The Eva G. R. Taylor Lecture is jointly sponsored by the Institute with the Royal Geographical Society, the Hakluyt Society and the Society for Nautical Research to enable a lecture to be given every year by a distinguished scholar in one or other of the branches of knowledge to which Professor Taylor made such notable contributions. The 1999 lecture was presented at a meeting held at the Royal Geographical Society on 30 November 1999. Michael Richey first describes the events leading up to the dramatic announcement by Yale University in 1974 that the famous Vinland Map it had acquired some nine years before might well be a fake; and then the steps taken to try to rehabilitate it. Professor Taylor was almost certainly the first scholar to set down in detail the reasons for believing the map to be a forgery. The map remains a mystery, for while the evidence seems for the most part to point towards forgery, who by and when and why remain in the air. Michael Richey is a Gold Medallist and a former Director of the Institute.

Russia has had a quite unique development as a sea power. The 20th of October 1696 has been considered as the date of the Russian Fleet's creation when the supreme legislative body of Russia – the Boyar Duma – decreed that there should be a ship-building programme for the State's need. So, in 1996, we celebrate the tercentenary of the founding of the Russian Fleet (Figure 1).