x 1468.

Math gets us 46.509635227 miles north to south by 45.60864697 miles east to west.


What I Can Do With that Info: AKA Where Real Life and Salem Meet

All that math was just so you could see how I did this. Knowing the location on our map of a real city (Providence), and how many pixels a mile is, I can use the as-the-crow-flies distances and a bearing to locate other real places on the map.

First places that come to mind for me are Boston, Plymouth, Salem (obviously), Hartford (capital of Connecticut) and New Amsterdam (New York City). Our map is pretty small so I wasn't sure if any of these would be here.

Note: You'll see I've rotated the map 90 degrees to account for the fact that IRL the Atlantic Ocean is to the South of Providence - our map has it to the East. Also these maps are big, so right click ---> copy image location, then paste it into a new tab to view the whole image.

Most aren't, but surprisingly Boston is. Ironically tho, Salem isn't.

This is a map of all the settlements as of 1648. I've tried to use the names they would have used around that time.

You can see most settlements are in the Northeast corner, around Boston. I may be missing a couple here or there so if I'm feeling particularly like I need distracting I may update this map at some point.

As you may or may not know, there were a number of different colonies in the region, which later merged to become the states we know today.

This map shows the boundaries of the different colonies in the area; Colony of Connecticut, Providence Plantations, Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Plymouth Colony. Which one are you in?

This map is a bit simplified, I ignored the Woodward & Saffery Line of 1642 and all disputed territory. You probably don't care, but I felt I should still mention it. Also my Plymouth/Massachusetts boundary isn't perfect, again, if I'm feeling existential and need distracting from the horror's or reality for a bit I may tweak this map in the future.

I'm hoping to reverse engineer this, so that given your Coordinates I can find where you would be on a modern map, than I can give people the specific real world history for where you have your base. Still working on that, tho. Anyone know how the coordinate system matches up with the map?

Don't relate with the pilgrims? Stayed tuned for Historyshrimp #3 and the Case of Who is Dropping those Indian Feathers?

[Argentis]

Pretty nerdy.

[trungdle]

You know, you can take salem's map and give it to the cartographers' guild, they can turn it into a superb map -_-
http://www.cartographersguild.com/content.php?s=c6e0929f358d6424e1c62322be80dd2b

[DarkNacht]

Did you use the location of Providence for your calculations or the coast south of Providence?

[pistolshrimp]

Did you use the location of Providence for your calculations or the coast south of Providence?

I used the city of Providence since technically Providence isn't even on the ocean at all!

Technically I divided the map into an east and west hemisphere and found the point where the two converged. Then I went up 3 pixels from the ocean as the Providence Statue where we port to is about 1.5 map tiles from the ocean. This gave what I assumed to be the 0,0 coordinate.

[joshnpk]

Very interesting, nice post.