To make up for this, however, my continent was divided by the 0 axis,and most of the foreign cities were on the south sides of long archipelagoes. This meant that there was no possibility of using the GoTo command to send my ships to foreign ports, but rather a constant micromanageing of every inch they sailed.

It also meant that many trips within my own kingdom must be steered one square at at time as well

It was by no means the best score I've ever done, but it was something.

And I don't feel quite confident enough to jump to the nex level of difficulty either, since I had that bit of luck with that initial placement.

However, I did manage to find out a few things about the game, though I'd still prefer a situation where I can use the GoTo command for cross-ocean trading.