The Map Collection of William and Jane Maycock

The Map Collection of William and Jane Maycock

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Catalog Researched and Written by Brian Flon

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Introductory Essay Written by Prof. David McLean, King’s College, University of London, as a contribution to an exhibit titled “The Fine Art of Bermuda Maps 1511-1861,” Curated by Nicholas Lusher and held at the Bermuda National Gallery in 1994.

© The Lusher Gallery LLC 2021. All rights reserved.

No portion of the material described herein may be reproduced in whole or in part without the prior written consent of The Lusher Gallery LLC.

www.lushergallery.com

The Map Collection of William and Jane Maycock The Political, Social, Economic & Cultural Historical Context

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The arrival of the Spanish conquistadors on the shores of the New World in the sixteenth century was the harbinger of religious, cultural and political upheavals that changed the face of the Americas forever. Swept out from under the broom of the European monarchies and the Catholic missionaries were thousands of years of indigenous civilizations, many of them quite advanced but unable to withstand the power of the newcomers, who also brought diseases that devastated the native populations. The central and southern American continents, veritable treasure troves of precious metals and resources, became the looting grounds of a race of white men who claimed the spoils in the name of country, king, and God. Lost forever would be a harmonious co-existence with the natural landscape and ecosystems whose importance we are only realizing today.

By the beginning of the seventeenth century, religious groups fleeing persecution in their native Great Britain headed for the cold and unyielding shores of North America. Despite severe hardships and high death tolls, they managed to grab a toehold in their new surroundings and established colonies that eventually thrived. These groups, bringing with them concepts of individual sacrifice for the good of the community along with a rigorous belief in their particular brand of Christianity, formed the basis of what would later become the United States. As the eighteenth century dawned, the colonists, isolated from the mother country by an ocean, became increasingly determined to have a say in their own fate. Bitterness grew among the colonists as rigid tax demands were thrust upon them by an English crown that was being slowly bankrupted by European wars. The political ideas of the eighteenth century Enlightenment appealed to the colonists, ideas which explored and set forth the so-called natural rights of man.

Concepts such as freedom, equality, and protection of property (at least among white men) became promulgated throughout British North America, finally reaching their zenith in mid-century when the idea of no taxation without representation became a clear battle cry within colonial society. When it became clear that the British crown had the map collection of william & jane maycock

no intention of including them in the political process, the American communities revolted and ushered in a rebellion that rocked the foundation of the Old World, a revolution that held as its central tenet that every (white) man had certain inalienable rights that could not be denied by a monarch. The victory of the colonists in the American Revolution ushered in a new power on the American continent, the power of a democratically elected republic. The destiny of the aboriginal Indians of North America was not, however, much different than that of their counterparts to the south. As the population of the new nation swelled, a movement into the western lands began. Armed with the concept of “manifest destiny” — that held it was God’s will for the United States to control the entire continent — the Americans either wiped out or herded into reservations all the native peoples with whom they came into contact. There also arose a repugnance in the northern states for the institution of slavery, which formed the economy and cultural backbone of the southern states. By mid-century the North had become an industrialized economy coexisting tenuously with the slave-based plantation economy of the South. This friction led to an unsolvable crisis which exploded politically in the American Civil War. From that moment on, the concept of freedom and equality for all peoples would have to be balanced against the realities of a capitalist system inexorably driven toward profit and self-interest.

European Expansion By the early decades of the sixteenth century European society had begun the long transformation that led from agrarian feudalism to commercial and eventually industrial capitalism. Although the great majority of people who worked on the land until the nineteenth century were peasants or farm labourers, the administrative and legal structures by which their lives were ordered changed in ways that reflected fundamental shifts in both political thought and economic development. The map of Europe was gradually redrawn from one of aggressively expansionist dynasties to the modern pattern of ethnically-based and culturally-exclusive nation-states.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw in Europe the growth of royal bureaucracy and the accretion of power by centralized authority at the expense of the traditional autonomy of provincial nobility. During this time Europe withstood the westward expansion of the Ottoman empire which conquered and absorbed much of Eastern Europe and which could not be resisted until the great naval battle at Lepanto in 1571.

Internally, however, Europe was beset by religious divisions after the Reformation of the early sixteenth century. Intolerance and persecution were common features of European life; wars between Catholic and Protestant princes dominated the continent for decades the map collection of william & jane maycock

and culminated in the devastation of the German lands during thirty years of warfare among the powers of Europe between 1618 and 1648. In England, religious differences contributed to the outbreak of a civil conflict in the 1640s which ended in the execution of a king and the assertion of parliamentary government. France, with its large population, had emerged as the most powerful European nation by the late seventeenth century.

French armies triumphed over those of Spain; its merchants and banking houses vied for dominance with those of Britain and the Netherlands. Intellectually, Europeans increasingly questioned royal prerogative and aristocratic privilege. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also witnessed a continuing challenge to ecclesiastical authority through the proliferation of scientific inquiry, much of it stimulated by Europe’s realization of the wider world.

The outbreak of the revolution in Paris in 1789 marked the beginning of the end of the old order of hereditary monarchy, opening the door to the imperial aspirations of Napoleon Bonaparte and then the development of nationalism and democracy across Europe over the course of the nineteenth century. By the late eighteenth century in Britain, changes were already underway which would have an irreversible effect on European and global history. Agricultural improvements were followed, in spectacular fashion, by an industrial revolution which, in essence, adapted the power of steam to the process of manufacture and which, by the mid-nineteenth century, had transformed patterns of national and international transport through such crucial innovations as steamships and railways. Industrialization concentrated the population into large cities, while the spread of factory production spawned a vast urban working class increasingly alienated from social and political elites. All of these forces shaped the structure of society in Europe from 1500 onwards and provided much of the dynamic for aggressive transatlantic expansion.

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the map collection of william & jane maycock

Table of Contents

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Girolamo Ruscelli................................................................................. 6 Tomaso Porcacchi da Castiglione......................................................... 10 John Smith.......................................................................................... 14 John Speed/George Humble; Richard Norwood...................................... 20 John Speed/George Humble; Richard Norwood.................................... 28 Willem Janszoon Blaeu........................................................................... 30 Johannes Cloppenburg...................................................................... 34 Johannes de Laet................................................................................. 40 Henricus Hondius................................................................................ 44 Sir Robert Dudley............................................................................. 50 Jan Janssonius...................................................................................... 54 Pierre Duval....................................................................................... 58 Nicolas Visscher..................................................................................... 62 John Ogilby; Arnold Montanus/Jacob van Meurs................................... 66 John Ogilby; Arnold Montanus/Jacob van Meurs................................... 72 Arent Roggeveen/Jac Robyn................................................................. 74 John Ogilby....................................................................................... 78 Johannes van Keulen.......................................................................... 82 Johannes Van Keulen........................................................................... 86 Allain Manesson Mallet........................................................................... 90 John Seller............................................................................................ 92 John Thornton........................................................................................ 96 Vincenzo Maria Coronelli....................................................................... 102 Vincenzo Maria Coronelli....................................................................... 104 Johann Ulrich Muller........................................................................... 108 Heinrich Scherer.................................................................................. 110 Heinrich Scherer.................................................................................. 114 Edward Wells..................................................................................... 116 Pieter van der Aa................................................................................... 120 Johannes Loots.................................................................................... 124 the map collection of william & jane maycock

Henri-Abraham Chatelaine..................................................................... 128 Herman Moll......................................................................................... 132 Henry Popple...................................................................................... 136 Henry Popple/Covens and Mortier........................................................ 138 Covens & Mortier................................................................................. 140 Homann’s Heirs.................................................................................... 146 Homann’s Heirs.................................................................................... 148 Clement Lempriere................................................................................ 150 Philippe Buache................................................................................. 156 Emanuel Bowen.................................................................................... 160 Mount and Page.................................................................................... 164 Jacque-Nicolas Bellin......................................................................... 168 Gentleman’s Magazine/John Gibson.................................................... 172 Jacques-Nicolas Bellin..................................................................... 174 John Gibson/Emanuel Bowen................................................................ 176 Sayer & Bennett/Thomas Jefferys........................................................... 180 Antonio Zatta........................................................................................ 184 Edward Orme/Dominic Serres the Elder............................................ 190 John Thomson..................................................................................... 192 Phillipe Vandermaelen........................................................................... 196 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge...................................... 200 Unknown............................................................................................ 204 John Tallis............................................................................................ 208 A. Fullarton & Co. ................................................................................ 212 Illustrated London News/Edward Weeden............................................. 216 J.M. Farnsworth..................................................................................... 218 Directorate of Colonial Surveys (Great Britain)...................................... 220 COVER IMAGE (IMAGE #30): Johannes Loots (1165-1726) Paskaart van Westindien (inset: Eyland la

Bermuda), Amsterdam / 1717. See page 124 for more information. the map collection of william & jane maycock

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Girolamo Ruscelli (c.1500-1566) Tierra Nueva (New Land) Venice / 1561

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Girolamo Ruscelli (c.1500-1566) was an Italian humanist, editor, writer, and cartographer whose extensive scholarship has led to his being labelled an early “polymath” by some antiquarian scholars.

Ruscelli was born in Viterbo, Italy, with accounts of his birthdate ranging from 1504 to 1518.

Born into a family of modest means, he was educated at the University of Padua, and lived in Rome and Naples until moving to Venice in 1548, where he remained for the rest of his life.

In 1541, while in Rome, Ruscelli founded the “Accademia dello Sdegno” (Academy of Secrets), a group of humanists and noblemen that is believed to be the world’s first recorded example of an experimental scientific society. Some of the experimental findings drawn by the society were culled by Ruscelli into a work titled De Secreti Del Alsessio Piemontese, which he wrote under the pseudonym “Alsessio Piemontese” (Alexis of Piedmont). First published in 1555, the book included recipes for alchemical compounds, cosmetics, dyes, and medicines, and proved to be immensely successful: It was reprinted for over two centuries and translated into several languages.

In Venice, Ruscelli became a prominent author, translator, and editor, and wrote on a variety of subjects, including poetry, medicine, alchemy, military affairs, and linguistics, as well as the works of Italian humanist writers Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarch. In 1555, he was tried by the Inquisition for the unlicensed publication of a satirical poem, “Il capitolo delle Lodi del Fuso,” for which he was fined 50 ducats (about 6 oz. of gold). At the time he was a partner in a small publishing company, which was put out of business by the fine. Most of Ruscelli’s later — and best known — works were published by Vincenzo Valgrisi.

Ruscelli’s most significant achievement was arguably his revision and translation of Ptolemy’s Geographia in 1561, which had previously been updated by Giacomo Gastaldi in 1548. Titled La Geografia di Claudio Tolomeo, Ruscelli’s commercially successful version of the Geographia contained nearly 70 maps of both ancient and modern origin, with a majority of them based on maps originally conceived by Gastaldi.

Map: Tierra Nueva Girolamo Ruscelli’s Tierra Nueva is the second earliest recorded print map to focus on the east coast of North America, following Giacomo Gastaldi’s 1548 map of the same name, upon which Ruscelli’s map was based. It was initially published in the 1561 edition of Ruscelli’s revised version of Ptolemy’s Geographia, titled by Ruscelli La Geografia di Claudio Tolomeo. The map’s terrain ranges from Labrador (present-day Canada) in the the map collection of

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north, to what today is Georgia or South Carolina in the south.

Ruscelli’s map, like Gastaldi’s, was printed using the copperplate engraving method, though Ruscelli’s plate was slightly marred by a defect, resulting in a jagged blank spot appearing to the west of Bermuda. (Gastaldi’s map also features an engraving error, with Bermuda misspelled Bremuda). Nevertheless, Ruscelli’s map (and its subsequent reprints) went on to become the most recognized cartographic image of pre-1620s Bermuda.

Apart from the larger size of Ruscelli’s map, the differences between the two maps include the way the ocean is depicted, with Ruscelli’s version utilizing a light stippling effect to create the appearance of placidity, while Gastaldi’s earlier effort portrays an Atlantic permeated by undulating dark waves of vigorous motion. Topographically, Ruscelli inserts a mountain range — possibly the Adirondacks — along with several rivers (including the Hudson and St. Lawrence, un-named), where no such detailing exists in its predecessor.

Place-names on both maps derived from the voyages of Jacque Cartier and Giovanni da Verrazzano include: Larcadia (Kitty Hawk, North Carolina); Angoulesme (New York Harbor, named after the native dukedom of the French king, Francois l); P. Refuge (Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island); Tierra De Nurumberg (northern New England, the name believed to be a corruption of the aboriginal name Norumbega, which essentially means “a stretch of quiet water between two waterfalls); Tierra del Bacalaos (present-day Canada, the name translated as “Land of Codfish,” because of the discovery of prodigious amounts of fish in the locale’s waters); and La Florida, which on the map is the nearest named locale to Bermuda, but which actually denotes a region much larger than the U.S. state of Florida, encompassing an area up to the present-day Carolinas. Both maps also have a text on the verso side, written in Italian and titled “Della Terra Nova del Bacalos,” neither of which mentions Bermuda. Much of it contains what has been described as a “lurid” account of supposed devil-worship by Amerindians on the “Isola de Demoni (Island of Demons), a phantom island allegedly existing off the coast of Newfoundland.

Following its initial publication in 1561, Ruscelli’s book was reprinted in 1562, 1564, and 1574. In 1598 a revised edition was published by the heirs of Melchior Sesa, with new visual enhancements made to Tierra Nueva, including oceanic vignettes that depict a sea creature to the east of Bermuda and a galleon under sail. There are also additional place names, such as Virginia and Nova Francia, with the reference to Virginia reflecting the early, ill-fated colony funded by Sir Walter Raleigh and named after Queen Elizabeth l, the “Virgin Queen.”

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Tomaso Porcacchi da Castiglione (1530-1585) Mondo Nuovo Venice /1572 10

Tomaso Porcacchi da Castiglione (1530-1585) was an Italian writer, scholar, geographer, and translator. Born into a poor family in Val di Chiana (Tuscany), he gained access to a humanistic education in Florence through the patronage of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. Working with the scholar Lodovico Domenichi, he embarked on a career as a translator, editor and author, with his first published works being a biography of Virgil and a translation of The Aeneid. In 1559 Porcacchi moved to Venice, where he met and married the poet Bianca d’ Este, and came into contact with the prominent Venetian publisher Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, for whom he translated classical Greek and Latin works and revised other texts, as well as writing volumes on various subjects, including geography, history, archaeology, and ethnology. Additionally, Porcacchi helped bring to publication a 16th century edition of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Laberinto d’amore, along with Storie Fiorentine by Francesco Guicciardini and Terze Rime by Pietro Bembo.

Porcacchi’s most notable work was his L’Isole piu famose del Mondo, first published in 1572.

It is classified as an “isolario,” or “Book of Islands.” In essence the earliest form of cartographic encyclopedias — primarily of islands but also of coastal areas of the mainland — isolarii were created and promulgated in Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries, and are considered by some antiquarian map scholars as being the precursors of modern cosmography. Generally combining maps with historical narrative, the format attempted to affix a new image of the world as it was being reassessed through the seaborne voyages of the Age of Discovery, representing a transitional genre that reflected the shift from medieval concepts to modern geographic contours brought forth during the Enlightenment. American philosopher Edward Casey (b.1939) has described the development and expansion of the isolario genre — “from the Mediterranean to the world” — as a prime example of “the remarkable elasticity of scope of the employment of cartographic images.”

The maps of Porcacchi’s isolario — engraved by the famed Italian cartographer Girolamo Porro — are considered quite sophisticated and elegant in comparison to other isolarii of the time, with their high level of accuracy and detailing in part owing to their being printed in copperplate rather than woodcut. The maps are accompanied by explanatory texts, and contain historical, mythological, geographic and ethnographic particulars on each covered region.

The first edition of L’Isole piu famose del Mondo (published in 1572 in collaboration with the Venetian bookseller Simone Galignani) contained chapters about, and maps of, 30 islands or archipelagos, including a world map and map of the New World; though the coverage was worldwide, the emphasis was on the islands of the Mediterranean. For the second edition of 1576, seventeen maps were added, including additional maps of the Americas, with maps of Cuba and Jamaica making their first appearance. Further editions the map collection of

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— expanded and revised — were published in 1590, 1604, 1605, 1620, 1686, and 1713.

Today, copies of any edition of L’Isole piu famose del Mondo are scarce, and examples of the first edition are extremely rare.

Map: Mondo Nuovo Tomas Porcacchi da Castiglione’s small map of the Americas, Mondo Nuovo, initially appeared in the 1572 first edition of his famous isolario L’Isole piu famose del Mondo.

Based on Paolo Forlani’s map of North America from 1565 — which itself was derived from Gastaldi’s world map of 1546 — Mondo Nuovo is the second earliest obtainable printed map of North America (following the virtually unobtainable Forlani map), and is regarded as quite advanced in certain respects, while extremely inaccurate in others. Its elements of accuracy include: the clearly demarcated lack of connection between America and the Asian continent, which are separated on the map by the Straits of Anian (as the Bering Straits were then known), a geographic reality first noted in the Porcacchi map; an early designation of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, to go along with the pioneering use of pictorial topography to identify continental mountain ranges; the delineation of the interior of the southwestern portion of the continent and the general outline of the west coast of North America, reflecting discoveries from Francisco Vázquez de Coronado’s expedition of 1540–1542 and Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo’s voyage of 1542–1544.

Accordingly, Baja California is correctly displayed as a peninsula, and Porto de San Michel (present-day San Diego) is labeled; a relatively accurate positioning of Cuba and Hispaniola is made vis a vis the Caribbean and the American mainland.

The map’s inaccuracies reflect the period’s misconceptions, such as: the existence of a trans-continental “northwest passage”; misshapen contours of the continental landmass; the placement of Bermuda (also irregularly shaped) too close to the mainland; the depiction of Japan as lying in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The map contains a simple but elegant title cartouche, a compass rose, and vignettes of sea creatures.

Mondo Nuovo’s status as functionally the earliest printed map of North America available in the public marketplace has led to its consideration among antiquarian scholars as being a cornerstone map for serious collections.

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John Smith (1580-1631) The Summer Ils London / 1624

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John Smith (1580-1631) was an English explorer, soldier, writer, and one of the leaders of the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in America, established in 1607. His maps and writings detailing his experiences as a pioneering settler in the New World were extremely influential in outlining the theretofore little-known territories of America’s eastern seaboard, and in encouraging and supporting English colonization of the Americas.

Born in Willoughby, Lincolnshire, Smith left his family’s farm at the age of 16, serving as a soldier-of-fortune in various continental conflicts until being captured by Ottoman forces in 1601 while fighting on behalf of Austria. Escaping, he made his way back to England, and in December 1606 joined the expedition financed by the Virginia Company of London and led by Captain Christopher Newport to establish an English colony in North America.

Smith’s relationship with the expedition’s leaders was an antagonistic one, and during the voyage he was charged with mutiny by Captain Newport, who planned to execute him. But an unsealed letter composed by the Virginia Company revealed that Smith was to be named a member of the colony’s seven-member governing council, and his life was spared.

Following the expedition’s members’ disembarking in May 1607 at what was to become Jamestown, Smith began a series of exploratory voyages upon the region’s rivers, recording the names of the Native American tribes that he encountered; in December 1607 he and his party were ambushed and captured by members of the Powhatan tribe, and Smith was brought before their leader, Chief Powhatan (aka Wahunsenacah), who allegedly sentenced Smith to death. According to Smith’s later account, he was about to be put to death when he was saved by the chief’s young daughter — the Indian Princess Pocahontas — who placed herself between him and his executioners. Smith’s story would become a legendary piece of American folklore, but its veracity has been questioned by many historians, some of whom believe that Smith may have misunderstood a situation that was actually a non-violent Native American ceremony. However, it is also true that no one in Smith's day who was in a position to question his account ever publicly expressed doubt about his version of events, and many people who would have known the truth were in London in 1616 — including Pocahontas herself — when Smith wrote a letter to Queen Anne requesting that she give special consideration to Pocahontas on the occasion of Pocahontas' visit to London.

Despite this incident, Smith’s continued his river explorations, which ultimately paid historically consequential dividends in the form of a map of the Chesapeake region that arose from these journeys — initially published in England in 1612 — following Smith’s return there in 1609 after a gunpower explosion had left him severely burned. (He never the map collection of

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returned to Virginia.) Regarded as a milestone in the early mapping of America, Virginia, Discovered and Discribed by Captain John Smith was one of the first maps to be published in Europe that accurately depicted the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic coastline, and the first by an English mapmaker. Antiquarian map scholar Philip Burden, in his authoritative The Mapping of North America, has called it “one of the most important printed maps of America ever published and certainly one of the greatest influence. It became the prototype of the area for half a century” (until the publication in 1673 of Augustine Herrman’s Virginia and Maryland As it is Planted and Inhabited this present Year). Furthermore, Virginia, Discovered and Discribed’s depiction of the surveyed area’s Native American Villages — as well as textual accounts of the region included in the 1612 publication Map of Virginia with a Description of the Country — remain primary sources for information on the region as it existed in the early 17th century. Burden notes that "to this day the map is still used by archaeologists to locate native Indian villages. It records 166 of them, and is remarkably detailed.”

In 1614, Smith returned to America in a voyage to the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts Bay. The commercial purpose was to take whales for fins and oil and to seek out mines of gold or copper, but neither of these bore out, so the voyage turned to collecting fish and furs to defray the expense. Most of the crew spent their time fishing, while Smith and eight others took a small boat on a coasting expedition during which he traded trifles for beaver skins, martens, and otters.

Charting the area from Penobscot Bay to Cape Cod, Smith published a map in 1616 that was the first to bear the label “New England.” (Smith’s original used Indian place-names, though English cities replaced these designations at the request of Prince Charles.) The settlers of Plymouth Colony adopted the name that Smith gave to the region, and other place-names on the map survive today, such as the Charles River (marked as The River Charles) and Cape Ann (Cape Anna). Of Smith’s effort, Peter Firstbrook, the author of A Man Most Driven: Captain John Smith, Pochahontas, and the Founding of America, has said: “I have actually positioned modern maps against the 1616 map . . . overall, within a ten mile margin of error, it is remarkably accurate. It really was a fine achievement and much better than anything else that existed at the time.”

Smith would make two further attempts to continue his exploration of America’s northeastern coast: the first came in 1615, whereupon he was captured by pirates and returned to England after escaping three months later; the second attempt was thwarted by a lack of winds, which left his vessels unable to leave port for several months. He would never again cross the Atlantic. the map collection of

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Smith’s published writings have provided historians with an important fount of information about the early English settlement of America. His earliest text is A True Relation of Virginia Since the First Planting of that Colony (1608), a first-hand account of the founding of the Jamestown colony which many scholars believe to be the first book written in English in the American colonies. His Map of Virginia with a Description of the Country was published in pamphlet form in 1612, and in addition to describing Virginia’s geography and natural resources, it provides observations on the language, religion and government of the region’s Native Americans. In his published writings Smith would continue to focus on Native American culture as well as the settlers’ relationship with the indigenous peoples, with Smith’s ideas differing from that of the Spanish conquistadores and the later English settlers. Smith believed that the English could avoid bloodshed by projecting an image of strength born out of psychology and diplomacy, rather than massacre, an approach legitimated by Jamestown’s minimal loss of life during the year he was president of the colony (1608-1609), compared with the enormous suffering and mortality in the years before and after his term.

In 1616 Smith published A Description of New England — a counterpart to his Map of Virginia with a Description of the Country — before the release in 1624 of his landmark work, The General Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, which is regarded as one of the foundational sources for accounts of the early English settlements in America and Bermuda, as well as having been a large commercial success in its own time, going through six printings (the last in 1632). Partly compiled from Smith’s earlier published reports, The General Historie provides an eyewitness chronicle of Smith’s time in Virginia (1606-1609) — including the episode involving Pochahontas (which did not appear in earlier published texts) — as well as his explorations of the New England coast and an early history of Bermuda, the latter drawn from the accounts of Smith’s contemporaries (Smith is not known to have visited Bermuda), including some who had been among the Sea Venture castaways, and some, like former Governor Nathaniel Butler, who were closely associated with the island’s early settlement. The General Historie includes Smith’s three major cartographic efforts: Virginia, Discovered and Discribed; New England; and his rare, historically consequential map of Bermuda, The Summer Iles. Smith also published a later volume, The True Travels, Adventures, and Observations of Captain John Smith in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, in 1630.

Though Smith never made it back to America following his 1614 exploration of New England — despite having attempted two further voyages — Smith’s books and New England map were important possessions for the settlers aboard the Mayflower in 1620. (Smith had unsuccessfully lobbied for the position of military leader of that expedition, with the post going to Miles Standish instead.) The map proved particularly valuable when it was used the map collection of

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to secure a landing spot in December 1620, with the colonists choosing a site marked on Smith’s map as “New Plimouth” as their point of disembarkation.

John Smith died in 1631 at the age of 51 in London.

Map: The Summer Iles John Smith’s 1624 map of Bermuda, The Summer Iles, which was initially published in Smith’s General Historie of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles, is the first detailed map of Bermuda positively recorded to have appeared in print. Though Smith’s map of Virginia — part of the same volume — was widely copied, The Summer Iles was not, having been superseded as the preferred representative image of Bermuda in 1627 by John Speed and Richard Norwood’s A Mapp of the Sommer Ilands (IMAGE #4), along with its continental derivatives. The scarcity of The Summer Iles, as well as its historical import, makes it today one of the most sought-after maps of the island.

Smith is not recorded to have ever visited Bermuda, but despite his admission that The Summer Iles was based on Norwood’s pioneering work, evidence suggests that Norwood was not the map’s creator. To that end, the phrase on The Summer Iles which has been the subject of historical debate reads “The discription of ye land by Mr. Norwood. All contracted into this order by Captaine John Smith.” Though many believe this should be interpreted to mean that Norwood devised the map, a counter-argument is that Smith’s use of the word “contracted” actually means “condensed, and that “this order” is a reference to Smith’s distinctive layout. Also, it is important to note that Norwood had already left the island before some of the buildings pictured on the face of the map were built, and that the inclusion of Smith’s personal coat-of-arms — featuring the heads of three Turks that he allegedly killed in combat — denotes his personal interest in the map.

The unique design of The Summer Iles features a small image of Bermuda in the center — considered, along with the compass alignment, to be extremely accurate — encircled by pictures of forts and other structures. The representation of the island includes the first printed delineation on a map of the island’s division into demarcated tribes. Because of the small size of the map, the names of the tribes appear on a table above the image of the island, keyed to numbers that appear inside the individuated tribes.

While the rendering of the island is the central reference point on the map, most of the engraved plate is taken up with birds-eye illustrations of the forts built to protect the then-settled east end of the island, along with depictions of other public works. Also the map collection of

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pictured are two ships flying the flag of St. George entering what were then the two fortified main anchorages, Castle Harbour and St. George’s. (St. George’s being the third successful British settlement in the Americas, after St. Johns, Newfoundland and Jamestown, Virginia). There are ten named fortifications — each laden with cannons —in totality forming a compacted protective ring around the island’s East End, with the drawings historically adjudged to be a correct rendering of the defensive enclave.

The illustrations also embody other public works structures constructed during the early days of the colony, including a wooden watchtower — “Rich’s Mount” — built on an elevated spot near the location of the future Fort St. George. Additionally, three wooden bridges are pictured, one in the West End between Somerset and the main island, and two of them serving to connect Coney Island to the main island and to St. George’s Island. Also depicted are the State House, St. Peter’s Church, the Governor’s House, and other buildings forming part of early St. George’s Towne. The location of each structure is marked by a letter on the map, with the letters corresponding to the drawings that surround the centrally placed map.

The map’s hydrographic elements feature the surrounding ocean waters in a heightened state of choppiness, most likely patterned after the earlier maps of Gastaldi and Gutierrez.

The Summer Ils also indicates the locations of six major shipwrecks, with the masts of the doomed vessels angled and protruding as they are pictured disappearing into the depths.

Five of these incidents are identified as occurring west of the island; the sixth, proximate to the East End, is presumably that of the Sea Venture. Additionally, Smith delineates a cross-section of the reefs by employing small asterisks. Based upon the hydrographic features presented in Smith’s map, antiquarian map experts have suggested that, had subsequent cartographers utilized Smith’s map instead of Speed’s, there may have been far fewer ships lost to Bermuda’s reefs.

Though the series of iconic Bermuda maps that followed Smith’s — replacing The Summer Iles as the maps of record for the island — were all based on the pioneering work of Richard Norwood, Smith’s was the only one of those Norwood-derived maps to give credit to the originator. In fact, the reference to Norwood in the box at the bottom left of The Summer Iles (“The discription of ye land by Mr. Norwood”) is the only credit bestowed upon Norwood on any extant printed map of the island published prior to 1930.

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John Speed (1552-1629) / George Humble (d.1640) A Mapp of the Sommer Ilands, Once Called the Bermudas (based on a survey and map by Richard Norwood [c.1590-1675]) London / 1627

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Richard Norwood (c.1590-1675) was an English mathematician, navigator, and surveyor whose survey of Bermuda in 1616-1617 became the basis for many of the iconic 17th century maps of the island, serving as the imprimatur for the island’s division into eight tribes, as well as the delineation of landholdings and shares belonging to the Somers Island Company (a.k.a. London Adventurers), who by grant of Royal Charter had proprietary control over the island in its earliest days.

At the age of 23, Norwood’s technical expertise — he had invented a primitive diving bell that was used to recover a sunken ship’s gun — came to the attention of the Somers Island Company, which in 1613 commissioned him to sail to Bermuda and help in the search for what was believed to be a large trove of pearls in the vicinity of the island. Once it became apparent such treasure did not exist, Norwood was hired by Governor Moore (the island’s first governor) to begin a survey of the island. To execute the survey, Norwood — aided by two assistants named Berkely and Caldicott — reputedly ran a series of north-south lines across the island using a 99-foot surveyor’s chain, measuring width from coast to coast and calculating Bermuda’s acreage for the first time. It would have been an extremely arduous assignment: Not only because of the difficulty of manipulating the chain through the thickly wooded hills and dales, and from having to deal with the complexities of measuring the shoreline, but also because the task coincided with a period of deprivation caused by a plague of rats and hampered by a lack of manpower owing to the Governor’s preoccupation with fort-building.

Norwood finished the initial survey in 1615, but non-payment of his fee caused him to halt any further efforts to complete the necessary work, which involved dividing the island into eight parcels called tribes — each tribe to be named after a prominent Adventurer — with a further subdivision of each tribe into 50 shares of 26 acres apiece, with the Company’s shareholders allocated an amount of acreage commensurate with the number of shares they held.

In 1616 the next governor, Daniel Tucker, employed Norwood to finish the work. Norwood calculated that there was not enough land to permit the requisite number of shares of 26 acres each, as had originally been planned, revising that number to 25, with the resulting “overplus” devoted to each tribe’s needs for wells, docks, schools, and other amenities. However, a controversy ensued, which Norwood would get caught up in, in which Governor Tucker was accused of appropriating the overplus for himself, in the form of prime arable acreage in Southhampton Parish.

After completing the survey, Norwood returned to London, and, based on the date engraved inside the List of Adventurers at the bottom of John Speed’s map, had completed his task the map collection of

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by 1622. Norwood’s own map, which presumably was put into the hands of the Adventurers in London, and which — perhaps in interim printed form — was registered with the Stationers’ Company in 1621 by London bookseller Nathaniel Newbury, has been lost to history. Working with either a then-extant version of Norwood’s map, or a layout thereof, John Speed and his engraver Abraham Goos began the process in 1627 of immortalizing Norwood’s work in printed form.

Norwood undertook a third and final survey of the island in 1662, this time at the behest of the Bermuda Council. Upon completion he published a book to accompany this survey, titled The Domesday Book of Bermuda. There is also an extant manuscript map associated with this survey, which today is held by the Bermuda Archives. Over time, the private property boundaries demarcated by Norwood in this final survey have been utilized as references in court cases.

Besides his seminal achievement as a surveyor, Norwood’s other historically consequential endeavor was the result of work performed in England between 1633 and 1635, when he personally measured - partly by chain and partly be pacing - the distance between London and York. Also, from observations of the sun’s altitude, he computed the difference of latitude of the two places, thereby calculating the length of a degree of a meridian. It was the nearest approximation to the actual number (off by a few hundred yards) that had been made to date in England, and earned him a notation in Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica.

In 1638, Norwood wrote a journal of his early life, which included details about his early surveys, and which has proven to be a valuable resource for historians of the island. In 1945 the journal was published by the Bermuda Historical Monument Trust. The original document, passed down through generations of his descendants, now resides in the Bermuda Archives.

In the late 1630s Norwood returned to Bermuda as a schoolmaster. Later he would build a school and a home on land in Pembroke. The estate is still called Norwood, and the house that sits on the property today was built in 1711 by the husband of Norwood’s great granddaughter, a member of Bermuda’s Saltus family. In 1662, Norwood was named the first schoolmaster of the newly-opened Warwick Academy.

Richard Norwood died in Bermuda in 1675.

John Speed (1552-1629) is arguably the most famous of all English mapmakers, and certainly England’s best-known cartographer of the 17th century. Universally, he is among the most eminent names in the history of antiquarian maps. the map collection of

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That said, Speed came to mapmaking later in life. In his earlier years he was a tailor and member of the Merchant Taylors Company, pursuing the study of history and mapmaking in his spare time. Speed’s scholarly abilities came to the fore when his first cartographic effort — a wall map of the Holy Land — was published in 1595. Titled ‘Canaan as it was Possessed both in Abraham and Israels Dayes, the map captured the attention of Sir Fulke Greville, a poet, dramatist, statesman and favorite of Queen Elizabeth who was raised to the peerage in 1621 as 1st Baron Brooke. Greville sponsored Speed with an allowance and brought him to the attention of the Queen, to whom Speed presented his map in 1598, and who granted Speed a “sinecure” in the Customs House, where he could pursue his research.

In 1601, Speed published a two-sheet map titled The Invasions of England and Ireland with all their Civill Wars since the Conquest, and followed that up with a wall map of England, Wales and Ireland in 1604. In 1611 Speed prepared two bible maps, securing a privilege to have his maps inserted into every folio and octavo sized copy of the King James Bible that was sold. That year he also published a biblical genealogy that was reprinted several times during the 17th century.

It was with the encouragement of William Camden — the English antiquarian and topographer who produced Brittania (the first chronological survey of Great Britain and Ireland) — that Speed produced the first of the two atlases for which he is largely famous: The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, published in 1612, the year after Speed had produced its companion volume, The Historie of Great Britaine.

The Theatre is a landmark in the history of British cartography. It was the first English attempt to produce a grand scale atlas, with the first detailed maps of the provinces of Ireland, the first set of county maps of England and Wales that attempted to show territorial divisions, and the first comprehensive set of English town plans, with many of the town plans providing the first visual record ever of the towns they depict. It is worth noting that many of the maps bear earlier dates and would have been available for sale as loose sheets prior to the completion of the atlas, with the first plate struck being that of Speed’s home county of Chester, making its initial appearance in 1604.

The maps of The Theatre were derived from the best and most up-to-date sources available, and engraved in Amsterdam by the famed Jodocus Hondius the Elder (IMAGE #9).

Speed also made innovations of his own: In addition to the introduction of town plans and the inclusion of county boundaries, Speed also enhanced his decorative maps with the coats of arms of local Earls and Dukes, as well as the Royal arms, and his maps of English and Welsh counties were often bordered with costumed figures ranging from nobility to country the map collection of

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folk (which today are found framed in homes throughout the U.K.). Text on the verso offered comprehensive information on each county, including its industries and agriculture, as well as its history and physical features. A sole Latin text edition was published in 1616, targeting the continental market; otherwise, the several editions published before Speed’s death in 1629 all contained text in English.

The Theatre was a resounding success, and in later years was re-printed many times by a number of publishers; John Sudbury and George Humble, the original publishers in 1612, realized that, given the increasing popularity of both county and world atlases, and in light of the success of Abraham Ortelius’ Theatrum, there existed the potential demand for an English world atlas. Consequently, Speed’s second major achievement, The Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World, was published in 1627 (the same year as the second edition of The Theatre), two years before John Speed’s death.

The Prospect was the first world atlas produced by an Englishman, and its maps are famous for their bordering panels of national characters in local costume and panoramic views depicting the areas of major towns and cities. In addition to its 22 finely engraved maps and their highly decorative embellishments, regular atlas copies have two pages of English text printed on the reverse of each map, offering a description of life in the early seventeenth century of the region depicted. The maps of the world and America show California as an island, being among the first to promote what turned out to be one of the major cartographic misrepresentations of the early period.

At the time of its initial printing, The Prospect sold for 40 shillings, and in the words of Speed himself, its circulation was limited to “richer customers and libraries” (the latter still acting as depositories for extant copies of this work). Originally published by itself, eventually The Prospect was bound together with The Theatre as one atlas. The plates passed through several hands in the 17th century — published no less than 12 times over a 50- year period — with the most commonly encountered variant published in 1676 by Thomas Basett and Richard Chiswell, which added a number of important new maps for the first time, including maps of New England, Virginia, the Carolinas, Barbados, and Jamaica. Later printings were issued without text well into the late 18th century, with an edition by Dicey & Co. published as late as 1770.

John Speed’s maps became the basis for many of the important world maps published through the mid-18th century, arguably being the preeminent contribution to British topography during the early modern period of mapmaking. However, cartographic historian Rodney Shirley, in his seminal volume, The Mapping of the World, has pointed the map collection of

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out that, owing to the limited international circulation of The Prospect — as compared to the multi-lingual atlases of Hondius, Jansson, and Blaeu — extant copies of some of Speed’s major maps, including his world map, are today not as accessible as their European counterparts, leading to the enhancement of their rarity value.

Sudbury and Humble was a London-based publishing house comprised of John Sudbury (d.1621) and George Humble (d.1640) that dominated the British map trade in the first 20 years of the 17th century, before Humble took sole possession of the business in 1619, maintaining a prominent position in the field for another two decades until his own death in 1640.

Sudbury, reputedly born in Maplebeck, Nottinghamshire, first appears as the print publisher of a large map of Ireland produced in 1599 by Battista Boazio (engraved by Renold Elstrack), the earliest known work printed in Britain to carry the name of a publisher, and the only print to carry Sudbury’s name alone. By 1603 he had entered into a partnership with his nephew, George Humble, the son of the London stationer and bookseller Thomas Humble (active 1566-81, d.1588). Together, Sudbury and Humble operated at an address listed as the White Horse in Pope’s Head Alley, over against the Royal Exchange.

In 1608, Sudbury & Humble were awarded a twenty-one-year privilege to publish John Speed’s groundbreaking first atlas, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, with the maps engraved by one of Holland’s premier mapmakers, Jodocus Hondius the Elder (IMAGE #9). During the second decade of the 17th century, Sudbury & Humble published a litany of prints, some of them among the finest published at that time in London, including works by Elstrack and Simon de Passe, the latter being the portrait engraver renowned for his portrait of Pocahontas, who sat for him in 1616 in London, the only time she is known to have consented to a sitting.

In 1615-16 Sudbury was master of the Leathersellers’ Company, a medieval guild dating back to 1444. He was still active in 1618, and some engravings by Simon de Passe of that year were published with the partnership name, but in 1619 Humble published artist/engraver Francis Delaram's portrait of the Earl of Northumberland in his own name, with Sudbury having retired either through old age or ill health. Sudbury signed his will on 16 December 1620, and since it makes no mention of the printselling business or of Humble, it is presumed that Sudbury had already passed his stake in the shop and stock on to Humble. From 1619 onward, Humble continued the business alone, still at the Pope’s Head Alley address.

Increasingly, Humble concentrated on maps (where he had a virtual monopoly in London), the map collection of

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more than portraits or books. In 1626 he had already begun selling plates to William Peake, the painter and printseller: The portrait of the 4th Earl of Pembroke by Simon de Passe has the date 1626 added with Peake’s address, perhaps part of the financing effort embarked upon

by Humble in the lead-up to the publication of John Speed’s second atlas, Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World, which was engraved in Amsterdam and published in 1627.

Humble, like Sudbury, was also a Master of the Leathersellers’ Company (though his profession is always described in documents as stationer). His portrait still hangs in Leatherseller's Hall. When Humble died on 7 August 1640, his will showed that he was a very wealthy man: He left property in Gracechurch Street to the Leathersellers’ Company to provide scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge for two scholars or children of members of the guild, as well as £500 for charitable activities. He also left the Company money for four silver tankards that survive to this day.

Following his death, Humble’s shop and map business were continued by his son, William.

Before selling the rights to John Speed’s work in 1659, William Humble published a well-regarded, miniature version of Speed’s atlas, A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World (with new engravings by Pieter van den Keere), in 1646, making it accessible to the masses in a smaller, less expensive format.

Map: A Mapp of Sommer Islands, Once called the Bermudas John Speed’s map of Bermuda, A Mapp of the Sommer Islands, Once called the Bermudas — based on a survey (and probably map) by Richard Norwood and published from 1627 onward in Speed’s atlas A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World — is, with near canonical certainty, perhaps the most important and influential early printed map of the island. Though A Mapp of the Sommer Islands was published only in England with an English text, and though the European market came to know Bermuda mainly via the map’s continental adaptations (Blaeu, Hondius, Montanus, et al.), it was the format of Speed’s original map that became the standard lens through which the island was viewed in the 17th century.

The map was originally published by George Humble and engraved by Abraham Goos (with the latter probably obtained through the agency of Jodocus Hondius II (IMAGE #9), whose father had engraved Speed’s earlier atlas, Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, and who had a habit of retaining proof impressions for his own use, which most likely led to his own copy of the plate being sold to Willem Blaeu (IMAGE #6) upon his death in 1629.) A Mapp of the Sommer Islands went through at least 12 printings, but remained essentially unchanged, with only the publisher’s name being altered, as well as minor fluctuations made to the map collection of

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the text printed on the verso; that text, titled The Description of the Sommer Islands, Once Called the Bermudas, was written by Richard Norwood and previously published in Samuel Purchas’ Pilgrims in 1625, but Norwood was not given attribution for the text on the map (nor was he given credit for being the map’s de facto creator).

A Mapp of the Sommer Islands is a large map aligned on a horizontal axis, with the unusual feature of having, in addition to the main image of the island, a much smaller image of Bermuda above the primary one, drawn to scale so that the viewer can gauge the island’s location relative to labelled areas in the background of the map, such as Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and the American mainland (present day Virginia, Georgia, the Carolinas, and New England).

Perhaps the map’s most distinctive feature is a table at the bottom which lists the island’s shareholders and keys their holdings to plots of land demarcated and numbered on the map, as well as enumerating the number of shares they held. (The list of investors — aka the “London Adventurers”—featured a prominent cross-section of that era’s English nobility and wealthy merchant class, most of whom never set foot in Bermuda.) The map’s table is flanked on both sides by coats of arms: on the left, Bermuda’s lion holds a shield featuring an image of the wreck of the Sea Venture; on the right, the crest of the Virginia Company (parent company of the Somers Island Company) is displayed.

Besides delineating all the individual plots of land, the map also divides and identifies the island’s tribes, as laid out by Norwood during his survey and first appearing in John Smith’s map of 1624 (IMAGE #3). Detailing includes pictorial representations of large houses, churches, and the island’s forts, as well as a proto-visualization of “Tuckers Towne.” Prominent topographical features such as marshes and ponds are also shown.

The reefs along the southern shore are indicated with what has been interpreted as a fair degree of accuracy, though the depiction of the western and northern reefs falls far short of evidencing the dangers potentially to be confronted. However, Norwood’s assignment did not include charting the surrounding waters, a fact which he made clear in his updated survey of 1663. (The questions of why Norwood’s original mandate did not include such charting, and whether or not the Company had navigational knowledge of the outer reefs which it did not share with Norwood, remain unanswered.) A Mapp of the Sommer Islands should therefore be considered with the understanding that a comprehensive hydrographic detailing was not within its purview.

A Mapp of the Sommer Islands contains several decorative embellishments commensurate the map collection of

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(Variant of Image #4, with Alternative Color Scheme)

John Speed (1552-1629) / George Humble (d.1640) A Mapp of the Sommer Ilands, Once Called the Bermudas (based on a survey and map by Richard Norwood [c.1590-1675]) London / 1627

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with maps of this period, though generally in a less ornate and cluttered fashion as its Dutch derivatives, which tended to insert large quantities of rhumblines, intricately engraved cartouches, and illustrated vignettes. A richly colored, aesthetically pleasing compass rose is placed above the main image in A Mapp of the Sommer Islands, as is a pair of English galleons — masts unfurled — with horizontally striped flags. The map’s four cartouches reflect a utilitarian compositional elegance which accompanies their stylistic flourishes: Two neo-classical scale-of-distance cartouches are provided — one at the bottom right and the other in the upper left corner — and the main title cartouche, positioned at the map’s center, consists of a tablet with the map’s title engraved in Latin and English, with that tablet placed upon and framed by a second tablet, the latter enhanced by a decorative voluted architrave with strapwork. The smallest cartouche is placed at bottom left, providing the name of the publisher along with his address. With the exception of Norwood’s descriptive text on the verso — which was abridged on all editions except that of 1631 — this is the one feature of the map that changed depending on the edition, with each new publisher engraving their own details onto this portion of the plate.

From its original printing in 1627 until 1676 (when the last variant with a verso text was issued), the map was published at least 12 times within Speed’s atlas, A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World. The initial printing was by George Humble, who reprinted the atlas in the early 1630s. He was followed by his son, William, who published the atlas from 1646 to 1654. Roger Rea (Elder and Younger) published the work twice in the 1660s, and Bassett and Chiswell reprinted it in their famous edition of 1676. The final English edition came in the form of the extremely rare printing of 1680 —minus the text on the verso — with the publishing cartouche referencing “Christopher Browne at the Globe under the West End of St. Paul’s Church.” The Browne variant of the map also appeared in Jacque de la Feuille’s Atlas of 1685, published in Amsterdam, as well as early 1700s editions of Frederick de Wit’s Atlas Maior.

There are three main states of A Mapp of the Sommer Islands that generally appear in the public marketplace: The original 1627 version, the 1631 edition, and the issue of 1676. Of these, the one usually encountered is the Bassett and Chiswell version of 1676. Perhaps this is because the 1676 edition was printed in greater numbers, but one must also take into account the fact that earlier editions had to survive up to an additional half-century of wear and tear, and also because of catastrophes like the Great Fire of London in 1666.

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Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638) Mappa AEstivarum Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum (Map of the Summer Islands also called the Barmudas) Amsterdam / 1630

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Willem Janszoon Blaeu (1571-1638) was one of the pre-eminent Dutch cartographers of the Golden Age of Dutch mapmaking, and the founder of the Blaeu family cartographic dynasty, which ran nearly the entire length of the 17th century. Renowned map specialist Roger Baynton-Williams has written that the Blaeu family holds “the title of mapmakers-supreme for any period of cartographic history.” The Blaeu printing house, one of the largest in the world at the time, was, and still is, known for the consummate care and attention paid to every stage of production — using only the finest Italian paper, employing the highest standard of printing, and utilizing beautifully designed and engraved plates that reflected the kind of artistry normally found only in paintings.

Willem Blaeu was born in Uitgeest (The Netherlands) in 1571. Between 1594-1596 he studied mathematics, astronomy, and the art of instrument and globe-making under Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), one of the most highly respected astronomers of the time. (In 1600 Blaeu discovered the second-ever variable star, now known as P Cygni.) After qualifying as an instrument and globe maker, Blaeu opened a shop in Amsterdam, where he almost immediately produced a beautifully engraved celestial globe; eventually his globes were refined to the point where the Metropolitan Museum of New York (which owns one of his globes), would call them “the best in seventeenth century Europe.” Buyers of his globes included members of Europe’s royal families, such as Queen Christina of Sweden. In 1604 Blaeu published his first printed map (of the Netherlands). In addition to producing highly regarded globes and country maps, Blaeu would go on to become one of Europe’s leading specialists in maritime cartography, using a printing press of his own creation to publish Het Licht der Zeevaerdt (The Light of Navigation) in 1608, a pilot guide with coastal profiles that became extremely popular, eventually being published in many different languages and under many different titles. It was so popular that Blaeu’s chief mapmaking rival, his neighbor Jan Janssonius [aka Jan Jansson] (IMAGE #11), published a pirated version of his own. Blaeu’s reputation would grow to the point whereby famed Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) paid homage to the mapmaker by using one of Blaeu’s maps as a wall decoration in three of his paintings, including the well-known Officer and Laughing Girl.

In 1630, after thirty years of publishing maps, globes, charts, pilot guides and books, Blaeu, now joined by his two sons Cornelis (1610-1648) and Joan (1596-1673), initiated the great tradition of Blaeu family atlas-making with the production of the now exceedingly rare Atlantis Appendix, a title chosen to position it as a supplement to the well-respected atlases of Abraham Ortelius and Gerard Mercator, and whose 60 plates consisted of inventory purchased from the collection of the recently diseased Jodocus Hondius ll (IMAGE #9) as well as his own. The following year the work was expanded to 98 maps the map collection of

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under the title Appendix Theatri A. Ortelii Et Atlantis G. Mercatoris, and bore the joint imprint of both Willem and Joan Blaeu. In 1633 Willem Blaeu was appointed the official Hydrographer of the Dutch East India Company, and by now the prestigious Blaeu imprint was also editing and publishing the work of many of Europe’s most prominent intellectuals, including famed philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650). In 1635 the Blaeu firm commenced publication of the successful Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (The New Atlas), which contained 208 maps and was eventually published in four separate editions and four different languages. Following Willem Blaeu’s death in 1638, control of the firm passed to his son, Joan, who was appointed his father’s successor in the Hydrographic office of the Dutch East India Company. Joan Blaeu’s efforts to produce the largest and grandest atlas of its time culminated with the publication in 1662 of the Atlas Maior (Atlas Major), which would eventually grow to 12 volumes, 600 double-page maps, and 3,000 pages of text. The work is situated by cartographic historians as being at or near the pinnacle of atlas-publishing endeavors, irrespective of era. In consideration of the Atlas Major’s nearly unsurpassed engraving, coloring, calligraphy, and overall attention to detail, the cartographic website classicalimages.com has called it “the most magnificent work of its kind ever produced.”

In 1672 a disastrous fire destroyed the Blaeu printing house in Amsterdam, and a year afterwards Joan Blaeu died. The firm's surviving stocks of plates and maps were gradually dispersed, before final closure about 1695. Yet the firm’s legacy endures: More than three centuries after the Blaeu publishing company closed its doors, the rare remaining maps issued by the firm remain highly prized and coveted by collectors the world over.

Map: Mappa AEstivarum Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum (Map of the Summer Islands also called the Barmudas) Regarded as one of the finest engravings of the entire period of the Golden Age of Dutch cartography, Mappa AEstivarum Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum — first appearing in 1630 — is based upon John Speed and Richard Norwood’s 1627 A Mapp of the Sommer Ilands (IMAGE #4), with the historical record indicating that the plate used by Willem Blaeu originally belonged to Jodocus Hondius ll (IMAGE #9), Blaeu having obtained the plate at auction following Hondius’ death in 1629. (There exists an extremely rare state of the Blaeu map, ca. 1629, bearing Jodocus Hondius’ imprint.) Irrespective of its origins, Mappa AEstivarum Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum is today one of the most highly sought-after cartographic images of Bermuda.

Famous for the iconic artistry of its elaborately decorated title cartouche, the map includes the map collection of

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an intricate detailing of the island as it existed in 1630, replete with the Speed/Norwood 1627-derived division of the island into original tribes, as well as its list of the “Adventurers of 1622,” along with their shareholdings and property allocations, with the list flanked by the arms of Virginia and Bermuda (the positions of the two crests being reversed from that of the prior map.) The pumpkin-shaped titlepiece, featuring a bearded, bare-chested Neptune gripping his trident in one hand and holding a Sea Venture-like galleon in the other, provides the island’s bearings from London and from Roanoke, Virginia, via a Latin text, which describes Bermuda as lying “in the mouth of the Bay of Mexico.” (The word “Caribbean” was not yet in general usage.) Two mermaids at Neptune’s feet flank the titlepiece. The neo-classical cartouche at the map’s upper-left corner — with three meticulously engraved Renaissance-style putti linked together with draperies — is highly ornamented, as is the scale-bar and nameplate at the bottom right, the latter containing a notation with the Latin word “excudit” (which means “to strike out”) following Blaeu’s name, which has been interpreted to mean that Jodocus Hondius’ name has been removed. Unlike Speed/Norwood 1627, an extensive network of rhumblines emanates from the striking compass rose — also radiating from a spot to the south of Paget and another near the coast of Virginia — and the border consists of an elegantly-engraved ribbon spiraling around a central shaft. Taken together, the map’s ornate artistry and decorative embellishments encapsulate the central spirit of the Golden Age of Dutch cartography.

The map was initially published in Blaeu’s 1630 atlas Atlantis Appendix (now extremely rare), followed by publication in his Appendix Theatri A. Ortelii et Atlantis G. Mercatoris of 1631. From 1635 onward the map was included in the comprehensive Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (The New Atlas, of which there were numerous editions) and was ultimately featured in the Blaeu family’s classic 1662 Atlas Maior (Atlas Major). All versions of the map (other than the original 1630 edition) contained a Bermuda text on the verso, translated into five different languages (Dutch, German, French, Spanish, and Latin). An Englishlanguage edition never appeared, perhaps because the Blaeu firm believed Speed/Norwood 1627 had cornered that market. The Bermuda text, across the board, was not simply a translation of the Norwood text as employed by Speed, but instead appears to have been derived from a variety of sources.

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Johannes Cloppenburg (active c.1610-1644) Description Des Isles Bermudas Amsterdam / 1630

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Johannes Cloppenburg (active c.1610-1644) was a Dutch cartographer associated with the Hondius firm in the first half of the 17th century. He is also identified on some maps as Cloppenburg; H. Jan Evertsz; or Johannes Everhardus. The historical record provides scant details of his life, other than the production in 1630 of the Atlas Minor, an expanded and updated version of the groundbreaking atlas by Gerard Mercator, which had been published posthumously in 1595, with the Atlas Minor’s engravings done by Pieter van den Keere, a noted Dutch engraver who also worked for the Hondius concern as well as Jan Jansson. Further editions of Cloppenburg’s atlas appeared in 1632 and 1636, including French and Latin editions.

Prior to Cloppenburg, both Jodocus Hondius the Elder (IMAGE # 9), in 1607, and Jan Janssonius (IMAGE #11), in 1628, had published their own expanded versions of the Mercator Atlas, including small format editions. (In 1604 Hondius had purchased the stockpile of Mercator’s plates.) Though at least one academic source asserts that Cloppenburg published his atlas at his own expense, others have pointed out that, based on the relationship between Cloppenburg and the Hondius publishing house, as well as the fact that the noted Flemish engraver Pieter van den Keere (1571-c.1646) engraved most of the maps for the Mercator-derived atlases produced by Cloppenburg, Hondius, and Jansson, Cloppenburg’s 1630 Atlas Minor is best thought of as the natural evolution in a Mercator/ Hondius/Jansson/Cloppenburg line of descent. However, differences in the size and topography of the maps — those in Cloppenburg’s editions are larger than the ones printed

by Hondius and Jansson, and contain more detailing and information— have led some scholars to posit that Cloppenburg’s cartography is a truer reflection of the maps contained in Mercator’s folio atlas. What is certainly true is that Cloppenburg’s editions of the Atlas Minor failed to generate as much public enthusiasm as their predecessor atlases by Hondius and Jansson, and therefore had short print runs, resulting in their maps being exceptionally uncommon today.

It is also important to note that the cartographer Johannes Cloppenburg is often incorrectly confused with the theologian of the same name and era.

Gerardus Mercator (1512-1594) was a geographer, cosmographer, and cartographer from the County of Flanders (present-day Belgium) who is one of history’s most influential mapmakers, as well as one of the generative forces behind the Golden Age of Dutch Cartography. He is best known for introducing the “Mercator Projection” — first seen in his seminal 1569 printed world map Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendata (A New and Augmented Description of Earth Corrected for the Use of Sailors) — which broke away from the Ptolemaic concept and applied a revolutionary new model the map collection of

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that enabled sailors to dispense with having to recalculate their bearings as they moved by instead employing straight-line courses called “rhumblines” — an innovation still widely utilized to this day by mariners.

Mercator began his career as a crafter of scientific instruments and a creator of globes. In fact, over the course of his lifetime, a large part of his income was derived from the sales of his terrestrial and celestial globes, which were considered by many to be among the finest in the world, and were sold in such quantities that numerous examples remain extant today.

Mercator’s interests extended to theology, philosophy, history, mathematics, and geomagnetism. He was also an accomplished engraver and calligrapher. Unlike many of the other notable scholars of his time, he did little in the way of traveling, and his knowledge of geography was derived largely from his library of over one thousand books and maps, as well as his vast correspondence (in six languages) with other scholars, statesmen, travelers, merchants and seamen. He would then employ his considerable skills as a mathematician and calligrapher to transform this information into a graphic format.

Mercator’s cartographic endeavors began in 1540, when he created two maps, one of Flanders and one of Palestine. These creations earned him the patronage of Emperor Charles V, for whom he constructed a globe and several large-scale maps. Despite this imperial patronage, and despite the fact that he was a devout Christian born into a Catholic family, his sympathy for the Lutheran cause led to him being accused of heresy by the Catholic uthorities. After spending six months in prison he was released, whereupon he moved to the more tolerant Duisberg (in present-day Germany), where he spent the last thirty years of his life. In Duisberg, Mercator set himself up as a cartographer, and began the work of revising Ptolemy’s Geographia.

Mercator’s early maps were in large formats suitable for wall mounting, and, having written on geography, philosophy, chronology, and theology, he engraved his wall maps with copious texts describing the regions covered. For example, his famous world map of 1569 is inscribed with over five thousand words in fifteen legends.

In the second half of his life, Mercator produced over 100 new regional maps in a smaller format suitable for binding into his Atlas of 1595. Mercator’s Atlas was the first time the word “atlas” was used to describe a collection of maps in binded form. (Mercator chose the word to honor the legendary “King Atlas” of Africa’s Mauritania, whom Mercator considered to be the world’s first great geographer.) However, Mercator originally conceived his atlas to be far more than a collection of maps; his intention was for it to also be a treatise on the the map collection of

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creation, history, and description of the universe. (The title of the work, Atlas Sive Cosmogarphicae Meditationes de Farbrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura may be translated to Atlas or Cosmographical Meditations upon the Fabric of the World.) Indeed, though the 1595 Atlas has about 120 pages of maps and illustrated title pages, a greater number of pages are devoted to Mercator’s account of the creation of the universe and narrative descriptions of the depicted countries. His table of chronology ran to some 400 pages, fixing the dates (from the time of creation) of earthly dynasties, major political and military events, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and eclipses. He also wrote on the gospels and the Old Testament.

Following Mercator’s death his descendants took charge of selling his posthumously published Atlas, made extremely difficult in part due to the continuing commercial strength of Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. Mercator’s family’s financial distress forced them to sell his copper plates to Jodocus Hondius the Elder in 1604. Revising Mercator’s work and adding his own maps, Hondius — followed by his son Henricus Hondius (IMAGE # 9) and son-in-law Jan Janssonius— published extremely successful versions of Mercator’s Atlas. These new issues of Mercator’s work re-established his reputation as one of the era’s preeminent cartographers.

Map: Description des Isles Bermudas Published in 1630 by Johannes Cloppenburg with what was ostensibly the backing of the Hondius publishing house, Description des Isles Bermudas is often referred to as the “Hondius-Cloppenburg ‘Mercator’ Map,” in part to avoid confusion with the larger 1633 map of Bermuda by Henricus Hondius, and also because it was contained in Cloppenburg’s Atlas Minor, an expanded and revised version of Gerard Mercator’s famous atlas of 1595.

The engraving for this, and most of the other maps of the Atlas Minor, was done by noted Flemish engraver Pieter van den Keere.

Perhaps owing to the fact that Margaret Palmer’s 1965 book, The Mapping of Bermuda, misattributed the map’s origins to Nicolas Sanson, the true genealogy of Description des Isles Bermudas remains unknown to many collectors. The map can be accurately described as a smaller, simplified version of John Speed and Richard Norwood’s 1627 A Mapp of the Sommer Ilands (IMAGE #4), without a list of the London Adventurers or the coats of arms, but including the names of the tribes, as well as the main scale-of-distance cartouche from the previous map reworked to serve as the main title cartouche. A handsome compass rose is centrally located.

As in Speed/Norwood 1627, a background map is included, though without the additional, the map collection of

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proportionately scaled image of Bermuda that the prior map contained. Thus, the background representations are out of proportion to the size of Bermuda. They include: “Virginia” (modern-day North Carolina); “C. Codd” (Cape Cod, Mass.); “Nova Anglia” (the geographical equivalent of present-day Nova Scotia); and “Hispaniola” (Haiti/Dominican Republic). Bermuda’s forts, bays, and ancillary islands are identified, as are sections of the reefs.

Description des Isles Bermudas went through several printings, including editions in 1632 and 1636, as well as French language variants in 1630 and 1636. In 1676 the heirs of Jan Jansson — under the trading name “Janssonius van Waesberge” — reissued the plate under the title Descriptio AEstivarurum, a misspelling repeated in the map’s appearance in Frenchman Henri du Sauzet’s Atlas Portatif of 1738, which was the last time the map would be published, 108 years after its initial printing, thus giving the map the second longest production history of any engraved map of Bermuda, following Johannes Van Keulen’s Pas Kaart Van I. La Barmuda Anders Sommer Ilands (IMAGE #19). [The Hondius/Jansson plate (IMAGE #9) is third in the longevity category, followed by John Thornton’s English Pilot plate (IMAGE #22), and then Montanus/Ogilby/van der Aa (IMAGE #14.)]

Due to the lack of commercial success on the part of Cloppenburg’s Atlas Minor, and the corresponding dearth of reprints, examples of Description des Isles Bermudas are today very rare.

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Johannes de Laet (1581-1649) Nova Anglia, Novum Belgium et Virginia (inset: Bermuda majore mole expressa) Leiden / 1630

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Johannes de Laet (1581-1649) was a Dutch cartographer and one of the founding directors of the Dutch West India Company, which sponsored the settlement of the Dutch colonies in North America. His seminal achievement was the Nieuwe Wereldt ofte Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien (The New World or Description of the West Indies), a historical account of the Americas first published in 1625 that is widely hailed as the most important and influential treatise on the subject theretofore published, with cartographic scholar Philip Burdon calling it “arguably the finest description of the Americas published in the seventeenth century.”

Born in Antwerp to a prosperous merchant family, de Laet’s family fled to the northern Netherlands following the fall of Antwerp to the Spanish in August 1585, with the family settling in Amsterdam. Matriculating at the University at Leiden, de Laet studied theology and philosophy, and was mentored by the renowned humanist scholar Joseph Justis Scaliger. Following his university education he moved to London, where he married an Anglo-Dutch woman and acquired “denizenship” — an early form of citizenship — but his wife died shortly thereafter, and de Laet returned to Leiden, where he re-married. In Leiden, de Laet became a successful investor and earned considerable wealth, becoming a founding member of the Dutch West India Company in 1620 (a position he held until his death). In his spare time de Laet studied manuscripts, maps, globes, and art, eventually publishing widely on a variety of topics of historical interest. Additionally, he edited modern editions of Pliny’s Historia natauralis and Vitruvius’ De Archtecura, and played a crucial role in the 1648 publication of the authoritative scientific treatise Historia Naturalis Brasiliae, a compendium of research on the flora and fauna of Brazil by Georg Marcgraf and Willem Piso. Many of the era’s leading antiquaries were in de Laet’s circle of correspondents, including William Camden, Sir Henry Spelman, Sir William Boswell, Abraham Wheelock, Sir Simonds D'Ewes, James Usher, Patrick Young, John Morris, and the Danish physician and antiquary Ole Worm.

By virtue of de Laet’s directorship in the Dutch West India Company, and eminent engraver Hessel Gerritsz’s position as the Company’s official cartographer (selected ahead of his teacher, Willem Blaeu), the two men were able to gain access to proprietary documents and glean information from personal contacts and Dutch colonists, important distinguishing factors in the production of Nieuwe Wereldt ofte Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien, whose first edition contained 10 maps and whose enlarged second added an additional four, the latter maps devoted to the eastern seaboard of North America. The maps produced by de Laet and Gerritsz advanced to a considerable degree the cartographic conceptions of the New World and served as the definitive collection of maps of 17th century America.

Employing these maps as prototypical foundations, many cartographers who followed — the map collection of

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including the Blaeus, the Hondius family, Jan Jansson, and Nicolas Sanson — at least partly based their own creations on the efforts of de Laet and Gerritsz.

Map: Nova Anglia, Novum Belgium et Virginia (inset: Bermuda majore mole expressa) Perhaps the most significant and influential map of the first half of the 17th century to depict America’s eastern seaboard from Virginia to New England (with the Dutch colony of “Nieuw Nederland” sandwiched in between), de Laet’s Nova Anglia, Novum Belgium et Virginia (Bermuda majore mole expressa) has been referenced by cartographic historian Philip Burdon as “a map of extreme importance,” and “by far the finest yet seen” delineation of coastal topography between Chesapeake Bay and Cape Cod. It first appeared in 1630, in the Second Edition of de Laet’s Nieuwe Wereldt ofte Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien.

The map is one of the earliest printed cartographic endeavors to document English settlement in New England and Dutch settlement along the Hudson River, and is reputedly the first recorded print map to reference Manhattan, New Amsterdam (New York City), the North River (Hudson River) the South River (Delaware River, inaccurately shown flowing from a lake), and Massachusetts (though it is unclear whether de Laet is referencing the colony or the Native American tribe). Plymouth (Mass.) and Fort Orange (Albany, NY) are also named, as is the non-existent settlement of “Bristow” (Mass.), which probably derived from John Smith’s (IMAGE #3) attempt to encourage colonization by placing it on his 1616 map New England. The title’s reference to “Novum Belgium” likely stems from the fact that the majority of the Dutch West India Company’s backers were Walloon Protestants who had fled to the Northern Netherlands following Antwerp’s fall to the Spanish. The map is also one of the earliest to identify parts of the Great Lakes, with its depiction of “Grand Lac” (Lake Huron) and Lac des Yroquois (either Lake Ontario or Erie). Above New England, in an area of the map that is today Canada, de Laet makes note of the colony “Nova Franciae” (New France).

Offshore, on the main map, Bermuda is appropriately scaled, but adjacent to this representation a prominent inset map of the island is featured. Titled Bermuda majori mole expressa (Bermuda in Greater Magnitude), this rendering places Bermuda on its natural southwest to northeast axis, mirroring the northeasterly slant of the American coastline. The image of the island is set within a beaded frame, and the inset contains its own compass rose and scale bar. Numerous place names are drawn from John Speed and Richard Norwood’s A Mapp of the Sommer Islands (IMAGE #4), published just the map collection of

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three years earlier. Though de Laet displays the island’s reefs more conspicuously than did Speed/Norwood 1627 — or even Willem Blaeu’s contemporaneously printed Mappa AEstivarum Insularum alias Barmuda dictarum (IMAGE #6) — and despite de Laet adding extra reefs in the Murray’s Anchorage area, the fact remains that de Laet’s map did little in the way of providing a safer passage through the island’s treacherous reefs than did the other maps. However, it is also true that de Laet did not intend to create a mariner’s chart. Rather, the maps of Nieuwe Wereldt ofte Beschrijvinghe van West-Indian were intended to accompany what was primarily a work of history.

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Henricus Hondius (1597-1651) Mappa AEstivarum Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum Amsterdam / 1633

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(For details on this map, see IMAGE #11, which corresponds to the identical variant of this map produced by Henricus Hondius’ brother-in-law and partner Jan Janssonius (IMAGE #11) in 1647, the only difference between the two maps being the Latinized insignias engraved in the bottom right corner, with this version bearing Hondius’ imprint, and the other that of Janssonius.)

Hondius Family of Mapmakers: Jodocus Hondius the Elder (Latinized version of his Dutch name, Joost de Hond) (1563-1612) was a Flemish cartographer, engraver, instrument maker and globemaker who was one of the eminent figures of the Golden Age of Dutch Cartography, helping to establish Amsterdam as the center of mapmaking in Europe.

Born in 1563 in Wakken (Belgium), Jodocus Hondius the Elder grew up in Ghent, located in the Southern Provinces. In 1584, after the capture of Ghent by the Spanish as part of the Eighty Years’ War, Hondius fled to London along with many other Protestants. There, he worked for the English writer and geographer Richard Hakluyt and mathematician/ cartographer Edward Wright, among others. Hondius also engraved the globe gores for the groundbreaking British instrument- and globe-maker Emery Molyneux’s pair of globes in 1592. Additionally, he met several prominent explorers, including Sir Francis Drake, Thomas Cavendish, and Walter Raleigh, as well as engravers, such as Theodor De Bry and Augustine Ryther. This network gave Hondius access to manuscript charts and descriptions which he then translated into engraved maps. Arguably, the most important achievement to arise out of these connections came from his association with Drake, who had made a circumnavigation of the world in the late 1570s. In 1589 Hondius produced a now famous map of the bay of New Albion, where Drake briefly established a settlement on the west coast of North America. Hondius' map was based on journal and eyewitness accounts of the trip and has long fueled speculation about the precise location of Drake's landing, now thought to be at “Drakes Estero” in California. It has also been posited that Hondius was the artist of several well-known portraits of Drake that are now housed in London’s National Portrait Gallery.

In 1593 Hondius moved to Amsterdam, where he resided for the remainder of his life, founding and operating the famed In de Wackere Hondt publishing house. In 1604, in collaboration with the Amsterdam publisher Cornelis Claesz, he purchased the plates of Gerard Mercator’s Atlas from Mercator’s grandson. Mercator’s work had been overshadowed by the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Abraham Ortelius, and in 1606 Hondius proceeded to republish Mercator’s Atlas with 36 additional maps, including several of his the map collection of

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own creation. Hondius gave Mercator full credit as the author of the work, listing himself only as the publisher, thus insuring Mercator’s everlasting fame. Hondius’ new edition of Mercator’s work was a great success, selling out after a year. Hondius later published a second edition, as well as a popular pocket version, Atlas Minor (1607). The maps become known as the “Mercator/Hondius” series, cementing Hondius’ own status as a famous publisher.

Between 1605 and 1610 Hondius was employed by John Speed (IMAGE #4) to engrave the plates for Speed’s landmark Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine.

In 1612, at the age of 48, Jodocus Hondius died in Amsterdam, leaving his publishing house to his widow and two sons: Jodocus ll and Henricus. In addition to his significant body of work as a publisher, engraver, and instrument- and globe-maker, Jodocus Hondius is credited with several important cartographic innovations, including the introduction of decorative map borders and contributions to the evolution of 17th century Dutch wall maps, as well as one of the first instances of a thematic map — Designation orbis christiani — which appeared in the French edition of the Atlas Minor and showed the displacement of major religions.

Jodocus Hondius’ reputation was such that cartographic scholars have long argued that the celestial globe depicted in celebrated 17th-century artist Johannes Vermeer’s 1668 painting, The Astronomer, was based on a work by Hondius. It is believed that Vermeer copied the design of a celestial globe crafted by Hondius that had been offered for sale in 1618. The globe in question can today be found in the Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam.

Henricus Hondius (1597-1651) was the second son of the renowned cartographer Jodocus Hondius, Sr., and a historically consequential engraver and publisher in his own right. He was born in Amsterdam.

Henricus played an integral role in the expansion and re-publication of the Mercator Atlas, first acquired by his father and Cornelis Claesz in 1604, and then initially reissued in 1606 to great success and acclaim. Following Jodocus Hondius Sr.’s death in 1612, the Hondius publishing firm was passed down nominally to his widow, but operationally to Henricus and to Henricus’ older brother, Jodocus ll, also a cartographer. The two brothers continued to publish the famed Mercator/Hondius Atlas together until 1619. (Beginning in 1623, the fifth edition of the Atlas only bears Henricus’ name.) However, for reasons lost to history, the two brothers drifted apart, and, even though they continued to publish other works the map collection of

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from their father’s stock together (in particular, their father’s globe), in 1621 they each set up independent publishing houses on Dam Square in Amsterdam, both shops coming into direct competition with one another. One of the most dramatic events in the early history of commercial cartography in Amsterdam occurred following Jodocus Hondius ll’s death in 1629, whereupon his widow sold Jodocus ll’s plates (as many as 40) to the Hondius family’s bitter rival, Willem Blaeu (IMAGE #6), at which time Henricus commissioned the engravers, Salomon Rogiers and Evert Hamsersvelt, to copy the sold plates (one of which included what would become, a year later, Blaeu’s famous map of Bermuda, based on Jodocus’ plate). Thereafter, Henricus partnered with his brotherin-law, Jan Janssonius (IMAGE #11). After 1633, Janssonius’ name appears on the Atlas as co-publisher, with the evolving and expanding series eventually becoming known as the Mercator/Hondius/Janssonius series. In 1638 the name of the Atlas was changed to Atlas Novus, with Janssonius the main publisher. After 1646, Henricus’ name no longer appeared on the title-pages, and he was no longer actively involved in the business. He died in 1651, leaving the firm’s copper plates and continued publication of the series in the hands of Janssonius.

In the aftermath of the initial publication of the Mercator/Hondius Atlas in 1606, over 50 editions were published in nearly every major European language. The series became such a part of the worldwide cartographic culture that an edition was printed for the Islamic world, translated by the eminent Turkish scholar Katip Celebi.

Jodocus Hondius ll (1594-1629) was the first-born son of Jodocus Hondius, Sr., and the older brother of Henricus Hondius. Like his father and brother, Jodocus Hondius ll was a cartographer, and though very little information exists about his life, it seems evident that his early death cut short a promising career.

Following his father’s death in 1612, Jodocus Hondius ll began publishing under his own name, despite running the family publishing house with his brother Henricus. By 1621, an apparent family feud led to Jodocus opening his own business on Dam Square in Amsterdam. Though the two brothers continued to publish certain works from their father’s inventory together (they jointly owned the copper plates to their father’s globes), they no longer were jointly publishing the Mercator/Hondius Atlas, which was now being produced by Henricus, who had also opened his own shop on Dam Square. Jodocus ll had set out to publish his own atlas, featuring maps not included in the Mercator/Hondius Atlas, (with the final product perhaps due to compete against it), and some cartographic scholars have put forth the idea that Jodocus ll planned to introduce his new atlas at the Frankfurt Book Fair, but due to his sudden death, whatever plans he had never the map collection of

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materialized. What did happen, however, is that approximately 40 copper plates from the new atlas were sold by Jodocus’ widow to the Hondius family’s main competitor, William Blaeu. One of those plates was the map of Bermuda that Blaeu would publish the following year (Mappa AEstivarum Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum) under his own name.

As evidence that this map — one of the most highly regarded engravings of the period and now an iconic collector’s item — arose from a plate originally owned by Jodocus Hondius, there exists an exceedingly rare original state of this map (c.1629) bearing Jodocus Hondius’ imprint.

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Sir Robert Dudley (1574-1649) Carta Particolare dell’Isola di Bermude sin all’ India occidentale et al capo S. Romano della Florida D’America (Carta XI).

Florence / 1646

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Sir Robert Dudley (1574-1649) the illegitimate son of Robert Dudley, the first Earl of Leicester, was an English explorer and cartographer who, in 1646, published Dell’Arcano del Mare (The Secrets of the Sea) one of the most historically consequential sea atlases ever published and certainly the most groundbreaking of its time.

Sir Robert Dudley’s father, the first Earl of Leicester, was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I and a supporter of exploratory voyages such as Francis Drake’s (c.1540-1596) global circumnavigation (1577-1580) and Martin Frobisher’s (c.1535-1594) expedition to find the Northwest Passage in 1576. Robert the Younger was born in 1574, the illegitimate son of the Earl and Lady Douglas Sheffield. Beginning in 1587 he attended Christ Church, Oxford, and a year later he reputedly accompanied his father to witness Queen Elizabeth’s famous speech urging resistance to the Spanish Armada. Later that same year the Earl died, leaving his illegitimate son a sizeable inheritance. In 1594 Robert the Younger led a privateering expedition to Guiana in search of gold, and in 1596, as an officer in the Royal Navy, he commanded the ship Nonpareil as part of the Earl of Essex’s successful attack on Spain’s historic port city of Cadiz, and was knighted for his actions. Having established himself “in favor” with the Royal Court, Sir Robert initiated court proceedings in 1603 to establish his legitimacy as a nobleman, and ratify his claim to the peerages of Earl of Leicester and Earl of Warwick (his uncle’s title); two years of court proceedings in front of the Star Chamber ensued, with Sir Robert’s claim eventually denied, leading to Sir Robert fleeing England in favor of Italy, eventually settling in Florence. Summoned by the royal authorities to return to England, Sir Robert refused, and was stripped of his titles and estates.

In Florence, Dudley employed his naval background as a designer and builder of ships, and became an advisor to Ferdinand I, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He also began to distill all of his notes and ideas on navigation — as well as information gleaned from Sir Francis Drake (c.1540-1596), original charts by Henry Hudson (c.1565-1611), and observations from his brother-in-law, the English explorer and privateer Thomas Cavendish (15601592) — into manuscript form, with the project slowly taking shape over a period of 40 years until it was published as Dell’Arcano del Mare in Florence in 1646 by Francesco Onofri, and re-issued in 1661 as Arcano del Mare by Guisepe Cocchini. Though categorized as a nautical chartbook, it is in effect a six-volume maritime encyclopedia, its subjectmatter inclusive of shipbuilding, navigation, and astronomy, explicated through illustrations, diagrams, and depictions of instruments, with the central component consisting of two volumes worth of charts, 146 in all, covering all parts of the world. The charts were drawn

by Dudley himself, as well as other Royal Navy officers and English pilots, and are generally accepted as reflecting a high degree of scientific accuracy for their time. Moreover, the Arcano del Mare holds the distinction of being the “first” sea-atlas in a number of categories: the map collection of

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It is the first sea-atlas to cover the entire globe; the first to have every chart employ the “Mercator Projection”; the first to offer magnetic declination; the first to list prevailing winds and currents; the first to recommend the “Great Circle” method of navigation; and the first sea-atlas to be produced by an Englishman, albeit an expatriate. Breaking with tradition, Dudley omitted compass lines, instead employing lines of latitude and longitude, despite the fact that techniques for determining longitude at sea were not perfected until more than two centuries later. This, and the fact that the charts were generally too large and elaborate for use aboard ship, made the Arcano del Mare less of a practical tool and more of an intellectual triumph at the time of its publication.

The Arcano del Mare’s reputation as one of the finest examples of Italian baroque art is due in large part to the highly distinctive engraving style of Antonio Francesco Lucini (c.1610-c.1661), whose “alla cancellaresca” calligraphic lettering technique was embellished by delicate, swirling flourishes, making the maps of the Arcano truly a one-of-a-kind visual experience. Lucini, who prior to working on the Arcano was a pupil of master baroque printmaker Jacques Callot (c.1592-1635), and had already published engraved views of Florence and scenes of the Turkish Wars, stated in an introductory leaf of the British Library’s copy of the Arcano that he had labored in isolation in a remote Tuscan village for a period of 12 years before completing his task, using at least 5,000 lbs (2,268 kg) of copper in the process.

Map: Carta Particolare dell’Isola di Bermude sin all’ India occidentale et al capo S. Romano della Florida D’America (Carta XI).

Sir Robert Dudley’s 1646 map of Bermuda, a component of the Dell’Arcano del Mare sea atlas published initially that same year, places his depiction of the island near the top of what is labelled as the L’Mare Oceano (The Sea Ocean), with a handsomely composed compass rose appearing to the west of the island, and the title cartouche to its east; the images are located amidst a vast expanse of ocean that, at least for the upper portion of the map, is sparsely detailed, save for a vignette of a sailing vessel and intersecting lines of latitude and longitude, which comprised the primary navigational tool of the maps of Dell’Arcano del Mare. In addition to the eastern portion of Virginia, the bottom segment of the map is filled with the islands of the West Indies, including the Bahamas, Hispaniola, and parts of Cuba and Jamaica, replete with an extensive toponymic detailing of Hispaniola and the eastern portion of Cuba.

Dudley’s image of Bermuda is accompanied, directly above the island, by the phrase: La Bermuda e’habitata da Inglesi (Bermuda is inhabited by the English.) The island is the map collection of

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delineated in such a way — with a truncated West End and exaggerated East End — that an impression is given that Castle Harbour is its only prominent body of water or anchorage, with the words Il Porto (The Port) the sole detailing, printed at the mouth of the harbor.

Perhaps this was because the east was the center of activity, with its proximity to St. George’s.

The same elegant calligraphic hand-lettering that marked Antonio Francesco Lucini’s other engravings in Dell’Arcano del Mare is present in this one, distinguishing it from virtually all other maps of the island, particularly in light of the fact that future mapmakers chose not to copy Dudley and Lucini’s style.

In the contemporary marketplace, Dudley’s map and atlas are rarely encountered.

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Jan Janssonius (1588-1664) Mappa AEstivarum Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum** Amsterdam / 1647 **Re-issue of the 1633 Henricus Hondius map of the same name (Image #9).

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Jan Janssonius (1588-1664) also known as Johann or Jan Jansson or Janszoon — was one of the premier Dutch cartographers and publishers of the 17th century, a time when the Netherlands dominated the mapmaking trade in Europe. Born in Arnhem (the Netherlands) in 1588, Janssonius was the son of Jan Janszoon the Elder, a publisher and bookseller who had worked with the renowned mapmaker Jodocus Hondius the Elder (IMAGE #9), who in 1604 had purchased the plates of the pioneering cartographer Gerardus Mercator. In 1612 Janssonius married Elisabeth de Honte, the daughter of Jodocus Hondius the Elder, and produced his first maps — of France and Italy — in 1616.

In the 1620s Janssonius owned several bookstores throughout Europe, and began producing a large number of maps, ultimately rivaling — but never overcoming — the dominance of the Blaeu family of Dutch mapmakers (IMAGE #6) Though his wife Elisabeth died in 1627, Janssonius would go on to form a partnership in the 1630s with his brother-in-law, Henricus Hondius (IMAGE #9), the son of Jodocus the Elder.

Together, the two men would re-issue and expand the successful Mercator-Hondius atlas that Jodocus the Elder had revived, and which Henricus had published following his father’s death in 1612, with new editions appearing under the “Mercator/Hondius/ Janssonius” imprint until being re-named the Atlas Novus and then the Atlas Major. By 1660, the Atlas Major contained 11 volumes, and bore the names of roughly one hundred credited authors and engravers, with volumes dedicated to ancient, maritime, and celestial maps, as well as descriptions of the world’s major cities. Editions were published in Dutch, Latin, French, and German. Besides the Atlas Major, Janssonius is also well known for his 1646 volume Jansson’s English County Maps, an edition which drew comparisons to the Blaeu’s own volume on the same subject.

Following Janssonius’ death in Amsterdam in 1664, his son-in-law, Johannes van Waesbergen, took control of the business. Ultimately, many of Janssonius’ plates were sold to Gerard Valck and Pieter Schenk, who added their names and continued to reissue the maps.

Map: Mappa AEstivarum Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum In 1647 Jan Jansson (1588-1664) reissued his brother-in-law Henricus Hondius’ (1597-1651) map of Bermuda in his Atlas Novus, the only change being the replacement of the Latinized version of “Henricus Hondius” at the bottom of the map with the Latin equivalent of Janssonius. Having acquired the plate from his brother-in-law —who was also his business partner — Jansson would go on to publish several virtually identical editions of the map as late as 1666. Hondius’ map itself had been modeled after Willem Blaeu’s (IMAGE #6) famous 1630 map of Bermuda, which in turn was based on a plate procured from the widow of Henrik Hondius’ younger brother Jodocus Hondius ll (IMAGE #9). the map collection of

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The Hondius/Jansson map is considered one of the most elegant early maps of Bermuda, with only modest decorative changes being made to the plate originally belonging to Jodocus Hondius ll, whose own design was allegedly duplicated from the plate engraved

by Abraham Goos for John Speed (IMAGE #4). In fact, apart from the decorative differences, as well as a reference to the house of Henricus Hondius (or Jansson) replacing a reference to Blaeu, the maps are essentially the same. The alterations to the Hondius/Jansson map are embodied by a different border and a new title cartouche, with the elaborate cartouche of the Blaeu/Jododus Hondius edition that featured Neptune holding both his trident and a miniature version of the Sea Venture while flanked by mermaids now replaced by an oval titlepiece crowned by a stylized lion’s head and held aloft by a winged cherub. (Bermudian map expert Jonathan Land Evans, in his book Bermuda Maps, has articulated the view that the juxtaposition of animal and angel symbolized Bermuda’s transformation from wilderness to civilization.) The division of the island into individuated landholdings and a directory of the original shareholders with the exact number of their allocated shares — arguably the key feature of the Blaeu/Jodocus Hondius plate — remains intact.

The Hondius map went through numerous editions, in several European languages. The first edition was published in Amsterdam in 1633, evidently for French consumption (Atlas ou Representation du Monde Universel). Though the first edition contained no accompanying text, later editions utilized Blaeu’s text on the verso: German-language editions in 1633 and 1642, a rare English-language edition in 1636 (translated into English by famed military writer Henry Hexham, who worked on the Mercator/Hondius atlas), a French edition in 1641, and a Dutch-language edition in 1642. Following Jan Jansson’s editions from 1647 to 1666, the plate was reworked by Schenk and Valk for publication in the 1700s.

It is noteworthy that, despite a consensus of opinion among cartographic scholars that holds the Blaeu firm’s production quality as being superior to that of Hondius’, it was a Hondius map rather than a Blaeu that was selected to be one of three Bermuda maps to represent the Bermuda section of King George lll’s King’s Geographical Collection of the late 1700s, with the others being Moll 1729 (IMAGE #32) and Lempriere 1738 (IMAGE #38). These maps are now permanently housed in the British Library.

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Pierre Duval (1618-1683) Carte de La Virginie Paris / 1659

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Pierre Duval (1618-1683) was an influential French cartographer, geographer, and publisher, and the nephew of Nicolas Sanson (1600-1667), who was perhaps the most important French cartographer of the 17th century, earning the title of “Father of French Cartography” for his role in ushering in the Golden Age of French Mapmaking. DuVal, for his part, played a prominent role in the promulgation of Sanson’s body of work.

Born in Abbeville in northern France, Duval was mentored in the principles of cartography

by Sanson. Following his studies he was employed by the prominent Parisian printseller Pierre Marriette. By 1650 DuVal had joined the Royal Court as a Geographer to King Louis XIV and, following the end of his publishing association with Mariette in 1654, began to publish a wide range of atlases, individual maps of the continents and the world, and many highly regarded wall maps. He also produced maps and cartographic documents for other Parisian map-sellers, including Nicolas Berey, Girard Joillan, Nicolas Langlois, Estienne Vouillement and Antoine de Fer. Along with editing and augmenting Sanson’s work during his uncle’s lifetime, Duval — together with his compatriot, the French cartographer A.H. Jaillot — played a major role in the augmentation of Sanson’s posthumous reputation by re-engraving many of his maps (a considerable number of which were still unpublished at the time of his death) and re-publishing them in the face of strong competition from Dutch mapmakers, who were a dominant force in the market at that time.

Duval’s body of work also includes the production of geographic dictionaries, including the publication of the first universal and vernacular geographic dictionary of Europe, published in 1651. He also published dictionaries about the ancient sites of the Greeks, Romans, Persians, and Asians, along with their linguistically appropriate toponyms.

Map: Carte de la Virginie Duval’s map, Carte de la Virginie, was first published in 1659 in his atlas Le Monde Terrestre, though there are no known extant examples of the 1659 edition.

Duval’s map covers the American eastern seaboard from New York (an early cartographic mention of “Nouvel Amsterdam”) to northern Florida (“Floride”), where the mythical Lake May (“L. May”) is detailed. Other toponyms include early references to Jamestown (“Iamestown), Lake Erie (“Lac Erie”), Cape Henry, and Chesapeake Bay, with the Appalachian Mountains (Apalatchi Montagnes) engraved in relief. Numerous Native American tribes/regions are also depicted. the map collection of

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The map also includes —as a hanging banner in the upper right portion — an inset of Bermuda (“Isles Bermudes”). Bermuda’s location is not delineated, and the island is drawn in an elongated fashion with no place-names or discernable characteristics, surrounded by oblong “islets” that are perhaps representative of reefs.

The map was published in four different states by Duval as late as 1688. The variant that has a titlepiece reading “La Virginie Par P. Duval Geographe du Roy A. Paris” is believed to emanate from 1663. Various cartographers — including J.C. Beer, Johannes Ulrich Muller (IMAGE #25), and Johann Hoffman, respectively — reissued Carte de la Virginie in slightly modified formats from 1679-1702.

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N. Visscher (1618-1679) Orbis Terrarum Tabula Recens Emendata Et In Lucem Edita per N. Visscher Amsterdam / 1663

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Nicolas Visscher (1618-1679) was a Dutch engraver, cartographer, and publisher whose father, Claes Jansz Visscher (1587-1652) had earlier established the Visscher family’s mapmaking firm, with Claes reputedly having studied under Jodocus Hondius the Elder (IMAGE #9), whose offices in Amsterdam were close to Visscher’s own establishment.

Claes Jansz Visscher published a number of individual maps (including a well-known panorama map of London in 1616), as well as an atlas composed by various cartographers, including his son Nicolas. After Claes Jansz Visscher’s death in 1652, Nicolas took over the business, producing biblical maps to satiate the demand for scripture-related material following the Reformation. In 1658 he published a map of the Western hemisphere titled Novissima et Accuratissima Totius Americae Descriptio, which would become the prototype for Dutch maps of America for the next 50 years; his much-copied double-hemispheric map, Orbis Terrarum Tabula Recens Emendata Et In Lucem Edita, first appeared in 1663.

Nicolas Visscher would go on to issue several atlases under the name Atlas Minor, beginning in 1664. His son, Nicolas Visscher ll (1649-1702), would expand the family’s mapmaking business into one that rivaled the other eminent Dutch cartographic dynasties. Though Nicolas Visscher ll’s own specialty was military maps, he continued to produce biblical maps, maps of the Netherlands, and editions of the Atlas Minor. Following the death of Nicolas Visscher ll, his widow Elizabeth Verseyl directed the business, until her own death in 1726 brought an end to the Visscher mapmaking concern after over 100 years of prominence.

Map: Orbis Terrarum Tabula Recens Emendata Et In Lucem Edita Per N. Visscher.

Nicolaes Visscher’s double hemisphere map — originally published in the Elzevier Dutch Bible — is one of the most copied world maps of the 17th and 18th centuries, with a number of different engravers copying its cartographic and decorative elements for nearly 100 years following the map’s initial appearance in 1663.

Containing many of the great misconceptions found in other major 17th century cartographic efforts, the map posits a massive land extension north of California — which itself is depicted as a peninsula— that nearly reaches Asia, with the continents separated only by the “Straits of Anian,” believed at the time to permit access to a “Northwest Passage” via the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. Also listed were dozens of place-names along the northwest coast of this mythical rendering of North America, including “Quivira Regnum,” one of the legendary “Seven Cities of Gold” sought by Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado (1510-1554), which appears twice (one just opposite the Straits of Anian and once just east of the Rio Grande River.) Partial views of New Zealand and Australia appear, as the map collection of

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do the tracks of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan’s (1480-1521) circumnavigation of the globe (1519-1522). Off the exaggerated curvature of the Atlantic coast of America lies an outsized rendering of Bermuda. Additionally, two diagrams (top and bottom center) depict the Ptolemaic and Copernican theories of the solar system.

The four landmasses recognized as continents at that time (Europe, Asia, America, and Africa) are represented on the corners of the map by four allegorical female figures, part of a continuous stream of richly detailed artistic vignettes that depict the continents’ indigenous inhabitants and wildlife. Taken together, the map’s cartographic features mesh with its decorative embellishments to forge a prime example of the Golden Age of Dutch Cartography.

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John Ogilby (1600-1676); Arnold Montanus (c.1625-1683) / Jacob van Meurs (c.1620-1680) Mappa AEstivarium Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum London / 1670 (Ogilby); Amsterdam-London / 1670 (Montanus/van Meurs)

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John Ogilby (1600-1676) was one of the most prominent English geographers and publishers of the seventeenth century, though he came to cartography late in life, spending his multi-faceted earlier years as a dancing master, poet, translator, theater owner and publisher of classical texts.

Following an injury that had ended his dancing career (a career through which he had freed his father from bankruptcy), Ogilby traveled to Ireland where, under the auspices of Thomas Wentworh, 1st Earl of Strafford, he established Ireland’s first theater, the Werburgh Street Theatre, and was subsequently appointed Deputy-Master of Revels for Ireland in 1637.

Though the theatre was a success, it was closed in 1641 as a result of the Irish Rebellion.

Finding his way to Cambridge, he learned Latin, and in 1649, Ogilby published his first translated volume, of the work of the ancient Roman poet Virgil, and he continued to publish lavish, illustrated translations throughout the 1650s and 1660s, having success with the Fables of Aesop and Homer’s Iliad. He also played a role in the 1660 coronation of Charles ll following the Restoration of the Crown, and in 1661 was again made Master of Revels of Ireland, where he helped to build a new theatre in Smock Alley, Dublin. (The libretto of the musical play Pompey, by Katherine Philips, performed at Smock Alley in 1663, credits him as composer.)

He was also appointed Master of the King’s Imprimeries (King’s Printer). After several years in Ireland, he returned to England in 1665, only to lose much of his printing stock in the Great Fire of 1666. Following this conflagration he was named Assistant Surveyor for the city of London, and turned his attention to cartography. In 1669 he published Embassy to China, a translation of the first-hand account of Dutch official John Nieuhoff’s extensive travels throughout the Far East from 1665 to 1667. At this time Ogilby began planning a series of atlases that would cover the entire world, to be funded via subscriptions, advertisements, and lotteries, all common practice at that time, particularly for expensive multi-volume series.

Ogilby’s ambitious project — which reflected a growing interest in the wider world on the part of British readers — was essentially translations of Dutch original atlases and plates, and several volumes were completed: Africa and Atlas Japannensis (1670); America (1670, originally published in Dutch by Arnold Montanus and Jacob van Meurs, and containing Montanus’ map of Bermuda); Atlas Chinensis (1671); and Asia (1673).

In 1671, while producing the atlases, Ogilby received another royal title: Kings Cosmographer and Geographic Printer, which he employed for the publication of what would become his best-known work, Britannia (or An Illustration of the Kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales) in 1675. Britannia is the first published road-book of any country in Western Europe, with the roads (in the form of strip-maps) drawn on a uniform scale of one inch to one mile.

The work delineates over 2,500 miles of roads in 100 maps, and his technique would be the map collection of

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widely utilized in the following century. His use of a waywiser (a large wheel) to measure distances also helped to standardize the length of the English mile at 1,760 yards. Britannia was a major success and was reprinted in 1698, 1719, and 1720. Upon expiration of the copyright, many subsequent mapmakers would copy it, including Owen and Bowen, John Senex, and Thomas Gardner.

Ogilby’s final project had begun as a survey of London after his appointment as Assistant Surveyor. It was much delayed, but he and his step-grandson, William Morgan, eventually completed it, and the result is regarded by some antiquarian map scholars as two of the greatest 17th century surveys of the city: A New and Accurate Map of the City of London, distinct from Westminster and Southwark (1676), and the posthumously published London & c.

Actually Survey’d (1682).

During his life Ogilby established friendships with some of the most eminent intellectuals of the period, including Christpher Wren, Robert Boyle, Samuel Pepys, and Sir Robert Hooke, and he was mentioned in both Pepys’ and Hooke’s diaries.

Arnold Montanus (c.1625-1683) was a Dutch scholar, teacher, and author who published

over 50 books — many of them influential — on subjects ranging from church history, theology, the history of the low countries, (present-day Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), travel narratives, and the geography and cultures of the Americas, Australia, and Japan.

Montanus was born in Amsterdam and studied theology at Leiden University. He became a minister in Schellingwoude in 1653 and in Schoonhoven in 1667, and was also appointed to the position of Headmaster of Schoonhoven’s Latin School.

Montanus’ most famous work is his monumental De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld; of Beschryving van America en ’t Zuid-Land (The New and Unknown World: or Description of America and the Southland), first published in Dutch in 1670. (The “Southland” in the title refers to Australia.) Though Montanus never visited the New World, and despite the fact that the work contained numerous errors and highly exaggerated conceptions of the people and animals in the Americas, the lavishly illustrated volume — published by the Amsterdam bookseller and engraver Jacob van Meurs — nonetheless offered the most complete cartographic records to date of North and South America, and was the most accurate compendium available of the New World. It was composed of 125 copper engravings, which included 32 folded views, 70 plates, 16 maps, and seven portraits of eminent explorers, each surrounded by baroque framed borders. The book was widely read for many years, and was translated and published in England by the aforementioned John Ogilby, under the title, the map collection of

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America, Being an Accurate Description of the New World (1670).

Jacob van Meurs (c.1620-1680) was a Dutch engraver and publisher born and based in Amsterdam. Active from 1651 to 1680, he specialized in highly illustrated folio books — primarily divided by country or continent — on geography and history, as well as travelogues.

He is perhaps best known for his collaboration with Arnold Montanus on De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld; of Beschryving van America en ’t Zuid-Land (The New and Unknown World: or Description of America and the Southland), which was originally published by van Meurs in Amsterdam in 1670. His association with Montanus also resulted in the publication of many of the well-known maps and views found in Montanus’ various histories and travel narratives; several of these views are among the earliest known scenes of the Americas, including some of New York City. Additionally, many of John Ogilby’s publications utilized van Meurs’ plates.

In the 1660s, van Meurs’ renowned publishing house in Amsterdam published three extensively illustrated monographs that profoundly altered continental perceptions of China and Japan. It began with the publication in 1665 of Dutch envoy John Nieuhof’s account of his journey to the Manchu court in Peking, a work that included 150 copper prints. Published in five languages and arousing much interest on the continent in travel narratives, the success of the book engendered van Meurs to publish a series of volumes on foreign locales. Similar tomes on Africa (1668) and Japan (1669) soon followed (the monograph on Japan was compiled by Montanus). Specifically in regard to Japan and China, the foundations of these volumes were eyewitness revelations by European employees of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) into the workings of what had historically been secretive and little-understood faraway seats of power; the reason this was possible was that the directors of the VOC had sent envoys bearing “tributes” to the rulers of these realms, in return for which they hoped to secure privileged trading rights.

Today, examples of van Meurs’ work can be found in the permanent collections of Britain’s National Gallery of Art and National Portrait Gallery.

Map: Mappa AEstivarium Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum Regarded by many scholars of antiquarian maps as the most exquisite of all antique maps of Bermuda, Mappa AEstivarium Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum first appeared in 1670 in Arnold Montanus’ Dutch atlas De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld (The New and Unknown World), published by Jacob van Meurs in both Amsterdam and London. The identical map was published the same year in London in John Ogilby’s America. The same map was issued in 1673 in a German-language edition of the Montanus book by Olfert Dapper in his Die the map collection of

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Unbekante Neue Welt, published by van Meurs in Amsterdam. In 1729 Peter van der Aa (IMAGE #29) reworked and published the map, and Covens and Mortier (IMAGE #35) reissued the map with their own imprint as late as 1761, thereby giving the original Montanus plate a working life of over 90 years. Though the Montanus, Ogilby, and Dapper engravings are identical, and though in Bermuda the map has come to be associated primarily with Ogilby, the plate was conceived and engraved by Montanus.

The Montanus/van Meurs map — a variant of John Speed and Richard Norwood’s 1627 A Mapp of the Sommer Islands (IMAGE #4) — maintains the layout of its predecessor, yet reduces its size to a middle-ground between a full-sized atlas and a Mercator atlas.

The distinctive title cartouche of the Montanus map features an unclothed Neptune leaning against a rockface draped by vegetation, seashells, and fruit, as well as cherubs in various poses, while two sea creatures seemingly stand guard at Neptune’s feet.

The bottom-right portion of the map contains a scale-of-distances cartouche whose informational inscription is engraved on another rockface, this one with a flat-top upon which sits several items, including a voluminous book and a butter-churn. Also atop the rockface are two native Amerindians, who are evidently measuring distances with a string and pair of compasses. Assisting them is a man dressed in European garb, beyond whom rise a group of armed European soldiers. The elements of this vignette, taken together, have suggested to some cartographic scholars the presumption on the part of Europeans of their having brought knowledge, science, and order to a theretofore untamed continent.

The rest of the Montanus map follows in the footsteps of Speed/Norwood 1627 and its descendants — including its layout and list of the London Adventurers and their landholdings — though the arms of the Virginia Company and Bermuda have been transplanted to the Virginia portion of the background map, as well as the information regarding the investors and their holdings being out of date in many cases by 1670. Distinguishing between the map’s various editions can be effected by an examination of the watermarks: The English edition is discerned by a cockatrice (cock with serpent’s tail), while Dutch editions generally featured a jester’s-head watermark.

Of all the maps following in the line of succession from A Mapp of the Sommer Islands, the Montanus variant is today considered the least likely to be encountered in the public marketplace.

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John Ogilby (1600-1676); Arnold Montanus (c.1625-1683) / Jacob van Meurs (c.1620-1680) Mappa AEstivarium Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum London / 1670 (Ogilby); Amsterdam-London / 1670 (Montanus/van Meurs)

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This is an identical variant of the map profiled in the preceding image (IMAGE #14), albeit with more striking coloration and arguably derived from a fresher plate. It is also possible that one of these versions appeared in the Montanus/van Meurs atlas De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld (The New and Unknown World), and the other in John Ogliby’s America, with 1670 being the original publication date of both atlases.

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Arent Roggeveen (d.1679); drawn by Jac Robyn (1649-c.1707) Pascaert van’t Eijland la Bermuda of Sommer Islands en de andere Eijlanden daer bij geleeghen Amsterdam / 1675

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Arent Roggeveen (d.1679) was a Dutch cartographer, mathematician, and expert on navigation whose career took shape in the city of Middelburg, where he was employed by both the Dutch East and West India Companies as a teacher of navigation and supervisor of the companies’ collections of maps and sea charts, which led to his compiling a series of large-scale charts of the North American coastline and the West Indies in the 1660s, building upon the work of earlier mapmakers such as Hessel Gerritsz (one of the leading figures in 17th century Dutch cartography) and Johannes Vingboons (also a watercolorist for the Blaeu (IMAGE #6) cartographic concern). In 1675 Roggeveen arranged for Pieter Goos, one of Amsterdam’s leading maritime publishers, to issue the completed collection, which was called Het Brandede Veen or The Burning Fen. (Watery lowlands known as “fen” in the Netherlands were often burned to create warning beacons on the coasts for ships.) The finished work achieved landmark status by becoming the first Dutch pilot-book to feature a set of large-scale navigational charts of the North American coastline and the West Indies, in so doing becoming the first to show the entire coastline of North America and the Caribbean, as well as one of the first to name the island of Manhattan.

As pilot books of this time period were published in limited quantities, and by nature received excessive use aboard ship (while being purposefully destroyed when updated versions came out), compilations of this period are by nature rare, and The Burning Fen in particular has been adjudged to be an exceedingly rare item in the contemporary marketplace for antiquarian sea atlases.

Map: Pascaert van’t Eijland la Bermuda of Sommer Islands en de andere Eijlanden daer bij geleeghen As part of his groundbreaking pilot book The Burning Fen, which featured large charts of the American coastline and the West Indies, Arent Roggeveen, in association with Pieter Goos, published in 1675 a large chart of Bermuda, titled Pascaert van’t Eijland la Bermuda of Sommer Islands en de andere Eijlanden daer bij geleeghen. The map was drawn by Jac Robyn [aka Jacobus Robijn] (1649-c.1707), a notable engraver and colorist who also collaborated with the van Keulen (IMAGE #19) firm. Similar to maps of Bermuda published in 1630 by Johannes de Laet (IMAGE #8) and in 1651 by Joost Hartgers, the Roggeveen/Robijn map depicts the island on its natural southwest-to-northeast axis, but unlike those maps, which showed the Island in prominent insets, the Roggeveen/Robyn effort devotes the entirety of its engraving plate to Bermuda. Though the toponymy includes both Latin and English, the chart otherwise employs an economy of detail, omitting the land ownership information and tribal divisions of earlier maps, and focusing on the the map collection of

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crisply outlined contours of the island’s coastline. The title and scale-bar cartouches are embellished with fantastical sea creatures that are unique even by the standards of 17th century mapmaking.

Accompanying the chart, on a separate leaf of the 1675 edition of the The Burning Fen, is a brief descriptive text, which upon close analysis has been found to bear very little resemblance to the text accompanying Speed/Norwood 1627 (IMAGE #4) and its derivatives, and a suggestion has been posited that the text may be a representation of the accounts of actual mariners. The text of the English edition is titled Discription of the Map, N. 30 Being the Island LA BARMUDA. Within the text the island’s name is configured in a variety of ways, and the text notes a lack of consensus on the island’s actual latitude. (“32 degrees 20 minutes north, but others say at least 30 minutes.”). Bermuda’s geography is synopsized accordingly: “This Island consists of several Lands which reaches alongst the same, as if it were one Island, being roundabout very much beset with Clifts, which with low water lie most above water, and with high water you may also see them, for the water flowes there not above five foot up and down: the whole Island reachesmost north-east and south-west, having on the northeast corner several islands.” The text’s final paragraph speaks to the weather conditions mariners may expect to broach upon passing the Island: “We shall desire every one to looke well to themselves, upon this Coast of the Island, for there are abundance of Clifts, so that it is no wonder although Ships be sometimes cast away here: moreover you are subject hereabouts to much tempestuous Wether, as is witnessed by many who have been often in the West-Indies, and count it happiness, when in their voyages homeward they have passed the latitude of this Island with good weather; but to the contrary, you shall ever hear them say, that about the Barmoudes, they have allways had an extraordinary gust of wind, which carried them a great way: how this is occasioned, we intend not to speake of, because we intend not to digresse from our usuall manner of writing.”

Several editions of the Roggeveen/Robijn map of Bermuda ensued following its initial publication in the 1675 Dutch edition of The Burning Fen, including an English edition published that same year and a Spanish edition appearing in 1680. In 1689 Robijn reproduced the map in both his own version of The Burning Fen as well as his sea atlas, New Enlarged and Lightning Sea Column or Sea Mirrour. The map was also republished in Johann Loots’ (IMAGE #30) 1717 pilot book New Great Sea Mirrour. Today, the confluence of several factors — including the map’s rarity, large size, and the fact that it is the first big sea chart of Bermuda — account for the map’s high degree of desirability on the part of serious collectors.

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John Ogilby (1600-1676) Haydon Bridge—Haltwhistle—Warwick Bridge— Carlisle (The Deanery of Carlisle) London / 1675 For biographical information on John Ogilby, see Image #14.

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The road map Haydon Bridge—Haltwhistle—Warwick Bridge—Carlisle (The Deanery of Carlisle) first appeared in John Ogilby’s (IMAGE #14) seminal achievement Brittania, Volume the First: or, an Illustration of the Kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales, published in 1675.

Brittania was the first published road-book of any country in western Europe, and the first road atlas of England and Wales. The roads are drawn on a uniform scale of one inch to one mile, in the form of strip-maps running up the page. (A strip map is a set of map pages that follow a route, such as a river, road, or pipeline, with each subsequent page following the trajectory of the previous one.) Ogilby includes natural waymarkers such as fields, hills, and forests, as well as man-made features such as bridges, churches, and windmills. Essentially, Ogilby narrates stages along a particular, carefully annotated route by pointing out the landmarks, crossroads, and countryside that the traveler would pass and noting the distance in miles along the route between each stage. The resulting volume emphasized the pathways of movement throughout rural England, rather than focusing on regional or local detail and orientation. This structure reflected the new need for maps at a time when domestic travel for business was rapidly growing.

Brittania was probably intended to be a multi-volume work covering the entire British Isles; only the first volume on England and Wales was published. Nevertheless, it was an immediate success, primarily due to the use of a standardized scale in each of the plates, and its innovative use of a scroll effect to illustrate the routes. Today, Brittania remains the most accurate record of the highways and byways of Restoration England.

Despite its immense contemporary popularity, the large size of Ogilby’s Brittania proved to be inefficient for many travelers, and public demand was such that smaller format versions were published following the expiration of the copyright. Among the cartographers who re-produced Ogilby’s work were John Senex and Thomas Gardner, but the most popular re-production of Brittania was “Britannia Depicta or Ogilby Improv’d; Being a Correct Copy of Mr. Ogilby’s Actual Survey of all ye Direct & Principal Cross Roads in England and Wales. Published by successful London printseller and publisher Thomas Bowles ll (who operated a shop opened by his father Thomas Sr. near St. Paul’s Cathedral), with engravings by Emanuel Bowen (IMAGE #40) and notes by the antiquarian John Owen, Britannia Depicta was first produced in 1720, with four editions put forth through the 1760s. (Further editions by other publishers were printed well into the 19th century.)

Corrected and updated with each successive issue with engravings by many artisans who worked from the drawings of other artists, the illustrated Brittania Depicta was comprised the map collection of

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of 54 county maps and associated suites of strip road maps in three or four columns over 273 plates. The atlas was enhanced with little-known historical facts (supplied by John Owen), elaborate heraldic images, rococo cartouches and decorative borders. Additionally, the maps were engraved on both sides of the page, an unusual feature resulting in a handier-sized book.

Map: Haydon Bridge—Haltwhistle—Warwick Bridge—Carlisle The map Haydon Bridge—Haltwhistle—Warwick Bridge—Carlisle depicts the area of the “Deanery of Carlisle.” A “deanery” is an ecclesiastical entity or jurisdiction, and the Deanery of Carlisle, as cited on the map’s titlepiece in the lower left portion of the map, was created

by King Henry Vlll in 1542.

The map contains roads leading in and out of the historic counties of Northumberland and Cumberland in the far north of England, a few miles south of the Scottish border.

One of the map’s primary features is the ancient town of Carlisle, an area whose early history is marked by its status as a Roman settlement (the Romans called it “Luguvalium”), established to serve the forts on Hadrian’s Wall, a defensive fortification of the Roman province of Brittania, with construction having begun in A.D. 122.

During the Middle Ages, because of its proximity to the Kingdom of Scotland, Carlisle became an important military stronghold; Carlisle Castle, still relatively intact, was built in 1092 by King William ll, and once served as a prison for Mary, Queen of Scots in 1568.

Given the proximity of Carlisle to the border between England and Scotland, Carlisle has been the centre of many wars and invasions. During the Jacobite Rising of 1745–6, Carlisle became the last English fortress to undergo a siege.

Other featured areas of the map include the village of Haydon Bridge, containing Old Haydon Bridge, built across the River South Tyne within the village around 1309; Warwick Stone Bridge (The Old Castle Bridge), a late medieval bridge (1300s) built across the River Avon a short distance south-east of the centre of Warwick town (also depicted); the village of Haltwhistle (comprised primarily of stone houses), also dating to Roman times and the closest English community to Hadrian’s Wall. The old Roman road passes just two miles (3.2 km) to the north of the town; “Blenkensop” Castle (Blenkinsopp), an ancient manor with a substantial tower house held by the eponymous Blenkinsopp family in the 13th century; and Thirlwall Castle, a 12th-century castle in Northumberland on the bank of the River Tipalt. Sir Percival Thirlwall of Thirlwall Castle was killed at the Battle of the map collection of

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Bosworth (the final battle of the War of the Roses between followers of Richard lll and those of Henry Tudor, later King Henry Vll) while fighting in the Yorkist cause on 22 August 1485. Thirlwall was Richard III's standard-bearer in the final charge at Bosworth, and held up the standard even after his legs had been cut from under him.

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Johannes van Keulen (1654-1715) Paskaert Amsterdam / 1680 For information on the van Keulen family of chartmakers see Image #19.

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The nautical chart Paskaert was first published in 1680 by Johannes van Keulen (IMAGE #19) — the founder of the legendary Dutch family of chartmakers — for inclusion in his Zee Atlas, the first sea atlas to be published by van Keulen’s firm, "In de Gekroonde Lootsman" (In the Crowned Pilot). The publication of the Zee Atlas quickly made a name for van Keulen in the competitive maritime publishing market.

The first edition of the Zee Atlas had 36 charts, with further editions replacing obsolete charts with new engraved plates. The atlas expanded quickly, with an issue from 1688 containing over 150 charts, and over the years it was expanded to five volumes, with editions being published until 1734. A hand-colored atlas of unprecedented scope and baroque artistry, with technically skilled charts by renowned engraver Claes Janszoon, the Zee Atlas came to be considered one of the most influential atlases of the late 17th century. Though it was but one of many nautical chartbooks published during that time, it is the only one to be cited by the website of the Utrecht University Library of Special Collections as truly being ‘new” and “expanded,” claims routinely made by its predecessors.

The Zee Atlas is viewed today as a historic milestone in maritime cartography, arguably the best reflection of what was then the extent of European knowledge in the area of nautical chartbooks; perhaps owing to practical wear and tear, few copies of the Zee Atlas have been recorded as having survived. In Germany, one of the few existing editions resides in the Darmstadt University and State Library.

Map: Paskaert Johannes van Keulen’s Paskaert is a double-page chart of the North Atlantic Ocean that delineates the coastal areas of portions of North America, South America, and Africa, while providing intersecting oceanic navigational routes through the use of rhumblines. It is important to note that, in this chart, magnetic north on the compass rose appears in the viewer’s sightline as facing east, requiring the viewer to “flip” the chart in order to be directionally aligned with the proper geographic vantage point.

Paskaert can effectively be divided into two halves, “upper” and “lower.” The “top” half of the map features the northeastern segment of South America, the West Indies, and the northeastern seaboard of North America, with extensive place-name detailing along the coastlines of “Venizula” (Venezuela), “Guaiana” (Guyana), and “Brasil” (Brazil), and including the islands of “Espanola” (Hispaniola) and Porto Rico (Puerto Rico), as well as Long Island, the Cape Cod peninsula, the eastern portion of Canada (“Nova Francia”) and I. Barmuda (Bermuda, surrounded by markers presumably representing the reefs). the map collection of

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Interestingly, though by 1680 (the date of the chart’s publication) the Dutch had ceded control of New York to the British, the area north of New York City is still labeled “Nieu Nederland” (New Netherlands) on the chart.

The “bottom” portion of the chart features the northern and northwestern coastlines of Africa, in particular the area labeled “Barbaria” (the former European term for the coastal regions of present-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya), and what today is the Western Sahara and Mauritania. As with the adjoining chart of the North Atlantic, there is substantial detailing of coastal place-names, and the geographic contours are reproduced with a considerable degree of exactitude. Also appearing are the “Canarise Eylanden” (Canary Islands), the “Vlamse Eylanden” (The Azores) and “Madera” (Madeira). Additionally, a rendering of the western portion of the Iberian Peninula (labeled “Hispangian”) depicts the Atlantic coastline of what is contemporary Portugal and Spain.

In the tradition of the Golden Age of Dutch Cartography, the title cartouche of Paskaert — located in the upper left corner of the chart — is richly embellished in the baroque style, capped by two winged cherubs sitting astride the top, holding open a book so that the pages appear, perhaps to indicate the chartmaker’s revelation of newfound knowledge.

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Johannes Van Keulen (1654-1715) Pas Kaart van I. La Barmuda Anders Sommer Ilands Amsterdam / circa 1682

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Van Keulen Family History: Founded in Amsterdam in 1678 by Dutch cartographer and maritime publisher Johannes van Keulen (1654-1715), the firm In de Gekroonde Lootsman (In the Crowned Pilot) grew to become one of the most important publishers of nautical atlases and pilot books in all of Holland, at a time when the Netherlands was still the center of this activity. Van Keulen began by registering with the Amsterdam Booksellers’ Guild as a “bookseller and cross-staff maker,” and in 1680 was granted an “official privilege” from the States of Holland and West Friesland to print pilot guides and sea atlases. His entrance into the world of maritime publishing came at a time when many of the 17th century’s most important Dutch nautical map and chart makers had either ceased operations or were nearing the end of their careers, giving van Keulen the opportunity to obtain their stocks, copperplates, and privileges; his procurement in 1693 of the stock of Hendrik Doncker — whose highly accurate and original work was frequently copied — is often cited in historical overviews as van Keulen’s most pivotal early acquisition.

Van Keulen gained early recognition with the publication in 1680 of the first part of his ZeeAtlas (Sea Atlas), one of many nautical atlases published in the second half of the 17th century, but the only one to be cited by the website of the Utrecht University Library of Special Collections as being ‘new” and “expanded,” claims routinely made by its predecessors. The following year, van Keulen followed up his intial success with the publication of the first volume of his De Nieuwe Groote Lichtende Zee-Fakkel (New Shining Sea Torch), a five volume sea pilot book published between 1681-1684 (with a sixth volume added in 1753) that brought his firm lasting international acclaim. Featuring charts compiled by cartographer Claes Jansz Vooght (1638-1696) and original artwork by renowned illustrator/engraver Jan Luyken (1649-1712), the hand-colored Zee-Fakkel was one of the most successful nautical publications in both the 17th and 18th centuries, with numerous editions being printed until the year 1783. Over the years translations appeared in French, English, Spanish, and Italian, with new charts constantly added and the original ones revised to reflect updated information.The volume published in 1682 was the first one in which a map of Bermuda appeared (Pas Kaart van I. la Barmuda), one of only two large nautical charts of the island produced by Dutch cartographers in the last quarter of the 17th century. Moreover, with the Golden Age of Dutch Cartography soon to pass into history, and along with it the kind of artistic aesthetic for which its maps became known, Pas Kaart van I. La Barmuda’s original artwork by Jan Luyken is one of the final examples of the era’s devotion to highly skilled decorative enhancements.

The success of both the Zee-Atlas and the Zee-Fakkel not only put the van Keulen publishing concern on firm footing, but set the stage for a cartographic dynasty that would remain under the map collection of

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van Keulen family leadership until the middle of the 19th century. With Johannes’ death in 1715, control of the firm passed to his son, Gerard van Keulen (1678-1726), a talented engraver and mathematician who in 1706 had been appointed Hydrographer to the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which at the time was the world’s most powerful corporation (often acting as a “stand-in” for the Dutch government abroad). In addition to publishing new editions of his father’s works, Gerard expanded the flourishing business, adding books on every aspect of geography, navigation, and nautical matters to the firm’s chart making foundation. He also produced hundreds of manuscript charts, which are now maintained in a number of important European collections. In 1726 Gerard’s son, Johannes ll van Keulen (1704-1770), took over the business. He was appointed “Chartmaker to the Dutch East India Company” in 1743, in effect giving the van Keulen charts the status of being the “official” charts of the Dutch government, a distinction lasting until the 1799 dissolution of the VOC. In 1753, Johannes completed his grandfather’s work, publishing the sixth and final volume of the Zee-Fakkel. This volume contained the previously kept secret cartography of The East India Archipelago, which had been collected and used exclusively by the VOC. (Until then, the maps had never been publicly distributed or sold. Merchants were required to return the maps to the VOC after each journey in order to keep the trade routes secret.) Jan de Marre, examiner of the Amsterdam Chamber of the VOC, provided Johannes II with the data for the Zee-Fakkel’s sixth volume, and it is also believed that de Marre was involved in the van Keulen firm’s decision to start production of the newly invented Hadley’s Octant in 1744.

Following the death in 1770 of Johannes II, the company was run by his widow and their two sons, Cornellis Buys van Keulen (1736-1778) and Gerard Hulst van Keulen (1733-1801). By this time, the firm also owned an anchor factory, which was managed separately. In 1778, upon the death of his brother Cornellis, Gerard Hulst van Keulen assumed leadership of the firm, adding sextants to its inventory for sale. Gerard Hulst van Keulen was one of the three original members of the “Dutch Commission for Longitude at Sea”, installed by the Dutch Admiralty in 1787, and in 1788, he published the first Dutch Nautical Almanac, with annual editions appearing until 1885. When he died in 1801, his widow ran the firm until 1810, at which time their son, Johannes Hulst van Keulen (d.1844) became the last van Keulen to head the firm; with his death in 1844, Jacob Swert — a well known cartographer and expert on navigation already in the company’s employ — became director, the first time an outsider had alone guided van Keulen interests. This handover came at a time of sweeping changes in the world of navigation: As a result of the transition from sailing to steam shipping, the number of ships and seafarers — and consequently the number of buyers of maps, instruments and books — decreased substantially, seriously impacting the firm’s fortunes. In 1885, following over 200 years of operation — most of them at the forefront of maritime cartography — what remained of In de Gekroonde Lootsman closed its doors, its assets dispersed at auction. the map collection of

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Map: Pas Kaart Van I. La Barmuda Anders Sommer Islands Produced in 1682, Johannes van Keulen’s Pas Kaart Van I. La Barmuda Anders Sommer Ilands (Map of Bermuda Otherwise Known as the Sommer Islands) is one of the earliest sea charts of Bermuda, and has been called by at least one noted map expert “the most decorative sea chart of Bermuda published in the 17th century.” It was first displayed in the 1682 volume of Van Keulen’s acclaimed six-volume sea pilot book De Nieuwe Groote Lichtende Zee-Fakkel (New Shining Sea Torch), a work that saw editions published as late as 1783, with Pas Kaart Van I. La Barmuda holding the distinction of possessing the longest production-history (over 100 years) of any map of the island.

Essentially an enlarged and more elegant version of the Bermuda chart of 1675 (Pascaert van’t Eijland la Bermuda of Sommer Islands) composed by Arent Roggeveen and Jac Robyn (IMAGE #16), Van Keulen’s Pas Kaart Van I. La Barmuda was most likely conceived

by Claes Jansz Vooght, a Dutch mathematician, surveyor, and cartographer who partnered with the van Keulan publishing firm, with many of the maps in the Zee Fakkel bearing his name.The artwork and engraving was done by Jan Luyken, a Dutch engraver, illustrator and poet renowned in his time not only for his cartographic efforts but for his illustrations depicting religious persecution.

For toponymic purposes, van Keulen dispenses with the Latin contained in Roggeveen/ Robyn’s Pascaert van’t Eijland la Bermuda of Sommer Islands, using only English. Similar to the Roggeveen/Robyn effort, however, Pas Kaart Van I. La Barmuda forgoes the tribal divisions and land ownership information that played such a critical role in the maps of Speed/Norwood (IMAGE #4) descent, choosing instead to emphasize the various smaller islands and bodies of water, which are clearly and handsomely detailed, as are the fortifications in Southhampton Harbour (replete with identifying imagery), keeping in mind that the island’s British overseers were in general very secretive about the full extent of Bermuda’s fortifications against attack throughout the entirety of the 17th and 18th centuries. The crisscrossing web of rhumblines is one of the map’s most prominent characteristics, though perhaps its most visually striking component is the artistry of Jan Luyken’s vignettes, featuring cherubs superimposed atop the title- and scale-bar cartouches, with the cartouches represented as rocks rising above the water and, in the case of the title cartouche, providing the cherubs with protection against a dangerous sea creature; Luyken’s use of color and his attention to detail are in the finest tradition of decorative embellishments that were a staple of the Golden Age of Dutch Cartography, an era that was rapidly drawing to a close at the time of this map’s publication.

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Allain Manesson Mallet (1630-1706) Canada ou Novelle France Paris / 1683 90

Allain Manesson Mallet (1630-1706) was a notable French cartographer and engineer who began his career as a soldier in King Louis XlV's army, rising through the ranks to become one of France’s top military engineers and eventually earning a spot as a professor of geography and mathematics in the court of the French king, where Mallet helped lay the foundations of geography and geometry in Europe.

Mallet’s seminal publication was the Description de L’Univers, a five-volume work first published in 1683 that is regarded as one of the 17th century’s most informative compendiums of knowledge about the ancient and modern worlds, featuring both antiquarian and modern maps, star maps, and prints and historical analysis of the customs, religions, and types of government of the many nations included in the text. The book continued to be published until early in the 18th century. A skilled artist, Mallet himself drew most of the illustrations engraved for the book, as well as for his highly distinctive maps.

Famed French playwright and novelist Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) paid homage to Mallet with a mention in his 1847 novel, The Vicomte of Bragelonne.

Map: Canada ou Nouvelle France Originally appearing in Allain Manesson Mallet’s classic 17th century publication, “Description de L’Universe,”Canada ou Nouvelle France is fashioned in Mallet’s distinctive style and extends as far north as the “Terres Arctiques Incognues” (Unknown Arctic Lands), the “Cercle Polaire” (Polar Circle), Greenland, and Canada, moving southward to cover the northeastern seaboard of North America in highly detailed fashion (using French toponyms), down to the Virginia/Chesapeake Bay region. The northwesternmost Great Lake, “Lac Superieur,” (Lake Superior), is shown in open-ended fashion, suggestive to some cartographic scholars of an allusion to the long sought-after “Northwest Passage,” still viewed as a possibility at the time of the map’s creation. To the right of the title cartouche —underneath which portions of “Floride” (Florida) can be viewed — an outsized image of the “I. des Bermudes” (Bermuda) is rendered.

Mallet himself is believed to be the artist responsible for the vignette located in the upper left portion of the map which depicts the continent’s indigenous inhabitants.

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John Seller (c.1632-1697) The Western Ocean London / 1686

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John Seller (c.1632-1697) was an English cartographer, publisher, and instrument maker. He is one of the most important figures of early English cartography, perhaps bestknown today as the first Englishman to endeavor to challenge the primacy of the Dutch mapmaking firms, such as Blaeu, Jansson, and Hondius.

No other London publisher of Seller’s time period offered the kind of comprehensive stock that he did, with his array of publications including a celestial atlas, two terrestrial atlases, a sea-atlas, several coasting pilots, and a large number of separately-issued charts.

Additionally, he published numerous navigation handbooks, almanacs, pocket books, and miniature sea-atlases, as well as producing a plethora of mathematical and navigational instruments and tools.

However, for much of his career Seller teetered between solvency and bankruptcy, with his ambition getting the better of his ability to bring economically feasible projects to conclusion. He was also found guilty of conspiring to kill King Charles ll, and was reprieved only at the behest of the King’s brother, James, the Duke of York, though Seller was later named Hydrographer to the King, serving not only under Charles ll but also James ll and William lll (in the process being granted a 30-year monopoly on the publication of nautical atlases in England.) Additionally, Seller has been accused by his critics of threading the line between derivation and plagiarism in the production of many of his charts, though to be fair, originality was hardly the strong suit of cartographers of this period. To that end, the Wardington Sale Catalog published the following note in reference to the 1671 edition of The English Pilot: “Although the use of outdated Dutch plates has sparked a certain amount of moral outrage from later commentators, and also contemporaries such as Pepys, it is worth pointing out that the first Blaeu terrestrial atlases were based around existing plates acquired from another publisher, and several other Dutch and English publishers went on to build successful businesses in the same way, so Seller was by no means exceptional in seeking a shortcut route to compiling an atlas, while the additional suite of charts prepared by Seller is a valuable contribution to the mapping of these coasts. Perhaps, if he had not been so unsuccessful, history would give him far greater credit than he has received so far.”

Seller’s most historically consequential project was the above-referenced English Pilot (IMAGE #41), a series of chartbooks that was the first of its kind to be produced in Great Britain (beginning in 1671), whose publication would continue until the end of the 18th century, in the process becoming enduringly popular with English mariners. Unfortunately for Seller, his financial woes forced him to effectively sell the publication rights the map collection of

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to two of his acolytes, William Fisher and John Thornton (IMAGE #22) who would take control of the series after the first two volumes, ultimately producing the famed Book lV, the first English sea atlas to chart the coastlines of the Americas, “from Hudson's Bay to the River Amazones,” as the titlepage states, inclusive of the West Indies and Bermuda.

Besides The English Pilot, Seller’s other best-known work is his Atlas Maritimus, a maritime atlas containing hydrographical descriptions of most of the known world’s sea coasts, comparable in intent to the work of Dutch publishers such as Jan Jansson (IMAGE #11) and Frederick de Wit. First published in 1675, and using mostly adapted continental sources (as did The English Pilot), the Atlas Maritimus is primarily composite in make-up, thus being assembled according to the wishes of the individual purchasers, though it was built around a standard format. Accordingly, the content of the various editions can vary considerably, making it difficult to adjudge it with regard to a signature issue.

Through many of his financially-trying circumstances, Seller resorted to the strategy of issuing miniature versions of his folio atlases, as he did with the New System of Geography (1684). This afforded him the opportunity to direct previously assembled geographical materials toward the significant demographic unable to afford folio atlases – a method first pioneered by Abraham Ortelius. Perhaps owing to their size, these pocket atlases have had low (recorded) survival rates, hence their rarity today.

The respect with which Seller’s contributions to British cartography were held is perhaps signified by the words of his friend, the Chief Secretary the Admiralty and famous diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), who said “till Seller fell into it we had very few draughts, even of our own coasts, printed in England, but all our English masters, even upon our own coasts, as well as elsewhere, sailed by the Waggener printed by the Dutch.” Additionally, Seller’s wide range of knowledge was perhaps reflected in the fact that England’s Royal Society — the world’s oldest national scientific institution, founded in 1660 — saw fit to publish one of his letters, and by virtue of the fact that Sir Robert Hooke — the eminent English scientist, architect, and polymath — consulted Seller for his opinion on the subject of magnetic variation.

Ultimately, though many of Seller’s projects faltered, and his ambition exceeded his resources, over the course of his career Seller published an important range of maps, charts and atlases that undoubtedly advanced the English mapmaking trade into a prominent position within the European marketplace.

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Map: The Western Ocean This exceedingly rare colored chart depicts the Atlantic Ocean, most of South America, the eastern half of North America, the western portion of Africa, and Southern Europe.

It is virtually unrecorded in terms of its placement in public repositories, with the exception of one example that was part of a composite atlas (Atlas Maritimus) residing at the Samuel Pepys Library at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge.

The Western Ocean is based on a four-sheet sea chart by John Seller, John Thornton, William Fisher, J. Colson and J. Atkinson, that dates to 1678. The map itself was engraved

by John Seller in 1686, for placement in his composite chartbook, the Atlas Maritimus.

In the upper left corner of the chart, in the middle of the chart’s depiction of North America, is the royal coat of arms of King Charles ll of England. Below this crest, placed in the map’s rendering of South America, is a scale-of-distances cartouche flanked by a vignette consisting of what is presumably meant to be two indigenous inhabitants of the continent, with two examples of native wildlife (a ram-like animal and cat-like creature) sitting atop the cartouche. The title cartouche, placed inside the map’s representation of Africa, is surrounded by several angelic beings and topped by a winged cherub. A variety of animals is seen pacing the continent, including a lion, camel, and elephant. In the center of the map lies an elegant compass rose, intersected by an array of rhumbines.

An appropriately scaled image of “Bermudos” (Bermuda) is placed in a location commensurate with its distance to the eastern seaboard of America.

The cartographic partnership of “Jer Seller and Cha Price” (John Seller’s son Jeremiah and engraver Charles Price) produced later editions of The Western Ocean in the early 18th century, publishing both a variant that included their names below the title as well as one that had their imprint removed.

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John Thornton (1641-1708) The Iland of Bermudas London / 1689

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John Thornton (1641-1708) was a British engraver, chartmaker, and publisher who is regarded as one of the most important figures in the rise of Britain’s mapmaking industry during the late 17th century. The late William Ravenhill, the Reardon Smith Professor of Geography (Emeritus) at the University of Exeter, considered him “the most competent and distinguished chart-maker of his time in England.”

In 1656, Thornton was apprenticed to John Burston, a maker of manuscript maps and a prominent member of the “Thames School,” a group of maritime chartmakers noted for their elegantly drafted manuscript charts, who today are recognized as critically important forerunners of Britain’s printed mapmaking industry. Hand drawn on vellum, and for the most part composed with colorful scales and intricate compass roses, the charts of the Thames School were called “beautiful to the modern eye” by cartographic historian Alaistair Maeer, and were focused primarily on the practical business of navigating, tending not to include topographical detailing of inland features. Thornton went on to become an important member of the group, and emerged as the first — and one of the only — chartmakers associated with the Thames School to make a successful conversion to printed maps, reputedly earning the designation of Official Cartographer to the East India Company and Cartographer to the Hudson Bay Company (though he is not mentioned in the records of either company). He also had a close relationship with the Lords of Trade, the official body which oversaw England's colonies in North America and the West Indies, which gave him access to important manuscripts. Over the course of his career Thornton worked both independently and in association with some of the premier British cartographers and publishers of his era, including Herman Moll, Robert Morden, James Clark, Robert Greene, Philip Lea, and Richard Mount.

During the first half of the 1670s Thornton published several highly-regarded charts relating to the Americas, and in 1677 became part of a group that went into partnership with the noted but financially troubled British cartographer and publisher John Seller (IMAGE #21), the Hydrographer to the King and originator of the famed English Pilot (IMAGE #41) series of chartbooks, which were mainly based on previously published Dutch plates, and which became the main navigational tool for British mariners for nearly a century. Though the partnership was dissolved after just two years, Thornton and one of the other partners, the successful maritime publisher William Fisher, would together produce in 1689 The English Pilot, Fourth Book, the first English sea atlas exclusively devoted to Britain’s colonies in North America and the West Indies, which provided sailing directions as well as maps to enable seafarers to make their way to and from the Caribbean. Thornton would go on to publish the first printed sea atlas of Southeast Asia and the East Indies,The English Pilot, Third Book, in 1703. Both atlases were enormously the map collection of

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popular and resulted in numerous subsequent editions being published into the 1760s.

In addition to his groundbreaking chartbooks, Thornton published a number of significant maps depicting Britain’s colonial holdings in America, including: A mapp of Virginia, Mary-land, New-Jarsey, New-York, & New England (1679, with Robert Greene); A Map of Some of the South and Eastbounds of Pennsylvania (1681, with John Seller); A Portraiture of the City of Philadelphia, (1681), A New Map of the English Empire, in the Continent of America (1685), and A Map of the Province of Pennsilvania (1687, all with Thomas Holme, who laid out the original plan for the city of Philadelphia.)

Upon Thornton’s death in 1708, he bequeathed the entirety of his cartographic stock to his son Samuel, who continued to republish his father’s work until his own death four years later, at which time the stock was acquired by the Mount and Page publishing concern (IMAGE #41).

Today, Thornton’s distinctively styled charts are considered among the most important of that era, and with only an estimated 100 or so printed charts still extant, are highly prized by collectors.

Map: The Iland of Bermudas In 1689 John Thornton, in association with publisher William Fisher, paired Bermuda and Barbados on a single plate for inclusion in their seminal sea atlas The English Pilot, Fourth Book, which charted the West Indies region, and was the first English sea atlas to exclusively cover the Americas.

As Bermuda’s idiosyncratic shape required more space on the page than islands with less complex geographic contours, a slightly larger portion of the plate containing both The Iland of Bermudas and The Iland of Barbados is devoted to Bermuda, this despite the fact that, at the time, the larger, rich-in-sugar island of Barbados was more important to the Crown than Bermuda.

The Iland of Bermudas was based primarily on the 1675 Roggeveen/Robyn map of the island, Pascaert van’t Eijland la Bermuda of Sommer Islands (IMAGE #16). Like that map, Thornton dispenses with the delineation of land ownership and tribal divisions, as well as the topographical detailing of inland features, choosing instead to concentrate its labeling on bodies of water, ancillary islands, and coastal forts. Also, like that map, it misnames “Brackish Pond” as “Brackish Point,” as well as (unlike the earlier map) inthe map collection of

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correctly engraving “Sandy’s Fort” as “Sandwich Fort,” though it does modernize what had been “Turkle Bay” to “Great Turtle Bay.” As was the case with so many of the 17th century maps and charts of Bermuda, the delineation of the reefs surrounding the island is considered woefully inadequate, especially to the north and west. In contrast to the Dutch charts upon which The English Pilot was based, early editions of The English Pilot contained no associated text, which could have served to ameliorate the problem of the dangers posed by the reefs; perhaps this neglect reflected the feeling that the dangers were considered to be so well known that there was no need for explicit warnings; or possibly, it was a purposeful omission to guard against the advances of aggressors. Later editions of The English Pilot finally inserted firm warnings to mariners about the unforgiving nature of Bermuda’s waters. In this regard, a text note from the 1755 edition of the map published by Mount and Page states “I would advise everyone to take special care upon this Coast, for there are an abundance of Rocks which are very dangerous: Likewise hereabouts it is very subject to tempestuous Weather.” It would not be until the Royal Navy lost major ports on the continent’s eastern seaboard in the aftermath of the American Revolution that a major hydrographic undertaking in the form of Thomas Hurd’s survey was deemed necessary, with British mariners in the interim primarily making do with Thornton’s chart, which was certainly as good as any others in use at the time. The fact remains, however, that an untold number of wrecks may have been avoided had Hurd’s survey taken place a century earlier.

The unembellished elegance of The Iland of Bermudas’ title cartouche, scale bar, and compass rose — as well as the uncluttered nature of its rhumblined oceanic background — may very well reflect the style of draftsmanship gleaned by Thornton in his early days as a member of the “Thames School” of manuscript mapmakers, who were vital progenitors of later British chartmakers. It is worth noting, however, that Thornton did at times imbue his charts with rich coloring and decorative vignettes.

The 1689 printing of The Iland of Bermudas — included in Book Four of the English Pilot series — is actually the second state of the map. The first was issued ca. 1677, and contains the imprint of John Thornton, John Seller, William Fisher, James Atkinson, and John Colson. An example of this issue can be found at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, as part of the custom-built atlas assembled around 1683 by William Blathwayt, the Secretary of the powerful British Lords of Trade group, an administrative body formed by King Charles ll in 1675 to provide advice to the King’s Privy Council about how to best manage the growing number of English colonies. The chart’s presence in this special atlas indicates the import with which the chart was held at the time by key members of the group. the map collection of

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The Illand of Bermudas was reissued in 1698 and again from 1704-1706 (and possibly other years). In 1716 the plate was cut in two to enable Bermuda and Barbados to be featured separately.

Today, early editions of this map are exceedingly rare.

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Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (1650-1718) Le Bermude, Dedicate All’Illustrissimo Sig:r Abbate Isidore Bernardi (Bermuda, dedicated to the most illustrious Abbot, Isidore Bernardi) Venice / c.1692

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Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (1650-1718) is widely regarded as the 17th century’s preeminent Italian cartographer and globemaker.

At the age of 10 Coronelli was apprenticed to a woodblock engraver, and at 15 became a novice in a Franciscan monastery. He was educated in Venice and Rome, and published the first of 140 books at the age of 16. In the 1670s, after studying theology and astronomy and having earned a doctorate in the former, he turned his attention to geography, and was commissioned by the Duke of Parma to create a set of globes, which brought him to the attention of the influential Cardinal d’Estrées, who summoned him to Paris to create two huge globes for King Louis XIV. As a result of his work for the king — the globes are today generally regarded as two of the most magnificent globes ever produced — he was named France’s Royal Cartographer, which led to a large demand for his work on the part of European royalty and elite society. Upon his return to Venice in 1705 he was named Cosmographer to the Republic of Venice, and founded what would become the world’s oldest surviving geographical society, the Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti, which produced a printed version of his Paris globes. The society was named for Jason and the Argonauts — the ancient adventurers who set out to find the golden fleece — and counted among its members princes, ambassadors and cardinals. In 1691 Coronelli issued his monumental atlas, Atlante Veneto, which was intended to be an extension of Blaeu’s Atlas Maior. Published in thirteen folios and divided into three major parts, the atlas provided a wealth of detail about hydrography, geography, and astronomy, both ancient and contemporary. Its maps were engraved in a bold style and printed on fine white paper, the more important ones spread over two sheets, allowing for great detail. Also appearing in the Atlante Veneto was Coronelli’s American Settenrionale, a richly embellished map that was one of the late 17th century’s most influential maps of North America and a source of a significant amount of new information about the American West.

Before his death in 1718, Coronelli produced six volumes of a planned comprehensive encyclopedia, the Biblioteca Universale Sacro-Profana. Today, many of Coronelli’s globes — including the two he produced for King Louis XIV — reside in prestigious public venues all over the world.

Map: Le Bermude, Dedicate All’Illustrissimo Sig:r Abbate Isidore Bernardi (Bermuda, dedicated to the most illustrious Abbot, Isidore Bernardi) First published c. 1692 in Vincenzo Coronelli’s Corso Geografico Universale — the second part of his acclaimed atlas Atlante Veneto —the map Le Bermude, Dedicate All’Illustrissimo the map collection of

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Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (1650-1718) Le Bermude, Dedicate All’Illustrissimo Sig:r Abbate Isidore Bernardi (Bermuda, dedicated to the most illustrious Abbot, Isidore Bernardi) Venice /c. 1692 For biographical information on Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, see the preceding Image #23.

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Sig:r Abbate Isidore Bernardi (Bermuda, dedicated to the most illustrious Abbot, Isidore Bernardi) is part of a large-sheet composite map containing four separate maps, which, in addition to Bermuda, includes maps of Newfoundland, Jan Mayen Island in the Arctic Ocean, and “Frislanda,” the latter most likely a representation of Iceland. In size and alignment, the Bermuda map has been compared to the well-known, so-called “Hondius-Cloppenburg” map of 1630 (IMAGE #7), but, unlike the latter map, does not contain a background map depicting Bermuda’s position relative to Virginia, the result being the possible misimpression that, like the other three islands comprising the map, Bermuda is located in icy northern waters. Dispensing with the detailed plot divisions and list of shareholders that were featured prominently in earlier maps, Coronelli only demarcates the island’s division into tribes. Historical analysis does, however, suggest that the map’s toponomy was drawn from one of the previously published Speed-based maps, though Coronelli in several instances inserts Italianized versions of place-names, such as “Isola S. [an] Giorgio” and “Forte Carlo” (Charles Fort).

Additionally, Bermuda is positioned on the map as lying within what is termed the Mare Della Nuova Francia (Sea of New France, i.e., Canada), another potential source of confusion as to Bermuda’s position in the Western Atlantic Ocean.

For some observers the most striking aspect of Coronelli’s map is its titlepiece, which appears to rest upon a set of lion’s paws, and is surrounded by baroque-style scrollwork.

Atop the cartouche is a coat of arms that is surmounted by a broad-rimmed clerical hat with 12 tassels, denoting the wearer is an abbot. (Coronelli himself was a highly respected clergyman within the Franciscan order, attaining the position of Father-General of the Order.) Though the island’s southern reefs are noted, the map’s tight eastern and western borders prevent a more extensive delineation.

In addition to Le Bermude, Coronelli produced another, less historically consequential map of Bermuda in 1706. Titled I Bermude, it first appeared in his Teatro della Guerra del P. Coronelli (Coronelli’s “Theatre of the War,” an example of which exists in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University). Bermuda also appeared — in more miniature form — on various other Coronelli maps and globes. It is perhaps significant to point out that Coronelli’s Bermuda maps were some of the last to be published before Bermuda ceased to become an object of fascination for many major cartographers. Indeed, for most of the 17th Century, mapmaking efforts had been devoted to producing substantial and highly decorative depictions of the island, based primarily on Richard Norwood’s survey map of 1622, which was published by John Speed in 1627 (IMAGE #4). Several of these cartographic derivations enjoyed aesthetic and commercial success, shaping and reinforcing the image of Bermuda as a special, near-providential outpost. During this the map collection of

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period, Bermuda enjoyed a cartographic prominence disproportionate to its actual geopolitical import. Once interest in the island on the part of the world’s atlas-purchasing demographic faded, however, Bermuda slipped into a long period of obscurity, ironically just as the islanders were making a name for themselves as the preeminent shipbuilders and merchants of the Western Atlantic and the Caribbean.

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IMAGE #24 is a colored, part-sheet version of the composite map that comprises the prior image (IMAGE #23), with the preceding map made up of Bermuda, Newfoundland, Jan

Mayen Island in the Arctic Ocean, and “Frislanda” (in all probability a likeness of Iceland).

In IMAGE #24, the engraving plate is composed exclusively of the rendering of Bermuda as it appeared on the composite map, with color added.

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Johann Ulrich Muller (1633-1715) Virginien (Virginia) Ulm (Germany) / 1692 108

The map Virginien (Virginia) by Johann Ulrich Muller (1633-1715) — a German geographer and cartographer active in Ulm and Augsburg — is a miniature, colored reproduction of French cartographer Pierre Duval’s Carte de La Virginie (IMAGE #12), the latter map produced in Paris in 1659.

Virginien first appeared in the work for which Muller is primarily known: the pocket-atlas Geographia Totius Orbis Compendiaria, initially published in Ulm in 1692. The volume consisted of 103 miniature engraved maps, with all but one —the world map — using letterpress text underneath. The maps were engraved by members of the Augsburg-based Bodenehr family of engravers and publishers, one of the preeminent engraving concerns in Germany during the 17th and early 18th centuries, with the work believed to be done

by Gabriel Bodenehr and his brother, Georg Conrad Bodenehr (The atlas’s allegorical frontispiece is signed by Georg Conrad.)

Besides the double-page world map, the atlas consists of 52 maps relating to Europe, 16 to Asia, 16 to Africa, two depicting the Arctic and Antarctic, and 16 devoted to America (including a plate depicting California as a large island).

An expanded small-format edition of Muller’s 1692 atlas was published in 1702, under the title Neu aussgeffertigter kleiner Atlas. It was published in both Ulm and Frankfurt, by Georg W. Kuehnen and Johann Philipp Andrea, respectively. These editions are today extremely rare, and even rarer is a virtually unrecorded edition issued at around the same time by Gabriel Bodenehr, titled Atlas Minor sive Orbis Terrae.

The image of Bermuda contained in Muller’s map is, except for its coloration, the same as the one in Duval’s. However, in Muller’s variant, Bermuda appears at the bottom of the plate in the form of a traditional inset map, while in Duval’s version, the island hangs like a banner in the upper right portion of the map. The two states of the map are also titled differently: Muller calls his image “I. Bermudes,” while Duval names his “Isles Bermudes.”

In addition toVirginien and its associated I. Bermudes, many of the other maps in Muller’s atlas are based on the previously published work of Pierre Duval.

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Heinrich Scherer (1628-1704) Nova Anglia (New England) Munich / c.1699 110

Heinrich Scherer (1628-1704) was a German cartographer, geographer, engraver, and publisher whose Atlas Novus — produced between 1698 and 1710 — is considered one of the most innovative cartographic achievements of the early 18th century, one which had a profound effect on the development of European mapmaking.

Until about 1680, Scherer was a Professor of Hebrew, Mathematics, and Ethics at the University of Dillingin. He then was named to prestigious positions as Official Tutor to the Royal Princes of Bavaria and Mantua. It was during his time as a tutor in Munich that he prepared the work which would earn him cartographic acclaim and recognition: the Atlas Novus.

Containing nearly 200 plates depicting all of the known world, and focusing on the activity of Catholicism’s Jesuit Order and the spread of Christianity throughout the globe, the Atlas Novus was comprised of seven separate volumes: Geographia Naturalis, Geographia Hierarchica, Geographia Politica, Tabellae Geographicae, Atlas Marianus, Critica Quadrapartita, and Geographia Artificialis. The maps were engraved by Leonard Hecknaeur, Joseph Montelegre, and Matthus Wolfgang, with each volume prefaced by an allegorical frontispiece created by these same engravers.

Scherer primarily employs two distinct approaches in the development of what has come to be termed “thematic cartography”: The first involves his use of highly decorative Catholic iconography and imagery. Rooted in the deeply conservative Catholic stronghold of Bavaria, and himself a Jesuit, Scherer draws heavily from the history of this religious order, one created in the early 16th century by St. Ignatius Loyola, which became the driving force behind the European Counter-Reformation. Charting the global revival and spread of the Catholic faith in the late 16th and early 17th centuries (largely accomplished through the work of Jesuit missionaries), Scherer fills his maps with religious images, and divides the world between “darkness” and “light,” between believers and non-believing “heathens.” This is in part accomplished through the use of shading, with Scherer darkening those areas not influenced by the Catholic faith and, alternatively, employing unshaded light to represent areas where Catholicism was either flourishing or gaining traction.

Though Scherer’s use of rich decorative elements on his maps is certainly in line with — and can be seen as an extension of — the kind of artistic embellishments characterized by the immediately preceding “Golden Age of Dutch Cartography,” it is also true that the Dutch cartographers incorporated the growth of trade and commerce into their imagery —such as the borders of Blaeu family maps that depicted views of cities and representations of the native inhabitants of each highlighted region — as well as drawing upon the mythology of the map collection of

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the classical Greek and Roman empires. Dutch cartographers put forth what has been called a “temporal” vision of the world, and only infrequently featured spiritual imagery.

Conversely, Scherer filled his maps with vibrant religious images, which often took the form of contemporary Jesuit saints and compassionate Madonnas.

Scherer introduced an additional paradigm shift by removing all political boundaries, borders, and place names from the maps of the Geographia Politica and Georgraphica Naturalis volumes of his Atlas Novus, and replacing them with straightforward relief maps that clearly depict mountains, forests, waterways, and river systems. In so doing, Scherer's atlas is viewed by many cartographic historians as an important milestone in the development of scientific and thematic cartography, providing a revolutionary alternative vision whereby a particular mapped area’s naturally occurring physical and geological characteristics are of paramount topographical concern.

Map: Nova Anglia (New England) Heinrich Scherer’s Nova Anglia originally appeared in his Atlas Novus on a sheet with a map of Great Britain, with Nova Anglia occupying the left side of the page.

Nova Anglia reflects an early 17th century visualization of the Atlantic seaboard, from Port Royal in Nova Scotia (also making note of Montreal to the west) down through easternmost Massachusetts (where the Cape Cod/Martha’s Vineyard/Nantucket Island region is clearly shown), and then to New York City (New Amsterdam) and Long Island (Lange Eyland). An early form of pictorial topography is utilized to extensively delineate mountainous areas and forests. Three sailing vessels are depicted off the coast, as is a mythical sea creature.

The lower right portion of the map features an outsized image of Bermuda (“I. Bermudes”).

Scherer’s rendering is devoid of place-names or any topographical features, and removes the portion of land that separates Harrington’s Sound from Castle Harbour, making it appear as a single body of water. The island’s location has been approximated to its general position east of the American mainland.

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Heinrich Scherer (1628-1704) America Borealis Munich / 1699 For biographical information on Heinrich Scherer, see the preceding Image #26.

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Heinrich Scherer’s America Borealis — a map of North America which first appeared in his monumental Atlas Novus — is an example of his groundbreaking “thematic” cartography, whereby the extensive topographical detailing of the continent (as well as the northern tip of South America) is primarily devoted to its natural features, with mountain ranges and forests represented pictorially, in addition to the enumeration of major lakes and rivers. (The few towns and cities that are noted are also identified pictorially.) America Borealis was the first of three nearly identical maps of North America that Scherer created.

Significant areas of interest on the map include: The promulgation of the myth of California being an island — a notion represented concurrently on many other major maps of the period — with the pictured area on this map being one of the most expansive cartographic embodiments of this idea; the suggested existence of a “Northwest Passage,” with an entrance at Hudson’s Bay eventually leading to the “Strait of Anian”, which here is located just north of California. (This concept was hypothesized as late as a 1726 map

by Johannes van Keulen [IMAGE # 19], showing the Strait also running north of “California Island,” with an accompanying note that stated “they say that one can come through this strait to Hudson Bay, but this is not proven.”); an early cartographic depiction of all five Great Lakes, though Lake Michigan is identified as “Lac d’ Illinois” (Lake Illinois); an outsized rendering of Bermuda (“I. Bermudes”), here depicted as a white, circular object surrounded by a cluster of similarly-sized shaded forms that perhaps represent the island’s reefs; a comprehensive charting of the numerous islands and extensive territorial area of the West Indies, with substantial topographical detailing applied to Cuba and Hispaniola; and the elaborate, allegorical artistry of the title cartouche, an example of Scherer’s thematic Catholic iconography, represented here as a Native American gazing up at a cloud, upon which stands the luminous “Virgin of Atocha” and the “Holy Infant of Atocha” (Madonna and Child).

Another recurring motif of Scherer’s maps that appears in American Borealis are the vignettes of sailing ships and mythological sea creatures, presumably symbolic of the dangers inherent in the trans-oceanic voyages of discovery to the New World.

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Edward Wells (1667-1727) A New Map of the most Considerable Plantations of the English in America (Inset: Bermudaz or Sommers Isles) Oxford / 1700-1701

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Edward Wells (1667-1727) was a British geographer, mathematician, theologian, and classical scholar who, in addition to his cartographic endeavors, authored numerous well-respected texts on a wide-range of scientific, mathematical, and ecclesiastical subjects, as well as translating classical and Christian texts from their Greek antecedents, with many of his books designed to serve an educational function, beginning with early works offering guidance on how to correctly use a globe and determine latitude and longitude.

Wells, the son of a vicar, began his formal education in 1680 at the historic Westminster School in London, then received a scholarship to attend Christ Church, Oxford, in 1686, graduating with a B.A. in 1690 and an M.A. in 1693. From 1691 to 1702 he taught mathematics and geography at Oxford, and it was during this period that he conceived the atlas, A New Set of Mapps both of Ancient and Present Geography, notable for their parallel maps of the ancient and contemporary worlds. The atlas, intended as a tool for instruction in geometry, was dedicated to one of his pupils, Prince William, the Duke of Gloucester and son of Queen Anne, whose chronic illnesses led to his death in July 1700, prior to publication of the atlas. The fact that the maps were composed for educational purposes may account for their lack of detail and decoration, instead relying on a simpler and sparser format. In the time period of its publication, A New Set of Mapps both of Ancient and Present Geography was popular with readers, with four additional editions printed well into the 1730s subsequent to its initial appearance in 1700. And perhaps due to what antiquarian map expert Michael Jennings has called their “unsophisticated charm,” the maps in this atlas have remained very popular with modern collectors.

Following publication of A New Set of Mapps both of Ancient and Present Geography, Wells would go on to conceive two more major cartographic works: A Historical Geography of the New Testament in 1708, and A Historical Geography of the Old Testament in 1711.

Map: A New Map of the most Considerable Plantations of the English in America (Inset: Bermudaz or Sommers Isles) First published in 1700, and reissued as late as 1738, A New Map of the most Considerable Plantations of the English in America, by Edward Wells, was primarily created to identify the English plantations in North America as they existed at the time of publication. The map covers the regions from modern day Maine to North Carolina, along the way identifying the major towns and colonies along the coast and rivers, though little detail of inland areas is noted. Besides the articulated area of coverage, the map includes inset maps of three British island colonies (Bermuda, Barbados, and Jamaica) as well as insets of Nova Scotia and the Carolinas. the map collection of

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The inset map of Bermuda shows the island on its natural northeast-southwest axis, and though the toponomy is minimal, several of the smaller islands are depicted, including St. Davids, St. George’s, Somerset, and Ireland. Southhampton Harbour and the Great Sound are also labeled, as is Tuckers Town, though the absence of St. George’s Town from the map arguably creates the misimpression that Tucker’s Town, rather than St. George’s, was the main habitation. Printed in the area of water off the southern coast is the sentence: The Greatest I. is reckoned 18 miles long and three broad. Also delineated are the reefs along the Island’s south shore.

The map’s engraver was Sutton Nicholls (1668-1729), famous for his panoramic views of the streets and squares of London and Westminster. Nicholls’ cartographic work included associations with several of the era’s most prominent mapmakers, including Philip Lea, Robert Morden, John Thornton, Henry Overton, Thomas Bowles, and John Bowles. The title cartouche he created for this map is considered one of his finest efforts, and includes the arms of, and dedication to, Prince William (Duke of Gloucester), the son of the future British monarch, Queen Anne. As a whole, the map’s clean, spartan engraving style has made it one of the most distinctive and recognizable efforts of the early 18th century.

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Pieter van der Aa (1659-1733) De Bermudes of Summer Eylanden tot de Keystogten afgepeyld, door de Engelzen derwaards gedaan Leiden / 1706

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Pieter van der Aa (1659-1733) was one of the most prominent and ambitious European publishers of his day, famous for turning both his own as well as pre-existing cartographic endeavors into sumptuously elegant and highly stylized engravings, almost always precisely detailed.

Born in the city of Leiden in The Netherlands, van der Aa was apprenticed to a local bookseller at the age of nine, and by 21, had established his own publishing, printing, and auctioneering concern. Taking advantage of Leiden’s position as one of the oldest and most important centers of higher learning in Europe (Leiden University was founded in 1575), van der Aa made a name for himself early on by publishing classical Latin texts that pertained to medicine and science. He was admitted into Leiden’s prestigious Booksellers Guild in 1677, and in 1692 was appointed as one of the Guild’s High Commissioners. By 1715, he had become the Official Printer of both the city of Leiden and Leiden University.

Over the course of his career, van der Aa produced thousands of highly decorative maps and numerous atlases, as well as narratives translated into Dutch that documented exploratory voyages to the New World. He was also the forerunner of the idea of separating border artwork from the map plate itself, allowing each map in a collection to display an elaborate border without the necessity of re-engraving the intricate plates, a technique used to great effect later in the century by publishers such as Brion de la Tour.

The pinnacle of van der Aa’s career came in 1729 with the publication of his La Galerie Agreable du Monde, essentially an illustrated atlas of the entire known world. A vast project consisting of 66 parts bound into 27 volumes, La Galerie utilized over 3,000 plates, covering not only maps, architectural plans, landscapes, and pictures, but also illustrating the customs, religions, and history of the peoples of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America; many of the plates were the product of other contemporary publishers, to which van der Aa added his signature decorative borders. (A complete copy cost the equivalent of a master craftsman’s annual salary.) Today, La Galerie is considered by many historians to be the apex of the field of “exotic geography” that flourished in Europe between the 1660s and 1730s. One of the few remaining sets resides in the Royal Library of Britain’s Royal Collection Trust.

Other well respected, voluminous works produced by van der Aa include the Cartes Des Itineraires Et Voyages Modernes (1706-1707), a collection of 28 volumes of travel accounts, illustrated with a series of small, but finely engraved maps, often with decorative pictorial titlepieces; as well as the Nouvel Atlas (1714, reissued in 1733 by Covens and Mortier [IMAGE #35], which contains the principal geographical maps of the most famous routes the map collection of

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for travelers, and of modern long-journey voyages that have been made both by sea and by land in all parts of the world, from the year 1246 to 1696.

Despite his prolific output, most examples of van der Aa’s work — including two highly regarded maps of the island of Bermuda — are today exceedingly rare and highly coveted by collectors.

Map: De Bermudes of Summer Eylanden tot de Keystogten afgepeyld, door de Engelzen derwaards gedaan Published in 1706, Pieter van der Aa’s small, foldout map of Bermuda originally appeared in one of the volumes of his compendium of travel narratives, collectively titled Naakeurige Versameling Der Gedenk-Waardigste Zee En Laudreysen Na Oost En West-Indies.

It was also part of his Cartes de Itineraires et Voiages Modernes, published both in 1706 and again in 1707, the latter edition being more decorative, with the map set in a new, elaborate outer frame. The map was reissued in 1714 and again in 1728 in van der Aa’s Nouvel Atlas.

Aligning the island on its natural northeasterly-southwesterly axis, De Bermudes of Summer Eylanden takes the unusual approach of printing the name of the map across the body of the main island, the ability to do so owing to the map’s near total lack of internal topographical detailing. However, the map’s draftsmanship is exemplary, and the place-names which are identified — East End forts, bays, and ancillary islands — are elegantly engraved and extremely legible. Along the map’s border, the gradations of latitude and longitude are set forth, relating not to Bermuda, but rather to the background map of Virginia, located on the map’s upper left corner.

Arguably, the most historically consequential element of De Bermudes of Summer Eylanden is the artistry of its decorative title vignette (in particular, the hand-colored edition). In the vignette’s foreground, a group of sailors disembark from a lifeboat upon a rockface, while in the middle-distance their comrades are wading toward shore, arms akimbo. In the background, the bow of their ship is sinking into the sea, fatally damaged by a large rock nearby (similar to the one in the coat-of-arms depicted in Speed Norwood 1627 (IMAGE #4). Despite the map’s central embellishment being a shipwreck (presumably the Henry May wreck of 1593, but perhaps the Sea Venture), no reefs are indicated as part of its topographical detailing, though this was a map produced as a supplement to a historical narrative rather than for navigational purposes.

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In 1729, van der Aa released a reworked version of Arnoldus Montanus’ 1670 Mappa AEstivarum Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum (IMAGE #14), engraving striking new embellishments onto the original plate. This variant was reissued by Covens and Mortier (IMAGE #35) as late as 1761.

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Johannes Loots (1665-1726) Paskaart van Westindien (inset: Eyland la Bermuda) Amsterdam / 1717

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Johannes Loots (1665-1726) was a prominent Dutch publisher of sea charts active from 1693 until his death in 1726. Born in Amsterdam, Loots began his career as a maker of mathematical and nautical instruments, serving an apprenticeship with famed cartographer/publisher Hendrik Doncker, whose charts were prized for their originality, accuracy, and constant revisions in an era when many charts were simply copied from other publishers. In 1693 Loots was accepted into Amsterdam’s prestigious Booksellers’ Guild, and in 1695 he began selling charts and atlases, setting up shop on the same street as Doncker and the famous Van Keulen firm. In 1707, following the dissolution of a joint venture with surveyor Claes de Vries and engraver Antoni de Winter, Loots sold over 100 charts based on the Mercator Projection system to Gerard van Keulen. That same year Loots acquired and subsequently published a rare set of charts of the North American and Caribbean coastlines — featuring engravings by eminent Dutch cartographer Arent Roggeveen (IMAGE #16) — that were deemed a significant improvement over other contemporary sea charts. Following Loots’ death, his widow and brother-in-law Isac Swigters continued to publish later editions of some of Loots’ charts, until Swigters sold the remainder of the Loots charts to Johannes van Keulen ll in 1750, whereupon Van Keulen re-engraved a number of the plates to denote the Van Keulen name.

Despite the presence of many well-known chart-makers in Amsterdam during this period, Loots’ business was known to have flourished: The final inventory of his shop numbered over 460 copperplates. However, in recent years his charts have proven to be on the whole exceedingly rare, with the AMPR having recorded a total of only five Loots charts being offered for sale at auction or in dealer catalogs for a period of 30 years prior to 2011.

Map: Paskaart van Westindien (inset: Eyland la Bermuda) First published in Johannes Loots’ chartbook New Great Sea-Mirrour in 1717, Paskaart van Westindien is an extremely rare and large sea chart of the southeastern seaboard of the North American continent, including Virginia, Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, the West Indies, and a large inset of Bermuda. The map’s detailing includes place-names along the northern coast of Cuba (rare for charts of this era), Jamaica, and “Espagnola” (present day Haiti/Dominican Republic), as well as labelling along the Floridian peninsula, the Bay of Tampa, and the coast of the Gulf of Mexico (present-day Texas), with its reach extending to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and the early 18th century’s geographic approximation of the Central American coastline. Navigation-aiding rhumblines crisscross the map, radiating out from three derivation points.

The map’s decorative features include a cartouche in the upper right corner that serves the map collection of

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as a dedication to the mayor of Amsterdam, Nicolaas Witsen, with a hand-colored rendering of Witsen’s coat-of-arms inlaid above the dedication. In the bottom left corner is a tabular cartouche that contains the map’s publication details as well as functioning as a resting base for the symmetrical, intricately crafted title cartouche. Paskaart van Westindien’s proportionality is further evidenced by the placement of its two compass roses, one in the Gulf of Mexico and one in the Atlantic, equidistant from the map’s western and eastern borders, respectively.

The map’s inset of Bermuda — Eyland la Bermuda — is a near-identical facsimile to Roggeveen/Robyn’s 1675 Pascaert van’t Eijland la Bermuda of Sommer Islands en de ander Eijlanden daer bij geleeghen (IMAGE # 16) , with Loots having purchased the plates for Robyn’s highly regarded charts in 1707. Eyland la Bermuda, like its predecessor, places the island on its natural axis, with minimal topographical detaling but with an extensive delineation of Bermuda’s northern reefs.

As is the case with most of Loots’ other charts, Paskaart van Westindien is extremely rare, with only two extant examples of the map known to currently reside in public repositories: One in the Sachsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden, Germany; and the other in the P.A. Leupe Collection in the Dutch National Archives.

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Henri-Abraham Chatelaine (1684-1743) Carte Qui Contient Une Description Des Iles &Terres Que Les Anglois Possedent Dans L’Amerique Septentrionale (Descriptive Map of the English Islands and Territories in North America), with Les Barmudes Amsterdam / 1719

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Henri Abraham Chatelain (1684-1743) was a French cartographer, publisher and Huguenot pastor whose career began in Paris before taking him to London, the Hague and Amsterdam. His seminal, seven-volume Atlas Historique — published in Amsterdam between 1705 and 1720 — is considered to be one of the finest examples of the Golden Age of French mapmaking. An ambitious and innovative work of encyclopedic proportions, the Atlas Historique combined elegant engraving and artwork with a wealth of historical, political, genealogical, cosmographic, and heraldic scholarship. Engraved by Chatelaine, the maps were primarily based on templates created by noted French cartographer Guillaume De L’Isle (1675-1726) — respected for his accuracy and knowledge of the newly explored Americas — and reflected the most reliably sourced travel accounts of the period. The extensive French text — credited to Nicholas Gueudeville, a historian and writer who was nicknamed the “unknown soldier of the Enlightenment”— is mostly printed in two columns with accompanying maps and illustrations interspersed on the page. Henri Chatelain published the Atlas Historique in combination with his father Zacherie Chatelain (d.1723) and his son, Zacharie Junior (1690-1754), with recent scholarship suggesting that Chatelaine’s son Zacherie Jr. was more heavily involved in compiling this momentous work than previously believed.

Designed for use by the general public, the Atlas Historique’s uncomplicated design and focus on the emergent discoveries and colonies in distant parts of the globe appealed to a European audience anxious to ascertain up-to-date, well-documented information about the early 18th century world’s rapidly evolving geopolitical contours.

Map: Carte Qui Contient Une Description Des Iles &Terres Que Les Anglois Possedent Dans L’Amerique Septentrionale (Descriptive Map of the English Islands and Territories in North America), with Les Barmudes Combining eight maps on a single sheet, with each image set neatly into blocks of calligraphic French text, this highly distinctive and coveted composite map first appeared in Henri Chatelaine’s masterful Atlas Historique. The individual maps — each well respected as a separate cartographic effort — together illustrate the most important English colonies of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The largest map is a highly detailed image of Jamaica, with the others representing Bermuda, Barbados, New York/New England, Virginia/Chesapeake Bay, the Carolinas, Nova Scotia, and an all-inclusive depiction of the West Indies/Gulf of Mexico region. The map is generally regarded as an excellent early example of the changing nature of mapmaking during this period, away from the decorative flourishes of the 17th century and toward more simplified and accurate, albeit still elegant, engravings. the map collection of

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The Bermuda map (Les Barmudes) is based on British cartographer and mapseller Robert Morden’s 1680 map of the island, itself a pared-down version of Speed/Norwood 1627 (IMAGE #4). Simply designed and sparsely detailed, with a limited delineation of the island’s reefs (only the southern reefs are indicated), Chatalaine’s map divides the island into tribes (though Sandys is misspelled as “Sands”) and employs letters and a reference key to identify the small number of place-names that are included (mainly forts), a feature both he and Morden appropriated from John Smith’s classic map of 1624 (IMAGE #3). The text was provided by the French historian and writer Nicholas Gueudeville, who, despite being praised for his overall work on the Atlas Historique, made a significant error here in his description of the island’s “natives,” writing that they appeared in public unclothed, with painted black circles under their eyes, floral crowns atop their heads and earrings made of fish or pig bone.

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Herman Moll (c.1654-1732) The Island of Bermudos Divided into its tribes, with the Castles, Forts & c. By H. Moll, Geographer, 1729 London / 1729

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Herman Moll (c.1654-1732) is regarded as one of the most consequential and wellknown cartographers working in the British mapmaking business in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, with an engraving style that is widely viewed as one of the most instantly recognizable in the history of cartography.

Born in either Germany or the Netherlands, Moll’s first major engraving project is believed to have been Moses Pitts’ English Atlas project of 1678, an effort that ultimately failed. Moll would go on to find work engraving for such noted cartographers as Grenville Collins, John Adair, and the Seller & Price firm. By the early 1680s he was publishing his own original maps and by the 1690s had set up his own enterprise. His highly skilled engravings became known for their decorative embellishments and intricate illustrations, as well as text panels offering commentary on the geography, inhabitants, and general features of the areas depicted. His work was also enhanced by information gleaned from a diverse array of acquaintances, a group that is believed to have included the scientist Robert Hooke, the archaeologist William Stuckley, the writers Jonathan Swift and Daniel Dafoe, and “buccaneers” William Dampier, Woodes Rogers, and William Hacke. Both Dafoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) were enhanced by maps and illustrations created by Moll, and Moll is even mentioned in Gulliver’s Travels, being referred to as the fictional Gulliver’s “worthy friend, Mr. Herman Moll.” Moll’s career was further aided by the English public’s interest in the expeditions of British mariners, which led to many publications chronicling such voyages, with Moll being an important contributor to many of these volumes, such as Dampier’s New Voyage Round the World (1697) and John Harris’ Navigantum (1705). As Moll’s biographer Ashley Baynton-Williams has written: “The list of books published from 1695 to 1708 containing a map or maps by Moll is a long one, with perhaps as many as half the books containing a single map published in this time frame having that map engraved by Moll.”

Perhaps Moll’s most famous work was The World Described. Completed in 1717, it is one of the most famous English atlases of the 18th century, and its maps were still being sold in 1796. Some of his other major works include the Atlas Geographus (1711), Twenty-Four New and Accurate Maps of the Several Parts of Europe (1706), Atlas Minor (1729), and A New Description of England and Wales (1724), the last one an atlas of county maps famous for its side panels and architectural drawings. His most well-known individual map was A New and Exact Map of the Dominions of the King of Great Britain on ye Continent of North America (1715), the first large-scale map to cartographically illustrate what was then the ongoing dispute between France and Great Britain over boundaries separating their respective American colonies. Cartographic historian Margaret Beck Pritchard has noted that "the map was the primary exponent of the British position during the period immediately following the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713." Numerous notations relating to territorial claims, Indian tribes, the fur trade, and the condition of the land cover the face of the map. This map also shows the early eighteenth-century postal routes in the British colonies, the map collection of

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and is frequently called the first American postal map. It is also referred to as the “Beaver Map,’ on account of its famous vignette — republished in other maps — showing beavers industriously at work in the vicinity of Niagara Falls.

Following Moll’s death in 1732, Thomas and John Bowles took possession of his stock and continued publishing his maps and atlases. Due to Moll’s popularity, his maps remained a fixture in the British marketplace for decades.

Map: The Island of Bermudos Divided into its tribes, with the Castles, Forts & c. By H. Moll, Geographer, 1729 Herman Moll produced two maps of Bermuda: The first one appeared in 1708 in English historian John Oldmixon’s book, The British Empire in America, and was titled A Map of ye Island of Bermudos, Divided into its Tribes, with the Castles, Forts, & c. By H.M. In this map Bermuda occupied the right side of a page shared with Carolina, with the island positioned on a straight up and down alignment, in order to accommodate the larger engraved image of Carolina on the same plate. Moll’s second version of Bermuda (IMAGE #32) — The Island of Bermudos Divided into its tribes, with the Castles, Forts & c. By H. Moll, Geographer, 1729 — was published in 1729 in his Atlas Minor (Small Atlas), on a shared plate with “Part of Providence Island” (modern-day Nassau, Bahamas). In this map the island is aligned similar to the Speed/Norwood 1627 (IMAGE #4) variants, though slightly tilted. A radiating burst of rhumblines emanates from the prominent compass rose, and the coastline is distinctly outlined. Though the map is generally considered to be stylishly crafted, Moll committed several errors in his engraving, including the insertion of a tiny grouping of non- existent islands off the island’s north shore, labelled “Bermudos or Sommers Island.” This mistake was most likely a consequence of a failure to understand that the placement of a smaller-scale representation of Bermuda behind the main, larger-scale image in John Speed’s 1627 Mapp of the Sommer Ilands (IMAGE #4) was an effort to show the relative position of Bermuda vis-a-vis the North American Atlantic seaboard, and not the inclusion of any additional actual islands; the same mistake was copied in several later cartographic efforts, including ones

by Homann’s Heirs (IMAGE #36), Georges-Louis Le Rouge, and Antonio Zatta (IMAGE #47). Additionally, there are a number of engraving peculiarities in which place-names are incorrectly labeled (i.e., “Davis Head” instead of Daniel’s Head; “Goat’s Island” instead of Gates Island; “Barley Bay” instead of Bailey’s Bay, etc.). Despite its inaccuracies, Moll 1729 is one of only three Bermuda maps included in King George lll’s Geographical Collection, the others being Lempriere 1738 (IMAGE #38) and Henricus Hondius’ 1633 Mappa AEstivarum Insularum alias Barmudas dictarum (IMAGE #9) .

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Henry Popple (d. 1743) (segment of) A Map of the British Empire in America London / 1733 For biographical information on Henry Popple, see Image #35.

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This image features a slice of the oceanic portion (“The Western or Atlantick Ocean”) of Henry Popple’s 1733 masterwork A Map of the British Empire in America (IMAGE #35), and includes the main map’s appropriately scaled rendering of Bermuda, shown here with an outline of the surrounding reefs, as well as the labeling of “The N.W. Rock,” so-named because of the tall rocks which formerly rose above the surface of the water. Also included are vignettes of sailing vessels — masts unfurled — set amidst blue-highlighted waters, and a striking, eight-pointed compass rose.

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Henry Popple (d.1743) or Covens & Mortier (Part-Sheet Reduction) A Map of the British Empire in America (Popple) or Les Principales Forteresses, Ports &c. De L’Amerique Septentrionale (Covens & Mortier) London / 1733 (Popple); Amsterdam / 1737 (Covens & Mortier) For biographical information on Henry Popple, and details on the Covens & Mortier publishing firm, see Image #35.

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This is a part-sheet map featuring four insets derived from either Henry Popple’s (d.1743) A Map of the British Empire in America (IMAGE #35), from 1733, or Coven and Mortier’s subsequently published Les Principales Forteresses, Ports &c. De L’Amerique Septentrionale (IMAGE #35), which in 1737 culled together 19 inset maps that originally appeared in Popple’s map. The colored variants included here are titled: New York and Perth Amboy Harbour; The Town and Harbour of Charlestown in South Carolina; Harbour of St. Augustine, and The Bermuda or Summer Islands (IMAGE #35).

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Covens & Mortier Les Principales Forteresses, Ports &c. de L’Amerique Septentrionale, with The Bermuda or Summer Islands (19 inset maps taken from Henry Popple’s A Map of the British Empire in America / 1733) Amsterdam / 1737

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Henry Popple (d.1743) is primarily known as the publisher of the landmark A Map of the British Empire in America (1733), the first large-scale printed map of North America, as well as the first to show all 13 colonies that would later form the United States.

The map is considered to be one of the two most important general maps of colonial America published during the 18th century (along with John Mitchell’s 1755 A Map of the British and French Dominions in North America).

Of Popple’s life, relatively little is known; his father had worked for the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations (the “Board of Trade”) — created to give advice to the Privy Council regarding the management of Britain’s colonies — with his brother William Popple lV acting as the Board’s solicitor and his older brother Alured the Third Secretary (both brothers would serve as governors of Bermuda). Henry Popple went on to act as agent on behalf of various West Indian colonial governments, and also served as UnderSecretary to the household of Queen Caroline.

Popple had no known formal training as a mapmaker, and his only prior experience before his map of 1733 was a small manuscript map of America he drew in 1727 (which included an impressionistic image of “Bermuda or Summer Islands”). But the period during which Popple was employed by the Board of Trade (late 1720s) was one in which boundary disputes between the colonial powers were growing, with an increasing need for maps substantiating English claims to lucrative territories, relative to the claims of France and Spain. In 1730, the Board began requesting detailed maps of the entirety of the overseas provinces and contiguous Franch and Spanish dominions.

Despite his lack of cartographic training and expertise, Popple was able to use his position at the Board of Trade to gain access to a number of important manuscript and printed sources and compile them into a map. The list of those mapmakers and maps that proved critical to Popple’s effort includes: Guillaume de L’Isle’s Carte de la Louisiane et du Copurs du Mississippi; Nicholas de Fer’s La France Occidentale dans L’Amerique Septentrionale; John Barnwell’s 1721 manuscript map of Britain’s Southeastern colonies; and Cadwallader Colden’s Map of the Country of the Five Nations.

Additionally, Popple relied on the abilities of several highly skilled cartographers to technically effectuate the project, including W.H. Toms and R.W. Seale (engraving), B. Baron (drawing), and, perhaps most importantly, Clement Lempriere (IMAGE #38) (drafting).

The terrain covered in A Map of the British Empire in America roughly corresponds to Newfoundland in the upper right corner; an area of the Great Plains several degrees west of the map collection of

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the Mississippi River in the map’s upper left corner (with identification of all the Great Lakes along the way); present-day Texas (and the Rio Grande), Central America, and the Gulf of Mexico in the bottom left corner; and the entirety of the West Indies and the northern tip of South America in the map’s center-bottom and bottom right corner. Also, the map contains illustrated views of New York City, Niagara Falls, Mexico City, and Quebec, and more than 20 inset maps and plans, including the islands of Bermuda and Barbados, as well as numerous harbours, inclusive of Boston, New York, Charleston, Havana, and Kingston (Jamaica).

Originally published in 1733, the map’s initial appearance took two forms: one state was a 20-sheet wall map, which fully assembled measured nearly eight feet square, with the other version being a single-sheet, so-called “key” map. The map took on a quasi-official status, with the Board of Trade granting it “the Approbation of the Right Honorable the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations,” and a copy being sent to each of the governments of every colony. The highly esteemed British Astronomer Royal Edmund Halley weighed in, stating, “I have seen the abovementioned Map, which as far as I am Judge, seems to have been laid down with great Accuracy, and to shew the Position of the different Provinces & Islands in that Part of the Globe more truly than any yet extant.” Benjamin Franklin ordered two for the Pennsylvania Assembly in May 1746, "one bound and the other in sheets.” (One of these was hanging in the Pennsylvania State House when the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4th, 1776.) Future President John Adams noted that Popple’s map was "the largest I ever saw, and the most distinct,” and copies of the map were later found in the private collections of several of the wealthier founding fathers, including George Washington’s.

Commercially, however, the map was not an immediate success, perhaps due in part to the unwieldy size of the 20-sheet map, but also because of its price: the subscription price was four guineas — compared to one guinea for John Mitchell’s eight-sheet Map of the British and French Dominions in North America — making Popple’s map a luxury item at a time when there was little domestic demand for such a detailed map. It would take the outbreak of the War of Jenkins’ Ear in 1739, fought between Britain and Spain in the Caribbean, for sales of the map to increase significantly. Realization of the map’s import on the part of other cartographers followed suit, with a number of prominent European mapmakers issuing their own variants, including Covens & Mortier in Amsterdam, George-Louis Le Rouge and Phillipe Buache (IMAGE #39) in France, and Johann Michael Back in Germany. For many decades, the map — or facsimiles thereof — remained the standard cartographic representation of North America.

Emblematic of the contemporary relevance of A Map of the British Empire in America, cartographic historian Mark Babinski has called it "A fundamental centerpiece of any the map collection of

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serious collection of North American maps.”

Covens & Mortier was an Amsterdam-based publishing firm that, for nearly 150 years

(1721-1866), established a reputation as the largest and one of the most important Dutch publishing houses in the field of commercial cartography, and perhaps the world’s biggest mapselling concern of the 18th century.

The firm’s predecessor was the bookselling and publishing business of Pieter Mortier the Elder (1661-1711), the son of a political refugee from France. Born in Leiden, Pieter Mortier travelled to Paris in 1681, returning to Amsterdam in 1685 and operating as a bookseller, engraver, and mapmaker from 1685 onward. In 1690 he obtained the privilege of publishing maps and atlases by French publishers in Amsterdam for the Dutch market.

Following Pieter Mortier’s death in 1711, his widow operated the business for several years, until 1719, when she passed it to her son, Cornelis Mortier (1699-1783). In 1721, Cornelis forged a partnership with Johannes Covens (1697-1774), who had recently married Cornelis’ sister. (Of note, several cartographic scholars assert that it was Cornelis that married Johannes’ sister.) Operating jointly under the name Covens and Mortier, they rapidly and prolifically expanded the business, publishing and selling maps, atlases, globes, and books, with significant attention paid to the re-issuance of atlases by major cartographers, including those by Guillaume De L’Isle, Alexis-Hubert Jaillot, Jan Janssonius (IMAGE #11), Nicolas Sanson, Claes. Jansz. Visscher, Nicolaes Visscher (IMAGE #13), and Frederik de Wit. The company also profited from the acquisition of original plates, such as those of de Wit and Pieter van der Aa (IMAGE #29). Additionally, Covins and Mortier published atlases focusing on the geography of particular countries, such as Germany, England, and Scotland, as well as pocket atlases, town plans, and, from about 1730 onward, a series under the title Nieuwe Atlas, with some volumes consisting of as many as 900 maps produced by various cartographers. At their height, the company had the largest collection of geographic prints ever assembled in Amsterdam.

Heirs to the two original partners continued to operate the business under the trading names of J. Covens & Son, and then Mortier, Covens & Son, until the middle of the 19th century.

Map: Les Principales Forteresses, Ports &c. de L’Amerique Septentrionale (with The Bermuda or Summer Islands) Covens and Mortier’s Les Principales, Ports &c. de L’Amerique Septentrionale culls together the map collection of

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in a single-sheet composite format 19 of the inset maps contained in Henry Popple’s 1733 landmark A Map of the British Empire in America. It was issued to accompany Covens & Mortier’s six-sheet edition of the original 20-sheet Popple map, which was the first large scale map of North America, and the most accurate at the time, showing the extent of British, French, and Spanish colonial possessions.

The maps of Les Principales, Ports &c. de L’Amerique Septentrionale are highly detailed for their size, and form a diverse representation of the harbors, towns, forts and islands of America’s Eastern Seaboard and the West Indies. The locations include: Boston Harbour; New York and Perthamboy Harbour; Anapolis Royal (Nova Scotia); the Harbour of Placentia (Newfoundland); Charleston; St Augustine; Providence; Havana; St Iago (Cuba); Port Antonio (Jamaica); Fort Royal (Martinique); Barbados; Antigua; Kingston Harbour; Bermuda; Curaçao; and Porto Bello (Mexico).

Les Principales, Ports &c. de L’Amerique Septentrionale contains a full-sized inset map of Bermuda (The Bermuda or Summer Islands), identical to the one found in Popple’s A Map of the British Empire in America. This map of the island is often misattributed to Guillaume de L’Isle, owing to its identification as such in Margaret Palmer’s The Mapping of Bermuda (which also erroneously listed the publication date as 1720.)

Though portions of Popple’s huge map were likely based on work previously published by de L’Isle, more recent scholarship asserts that the Bermuda map was the product of Popple and his British associates.

The Bermuda or Summer Islands has a distinctively scrolled titlepiece, and contains new cartographic details relative to previously published maps of the island, perhaps owing to the assistance of Henry Popple’s brother Alured (Bermuda’s governor from 1738-1744).

Some of the new details include: the notation of “Breast Work (a defensive barrier for militiamen) to the south of “Sandy’s Fort.”; “Mount look out,” a reference to what later became Fort George; “Queen’s Fort” on Paget Island; the “Battery” at Ferry Reach, which was the designation of cannon near the location of what would later become Martello Tower; “Flatts Br[idge]; Trunk Island and Pear Island (misspelled “Peor”) in Harrington Sound; and anchor symbols off the North Shore at Devonshire and at Castle Harbor. Also denoted for the first time on a map was The Ferry, though it had long been in operation.

The map does have a few place-name errors, including “Ballast Bay” instead of Bailey’s Bay, and “Davis I.” instead of St. David’s. “Great Turkle Bay” is used, and, like Norwood’s map of 1663, Gates Island is listed as “Yates I.” The map utilizes a new kind of engraved shading to establish the watery margins of the the map collection of

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coastlines, instead of the more conventional horizontal hatchings. These stylized lines make for a kind of decorative ripple effect, perhaps designed to make small inset maps stand out better on a large wall chart. The map also lists the island’s major ship-channels, and delineates a fair portion of the northern and southern reefs, though the southern reefs end abruptly at Port Royal. Whatever the map’s limitations, however, it is considered to be an improvement on previous charts, particularly in regard to the functional, hydrographic aspects of the island’s topography.

Though Les Principales, Ports &c. de L’Amerique Septentrionale was published in several editions between 1737 and 1757, it is a rarity in today’s marketplace: Recent cataloging suggests that the map has made only two recorded appearances in AMPR over the past 20 years

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Homann’s Heirs Inusulae Bermudes (derived from the 1737 composite map Dominia Anglorum in praecipuis Insulis Americae ut sunt Insula S. Christopheri, Antegoa, Iamaica, Barbados nec non Insulae Bermudes vel Sommers…)

Nuremberg / 1737

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Johann Baptist Homann (1664-1724) was the founder of one of the 18th century’s most prominent and prolific cartographic publishing houses. Born in the Bavarian town of Oberkannlach (Germany), Homann studied at a Jesuit school before converting to Protestanism in 1687. He then moved to Nuremberg and worked as a notary before relocating briefly to Vienna, where he studied printing and copperplate engraving. Moving back to Nuremberg, he founded his namesake publishing house in 1702. Over the next several years Homann published hundreds of maps marked by a distinctive style that emphasized detailed engraving, elaborate cartouches, and rich hand-coloring. His growing renown, and position as the most important publisher of maps and atlases in Germany, attracted the attention of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles Vl, who in 1715 appointed him Imperial Cartographer. That same year Homann was also named a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Homann’s title and status accorded certain imperial perquisites — such as access to the most up-to-date cartographic information — as well as “the Privilege,” a type of early copyright offered to selected individuals by the Holy Roman Emperor, which offered limited protection for one’s authorial output. (Nearly all of Homann’s maps printed between 1715 and 1730 bear the inscription Cum Priviligio, or similar variations.)

In 1716, Homann published his masterpiece, Grosser Atlas ueber ie ganze Welt (Grand Atlas of all the World), produced in association with the engraver Christoph Weigel the Elder.

Following Homann’s death in 1724, control of his firm passed to his son, Johann Christoph Homann (1703-1730). Perhaps aware of his impending mortality, J.C. Homann stipulated in his will that the company would be bequeathed to his two head managers, Johann George Ebersberger and Johann Michael Franz, further stipulating that the firm continue publishing only under the name Homann’s Heirs (alternatively, Homann Heirs). This designation, from about 1731 onward, took various forms, including: Homannsche Heirs, Heritiers de Homann, Lat Homannianos Herod, and Homannschen Erben.

The company maintained considerable influence in the German publishing business as its leadership was passed down through several generations, until its once prolific output contracted to the point where it finally closed its doors in 1848 following the death of its last heir and owner, Christoph Franz Fembo.

Map: Insulae Bermudes Homann’s Heirs’ map of Bermuda, Insulae Bermudes, was derived from a composite map originally published by the firm in 1737 (IMAGE #37), which featured maps of five islands: Bermuda, Jamaica, St. Kitts (St. Christopher), Antigua, and Barbados. The composite map was based on separate maps previously published by Herman Moll. The Bermuda map, in particular, was adapted from Moll’s 1729 rendering of the island, The Island of Bermudos the map collection of

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Homann’s Heirs Dominia Anglorum in praecipuis Insulis Americae ut sunt Insula S. Christopheri, Antegoa, Iamaica, Barbados nec non Insulae Bermudes vel Sommers…

Nuremberg / 1737 For information on Johann Baptist Homann and the Homann’s Heirs publishing firm, see the preceeding Image #36.

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(IMAGE #32), which was paired with Providence Island (Nassau) and published in his

Atlas Minor; this followed Moll’s first map of the island, A Map of ye Island of Bermudos, which was published in 1708 and shared the same plate with the American colony of Carolina.

Employing expertly engraved topographical detailing and impeccable hand-coloration, Insulae Bermudes is one of the most stylish Bermuda maps of its time period, and one of the most accessible, in terms of overall legibility. The map identifies each of the parishes, clearly demarcating the dividing lines between each one. Also appearing on the map are pictorial markers indicating the island’s theretofore constructed houses and buildings of significance.

Insulae Bermudes places the island on the same slightly tilted axis positioned in Moll 1729, but dispenses with the radiating array of rhumblines emanating from the compass rose as depicted in Moll’s map. Both maps suffer from the error first made in Moll 1729 — and perpetuated in numerous maps to follow — in which a small cluster of islands appears off the North Shore, identified as “Bermudos or Sommers Island.” Although this cluster of islands first appeared in Speed/Norwood 1627 (IMAGE #4) and its derivatives, those early maps used these islands as a properly-scaled image of Bermuda relative to the island’s position off the American mainland, with the mainland displayed in a background map. No such background map exists in Insulae Bermudes or Moll 1729, conveying the misimpression that these are ancillary islands existing independently of the main island.

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This composite map was published by Homann’s Heirs in 1737 and consists of maps of five British possessions in the Caribbean and North Atlantic: St. Kitts, Antigua, Bermuda, Barbados, and Jamaica. Each of the maps was based on separate maps previously published by Herman Moll, with the Bermuda map (Insulae Bermudes) derived from Moll’s 1729 The Island of Bermudos (IMAGE #32). Each map is intricately detailed, and denotes cities, rivers, roads, forts, churches, plantations, and political/administrative subdivisions, with an early example of pictorial topography utilized to visualize mountainous areas. Textual annotations in German and reference keys are also added.

In the upper right corner of the map is a dual-sided rococo title cartouche — Latin on one side, German on the other — with each map having its own titlepiece and scale-bar. Directionally, Barbados is pictured with north facing left — though the other maps are all oriented north.

A colored variant of the map of Bermuda (Insulae Bermudes) is featured alone in a full-sized format in the preceding image (#36).

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Clement Lempriere (1683-1746) The Bermudas or Summer’s Islands (To his Excellency Alured Popple Esq. Governour of Bermuda, or the Summer Islands This Map From a New Survey, Correcting ye Dangerous Errors in al ye Charts of that Place hitherto Publish’d Is humbly Dedicated by C. Lempriere, and W.H. Toms, 1738.)

London / 1738

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Clement Lempriere (1683-1746) was a sea captain, surveyor, cartographer, and artist best known for his role as designer and draftsman of Henry Popple’s historically significant Map of the British Empire in America (1733), as well as his own 1738 chart of Bermuda, considered by many antiquarian map scholars to be the most influential map of the island published in the 18th century.

Lempriere was born in the town of St. Helier on the isle of Jersey (a self-governing territory of the British crown), and was known to have spent time at sea as a young man, at some point earning the title “Captain,” though it is unclear in the historical record as to whether this was a military or maritime designation. (His obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine calls him a “captain of a marching regiment” but elsewhere he is referred to as a “ship’s captain by profession.”) He did serve in the British Army, attached to the Engineering Corps., and it is possible that his title was a regimental commission made within the Corps. of Engineers.

In 1725, following the Jacobite rebellion, Lempriere drafted an important military map of roads in the Scottish Highlands, titled The Roads between Innersnai, Ruthvain, and Fort William in the Highlands, which is presumed to be his earliest publication. In 1727, he was appointed Draughtsman to the Civil Branch of the Ordnance Office (the British Army’s mapping division), with a salary of 100 pounds per year and an office in the Tower of London; he was later promoted to Chief Draughtsman, serving in that capacity until his death.

In addition to the aforementioned maps, a number of important cartographic works were published after his death, including A New and Accurate Map of Jersey (1755), an example of which is today in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London.

As an artist, the well-traveled Lempriere created numerous pen and ink drawings and watercolors, many of which were turned into engravings, primarily maritime views featuring sailing vessels and warships. He also produced mostly undated sketches drawn during his travels to locales such as Scotland, Portugal, the Balearic Islands and Bermuda, including a highly-regarded drawing of the port of Lisbon. Additionally, in association with the military engineer and artist J.H. Bastide, Lempriere drew a folio of eight views of the Channel Islands, titled General and Particular Prospects of the Islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Serc, Arm, and Jethou (1731).

Perhaps Lempriere’s most acclaimed artistic work is his contribution to a folio of engravings published by John Pine in 1739. Titled The Tapestry Hangings of the House of Lords: Representing the Several Engagements Between the English and Spanish Fleets. In the Ever Memorable Year MDLXXXVlll (1588), the folio commemorated the defeat of the Spanish the map collection of

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Armada at the hands of the British Navy in 1588. The engravings — ten of which were sea battle views drawn by Lempriere, with an additional ten charts drawn by Hubert-Francois Gravelot — were print reproductions of the ten majestic tapestries that hung in the House of Lords until 1834, at which time they were destroyed by a fire, leaving the folio as the only surviving record.

Several examples of Lempriere’s work are today part of the permanent collection of the British Museum in London.

Map: The Bermudas or Summer’s Islands (To his Excellency Alured Popple Esq. Governour of Bermuda, or the Summer Islands This Map From a New Survey, Correcting ye Dangerous Errors in al ye Charts of that Place hitherto Publish’d is humbly Dedicated by C. Lempriere, and W.H. Toms, 1738.)

In 1738, Clement Lempriere published what turned out to be one of the most significant, if lesser-known, maps of Bermuda, based upon a survey Lempriere himself completed, probably in the 1720s (the first general mapping of the island since Richard Norwood completed his final survey in 1662). Titled The Bermudas or Summers Islands, and engraved

by W.H. Toms, the map served as the prototype for commercially important charts by Emanuel Bowen (IMAGE # 40) and Thomas Jefferys (IMAGE # 46), and was a precursor to the exceedingly detailed and historically consequential survey of the island

by Thomas Hurd R.N. (completed in 1797) as well as the Heather/Norie chart of 1805, which offered the fullest picture theretofore published of Bermuda’s barrier reef.

Designed primarily for practical use by navigators, Lempriere put considerable effort into demarcating the reefs surrounding the island, with the map’s topographical detailing concentrating on the identification of forts, bodies of water, and ancillary islands. Yet the map also includes an early grid for “Tuckers Town,” and indicates a church and buildings at the site of “St. George Town.” Importantly, for the first time on a map of Bermuda, pictorial representations of each parish church, as well as trees, hills, and marshes, are offered. Also for the first time, a number of channels through the reefs are indicated, the most prominent being two along the North Shore.

Suggesting a lineage from Speed/Norwood 1627 (IMAGE # 4) and its successors, The Bermudas or Summer Islands places the island on a lateral alignment and delineates tribal divisions. Also like Speed/Norwood 1627, Lempriere’s map contains a block of horizontal text at the bottom, but unlike the text of the earlier map — which concentrated on the land allocations of the London Adventurers — the text here speaks to the dangers the map collection of

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facing mariners attempting to safely navigate Bermuda’s waters. “The Coasts in general are very Rocky and Dangerous,” the text warns. “The channels into the two Harbours are very narrow and Shoaly and to such a degree, that it is scarce possible to Delineate or Describe them, that a Vessel may safely be carried into em without the Assistance of a Good Pilot.” Lempriere also gives his opinion as to why earlier maps gave the false impression that the reefs lying to the south posed greater danger than the ones lying to the north and west. According to Lempriere, this had been “designedly done by the first settlers of this colony, and (as their Posterity say) to prevent the ill consequence which might happen in time of war by an Enemy’s knowledge of the true situation and Nature of the place: But by keeping this so long unknown to the Navigators of our own Nation, the Evils which have Arisen therefrom, no doubt have overbalanced the Good which ere has, or possibly can accrue from it.” Additionally, Lempriere issues stern warnings about “the current” — the Gulf Stream — to those attempting to navigate to Bermuda from America, resulting in ships being carried farther to the east than otherwise anticipated.

Off-island, several textual notations are inserted to provide further information about the dangers lurking off Bermuda’s coast, as well as information about seasonal fishing patterns and historical events, including a notation at the map’s westernmost margin that reads “At this end of ye Island from SW to NW are great Number of Rocks at 3 or 4 leagues distance from the Land whereby abundance of ships have suffer’d.” Also, beneath the island’s south shore a notation posits “This is the Boldest [most rugged] Coast about Bermudas & wherein some places ye largest Ships may with Safety come within half Gun Shot [500 yards] of ye Shore.” West of the island, another notation states “Here in the months of March, April and May they Fish for Whales,” and off the island’s East End (near “Mills Breaker,” the easternmost point on the map) a textual insertion reads “Here is the chiefest place for Fishing for Whales from the latter end of March, till the middle of May during which time they generally kill 10 or 12 pair of these Animals.”

Additionally, near North Rock (“N.W. Rock,” the northernmost point of the map) a notation asserts: “Among these Rocks are a great number of Vessels and among others that of a very Rich Spanish ship near a century ago Wch. was once discover’d but is now always Fish’d for in vain.”

The map’s decorative elements center around a uniquely conceived compass rose, comprised of conjoined, pyramid-like images, out of which emanates an array of rhumblines. There are also several vignettes of sailing vessels, three of which appear to be single-masted Bermudian sloops. Beneath and perpendicular to the rococo title cartouche is a coat-of-arms, presumably that of the Popple family, or Alured Popple, the latter being the individual to whom the map is dedicated, who served as Governour of Bermuda from 1738-1744. the map collection of

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Today, The Bermudas or Summer’s Islands is exceptionally rare, owing to the fact that it was separately issued in its original state, and not bound into an atlas or chart book. According to several prominent antiquarian map dealers, no examples of the map appear in AMPR or in published auction records over the past several decades, and Lempriere’s name does not appear in Tooley’s Dictionary. Publicly, examples of the map have been located only in the British Library (as part of the King George lll Topographical Collection), the Yale University Collection, and the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

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Philippe Buache (1700-1773) I de la Bermude ou Les Isles D’Ete. Aux Anglois Paris / 1740

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Philippe Buache (1700-1773) was one of the most famous and influential French cartographers of the 18th century, at a time when Paris was one of the world centers for cartography. Early on he studied mathematics and astronomy, and was trained in mapmaking by Guillaume de L'Isle (1675–1726), who has been referred to as “the foremost cartographer of his age” by many scholars of antiquarian cartography and who is famed for his groundbreaking maps of North America, which featured highly accurate and detailed, scientifically-driven information on areas such as the Mississippi River, California, the Great Lakes and Canada. In 1720 Buache married de L’Isle’s daughter, and the following year he entered France’s Depot des cartes et plans de marine (The French Navy’s Hydrographic Office), where he created and classified maps.

Following the death of Guillaume de L’Isle in 1726, Buache took over his business. In 1729 Buache was named Premier Geographe du Roi (Chief Geographer to the King), a position his father-in-law had held, and that same year was elected to replace de L’Isle in Paris’ prestigious Academie Royale des Sciences (where, as a student in 1721, he had received First Prize in Architecture). Buache’s selection to the Academie — and the subsequent papers and maps he wrote and created — is believed to have played a pivotal role in France’s recognition of geography as a science, and for laying the path for political debates over the role of ‘natural regions’ within France’s administratively-centered geographic divisions.

During his lifetime, Buache was considered an academic geographer who researched his material thoroughly, relying on the most up-to-date information from voyages of discovery. Highly esteemed by his contemporaries, he was considerably ahead of his time in his approach to cartography, and was a pioneer in thematic mapping and physical geography. One of the best-known examples of his thematic maps was his 1731 “bathymetric” chart of the English Channel, in which he adjudged the depth and shape of the Channel’s bottom. He also postulated a physiographic system in which the earth’s surface was divided into four basins, separated by overland mountain ranges and those beneath the oceans, with the basins serving as a source for rivers, which then flow into the oceans, the idea being that watersheds play a consequential role in physical geography. Buache — who was the first to advance the concept of the import of watersheds —applied this theory in an effort to interpret the geology of North America and the Pacific Ocean. By factoring in Russian discoveries in the Bering Strait, he was able to thereby deduce the existence of Alaska and the Aleutians (years before they were “officially” discovered).

Buache was also a pioneer in the use of contour lines to express relief on maps, another example of the kind of theoretical approach to cartography brought to bear by French mapmakers of this period. the map collection of

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Map: I de la Bermude ou Les Isles D’Ete. Aux Anglois One of many composite maps that Phillipe Buache based on Henry Popple’s historically significant 1733 A Map of the British Empire in America (IMAGE # 35), Buache’s I. de la Bermude — first published in 1740 — situates Bermuda on a plate with Charleston, South Carolina (another variant adds Perth Amboy/New York Harbour).

Engraved by the noted F. Debrulins, the map aligns Bermuda on its natural axis, and is slightly larger and less detailed than Popple’s, with no embellishments — the standard title cartouche is replaced by an unadorned printing of the title in the margin above the map— though there are pictorial representations of important man-made structures scattered throughout the island. The place-names are printed in French, resulting in curious translations such as “Fort du Sable ou Parapet” (Fort of Sand or Parapet) instead of Sandy’s Fort. The island’s tribes — each referred to as a “tribu” — are carefully demarcated, with the names set forth in a bold-style font. Primarily to the north, the offshore reefs are partially delineated.

Buache’s I. de la Bermude — which today is seldom encountered —was periodically reissued until the 1780s; in 1782 a version of the map was printed by the prominent French map publisher Jean-Claude Dezauche, who had purchased the stocks of both Guillaume de L’Isle and Buache. Dezauche’s variant added a pink outline and pale blue or green ocean wash, whereas Buache’s examples lacked ocean tinting.

Engraved in the bottom left corner of the map on view in this image, just outside the border of the Bermuda compartment, is the number “40”, which might be part of the tiny P.B. 1740 imprint that was reputedly engraved in that location in at least one (the original) or more editions of Buache’s map prior to Dezauche’s 1782 offering.

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Emanuel Bowen A New & Accurate Map of Bermudas or Sommer’s Islands, taken from an Actual Survey; wherein the Errors of former Charts are Corrected. By Eman. Bowen London / 1747

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Emanuel Bowen (1694-1767) was a Welsh-born engraver, mapseller, and publisher who attained the unique distinction of being named Royal Mapmaker to both King George ll of Great Britain and King Louis XV of France. His maps were lauded for their high level of detail and accuracy, and he collaborated with some of the best-known British cartographers of the period, including John Owen and Herman Moll (IMAGE # 32).

In 1720, following an apprenticeship served with cartographer Charles Price, Bowen produced his earliest engraved work, the Britannia Depicta (IMAGE #17). Published in association with John Owen, it contained over two hundred road maps together with miniature maps of every English and Welsh county, and became a popular successor to John Ogilby’s (IMAGE #14) renowned road atlas, Britannia (IMAGE #17). By 1726 Bowen was recognized as one of England’s finest engravers, and was aided by many apprentices who would themselves go on to notable careers, including Thomas Kitchen, Thomas Jefferys (IMAGE #46), John Lodge, and his own son Thomas Bowen.

Over the course of a prolific career, Bowen engraved a large number of maps for general atlases, geographical text books, and periodicals, highlighted by A Complete System of Geography (1744); Complete Atlas (1752); Atlas Minimus (1758, with John Gibson); and Universal History of the World (1766). In collaboration with Thomas Kitchen, he produced the Large English Atlas in 1755 and the Royal English Atlas in 1762. The Large English Atlas is considered to be the largest scale and most detailed English county atlas theretofore published, remarkable not just for its detail and clarity but for descriptive annotations that provide extensive information about the individual localities, and for vignettes that artistically depict the Georgian landscapes. These additional features — including elegant rococo and floral title cartouches — are emblematic of Bowen’s body of work.

Despite the royal patronage accorded him, and the considerable level of respect earned from his many significant cartographic achievements, economic prosperity eluded Bowen, and he died in poverty in 1767.

Map: A New & Accurate Map of Bermudas or Sommer’s Islands, taken from an Actual Survey; wherein the Errors of former Charts are Corrected.

By Eman. Bowen First published in Bowen’s Complete System of Geography in 1747, A New and Accurate Map of Bermudas or Sommers Island’s was closely modeled on Clement Lempriere’s 1738 map of Bermuda (IMAGE #38), and, like Lempriere’s antecedent effort — as well as Thomas Jefferys’ chart (IMAGE #46) that would follow in 1775 — was an the map collection of

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immense improvement on previous charts’ depiction of Bermuda’s waters, the three charts serving as important precursors to Thomas Hurd’s monumental survey of 1797 and the Heather/Norie chart of 1805, which finally revealed the full extent of Bermuda’s barrier reef.

Bowen’s map is also distinctive for its being engraved on a plate with the Caribbean island of St. Chistopher (aka “St. Kitts”), with both islands placed on a vertical alignment, presumably for spatial considerations. (The St. Christopher map is notable for its early, artistically rendered depiction of that island’s chain of volcanic peaks.)

Bowen — in what amounts to an unattributed, near duplication of Lempriere’s effort — provides several annotations as well as a paragraph of text that impart key navigational information for mariners and whalers, as well as indicating most of the same channels evidenced by Lempriere. Bowen’s elegant rococo title cartouche also closely approximates that of Lempriere’s. The map’s place-naming on dry land is taken from maps derived from Speed/Norwood 1627 (IMAGE #4), and includes a theoretical grid plan for Tucker’s Town.

The Bodleian Library of Oxford University has an example of the map in its permanent collection, contained within Volume l of John Seally’s Complete Geographical Dictionary of 1781.

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Mount and Page (Map) Bermudas / (Text) A Description of Bermudas (plus additional passages) London / 1775

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Mount and Page was a London-based publishing house that specialized in the areas of religion and maritime cartography. By the 1730s they had become well-known worldwide as publishers of nautical charts, mainly through their role as publishers of The English Pilot, and remained a dominant force in the English mapmaking trade for nearly the whole of the 18th century.

The firm was founded in 1701 at Tower Hill, London, by Richard Mount (1654-1722) and his apprentice Thomas Page (1680-1833). Mount had previously been in partnership with his father-in-law, William Fisher, from whom he inherited their publishing business.

Upon the completion of his apprenticeship in 1716, Thomas Page became a full partner with Mount, and the firm acquired the plates of several defunct British map publishers, including those of Greenville Collins, Jeremiah Sellers, Charles Price, and John and Samuel Thornton (IMAGE #22). Mount and Page was able to generate consistent income from its editions of The English Pilot and historian John Barrow’s Navigatio Britannica (1750), the latter a practical handbook of navigation and charts still being advertised by the firm as late as 1787. With the addition of several lucrative government contracts, Mount and Page gained a near monopoly of the British nautical chart business, making the families of the intermarried proprietors extremely wealthy. The last member of either family to work in the map business was Richard Mount’s great-grandson, William, with later generations entering politics.

The English Pilot was the first major sea atlas produced in England. The idea was conceived by pioneering English cartographer and publisher John Seller (IMAGE #21),

who — though a polarizing figure — is considered by numerous cartographic historians to be one of the foremost British mapmakers of his time. Seller’s realization that there existed a serious dearth of high-quality, English-made nautical charts led him to begin making preparations for a new maritime atlas as early as 1669. That year he announced the impending publication of The English Pilot, which was intended to be published in geographically specific volumes so that only the necessary maps need accompany a voyage. Covering English waters, The English Pilot, The First Book was published in 1671, with most of the maps arising from retooled Dutch plates with Seller’s imprint added.

The volume proved to be extremely popular among merchant seaman, and in 1671 Seller was named “Hydrographer to the King” as well as being granted copyright protection for over 30 years.

As it turned out, Seller’s personal financial hardships prevented him from participating in the project beyond the first two books. (The English Pilot, The Second Book, covered the Mediterranean coast.) the map collection of

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In 1689, John Thornton (IMAGE #22) and William Fisher (who were both brought into the mapmaking trade by Seller) issued Book lV, which cartographic historian William Cumming has called “the first significant collection of charts exclusively of the American coasts to be published in England.” This was followed by The Third Book, covering the coasts of Asia, Africa, and Arabia. (The Fifth Book was a tome on practical navigation.) After Fisher’s death in 1691, Richard Mount took his place, with Mount and his partner Thomas Page (Mount and Page) purchasing the plates and taking responsibility for the series following the death of John Thornton’s son, Samuel, in 1716.

The five books of the English Pilot constitute a set only by virtue of the general title, with Book lV having the longest publication history, marked by 37 editions published over a span of over a hundred years (1689-1794), as well as being the best known. The number of maps in Book lV grew from 18 in the first edition to 26 in the final printing.

Map and Text: These two images strongly correlate to unbound pages from one of the Mount and Page editions of The English Pilot, Book lV, published by the Mount and Page publishing firm from 1716 to 1794.

The map of Bermuda (Bermudas) pictured in (IMAGE #41) is a variant of John Thornton’s The Island of Bermudas (IMAGE #22), which appeared in the inaugural edition of The English Pilot, Book lV, in 1689. The map — appearing here without the corresponding map of Barbados, as in Thornton’s original issue — is one of at least two, and possibly as many as five, slightly different variants on Thornton’s design that appeared in editions of the Mount and Page versions of the atlas that were published throughout the 18th century, with the final edition printed in 1794.

Underneath the map, an accompanying text is set into the page, with the text continuing on the verso (IMAGE #41 [VERSO]).

The text is comprised of four separate passages of primarily hydrographic detailing, which, in order of appearance, are titled: “A Description of the Ports and Islands upon the Coast Between the Amazons (The Guianas) and Cape Florida”; “A Description of the Gulph of Florida” (Gulf of Florida, aka ‘The Straits of Florida’, which separates the southern tip of Florida from Cuba and The Bahamas); “A Description of the Bahama Islands”; and “A Description of Bermudas (or the Summer Islands)”.

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Arguably the most important portion of the segment “A Description of Bermudas” contains explicit warnings about the surrounding reefs, which did not appear in earlier editions of the English Pilot, Book lV (most of the early maps of the island also failed to adequately represent the reefs’ dangers). The text here states “I would advise everyone to take especial care upon this coast, for there are (an) abundance of rocks, which are very dangerous: likewise hereabouts it is very subject to tempestuous weather…” (This warning is also reproduced in the cataloging of John Thornton’s The Island of Bermudas (IMAGE #22), recounted from the 1755 edition of the Mount and Page English Pilot, Book lV.) As has been previously noted, this failure on the part of 17th century maps of Bermuda to pictorially or narratively explicate the hazards posed by the reefs may have been because the dangers were so well-known to English mariners that many thought it was unnecessary to elucidate them, or perhaps it was the result of a conspiracy of silence that existed to prevent potential enemies from grasping key information that could be utilized in a nautical attack. In any event, it would not be until John Hurd’s monumental survey of the island at the conclusion of the 18th century that a comprehensive understanding of the reefs would be revealed.

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Jacque-Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772) Carte des Isles Bermudes ou de Sommer Tire de l’Anglois (Map of Bermuda or the Summer Islands, taken from English sources) Paris / 1758

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Jacque-Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772) was among the preeminent cartographers of the eighteenth century, and primarily responsible for France attaining a leading role in cartography and geography during this period. Over the course of his long, 50-year career, he produced — or oversaw the production of — hundreds of high-quality nautical charts encompassing the entire known world, many of them copied by other European mapmakers.

Born in Paris, Bellin’s first major appointment came in 1721 when, at the age of 18, he was appointed Hydrographer (Chief Cartographer) to the French Navy. In August 1741, he became the first Ingénieur de la Marine of the Dépot des cartes et plans de la Marine (Engineer of the French Hydrographical Office), and was named Official Hydrographer to King Louis XV. Additionally, he was selected for membership in both Paris’ Academie de Marine and the Royal Society of London.

A product of the Enlightenment, Bellin became one of the chief exponents of the transition to a more modern style of mapmaking that stressed accuracy and function over decorative flourishes, along with a commitment to the highest standards of workmanship and close attention to detail. His maps ranged from large to small format, and the large format world atlases he produced — including the famed Atlas Maritime and Hydrographie Francois — were among the most highly respected of the period, continuously reissued throughout the second half of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Moreover, Bellin published the smaller format Petit Atlas Maritime and Petit Atlas Francois, as well as executing a substantial number of important separately issued maps, many reflecting continuing discoveries and political events in the Americas. He also created most of the maps for French novelist Abbe Prevost’s monumental 15-volume travelogue Historie Generale des Voyages.

Contemporaneous to his mapmaking endeavors, Bellin was a member of the Philosophies movement of French public intellectuals, contributing over 1,400 articles on geography to Diderot’s Encyclopedie, a leading voice for Enlightenment thought in pre-revolutionary France.

Following Bellin’s death, many of his maps were updated and published posthumously, testimony to his reputation among his peers. He was succeeded at the French Hydrographic Office by his student, the prolific and influential cartographer, Rigobert Bonne.

Map: Carte des Isles Bermudes ou de Sommer Tire de l’Anglois (Map of Bermuda or the Summer Islands, taken from English sources) Regarded by cartographic historians as an elegantly crafted synthesis of Clement Lempriere’s 1738 map of Bermuda (IMAGE #38) and Herman Moll’s 1729 map of the island the map collection of

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(IMAGE #32), Carte des Isles Bermudes ou de Sommer was published in several of Jacque-

Nicolas Bellin’s major works, including 1763’s Petit Atlas Francois and the Petit Atlas Maritime of 1764; it first appeared in his Description Geographique des Isles Antilles Possedes Par les Anglois in 1758. The island is presented in the oft-used lateral alignment, and is displayed beneath a rococo title cartouche that features oyster shells top and bottom.

One of map’s chief elements is the simple but centralized compass rose, which enabled viewers to determine the correct latitude-longitude coordinates of particular parts of the island following many previous cartographic efforts which were unsuccessful in this endeavor (though he used Paris as his prime meridian, rather than the now-universal Greenwich). Dividing the island into “cantons” instead of tribes (as per the Swiss model), Bellin further translates the island’s place names into French, often with literal-minded results (i.e., Mill’s Breakers becomes “Breakers du Moulins” [Windmills Breakers]; Gates Island is rendered “Isle de la Porte” [Gate/Door Island]; and Sandys Tribe becomes “Canton de Sable [District of Sand]). Each of the forts guarding Castle Harbor is labeled with a flag to make identification easier, and Bellin was careful to note the “Chaines de Roches sous l’eau” (Chains of Rocks beneath the water) along the southern reef, though he issues no such written warning for the more dangerous reefs to the north and west. However, Bellin clearly was dismayed that he could not acquire the additional information necessary to provide viewers with the kind of comprehensive nautical chart he desired to create, a condition in part created by the contemporaneous nature of international relations, manifested in the “Seven Years War” then being contested between France and Britain. In 1758 Bellin wrote: “I should have preferred to have better information about the different channels into the bays and harbours in order to avoid the dangers and drop anchor into safety; to find out the nature of the sea floor, the approximate depth of water near the land; the right places to land, and the exact state of the forts and batteries to defend them, but it has not been possible for me to obtain this information.”

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Gentleman’s Magazine Engraved by John Gibson (c.1724-1792) The British Governments of North America Laid Down Agreeable to the Proclamation of Oct. 7, 1763 (with inset Bermuda or Summer Islands) London / 1763 For biographical information on John Gibson, see Image #45.

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This rare and unique depiction of British North America as it appeared following the conclusion of the Seven Years War between Britain and France, accompanied by a prominent inset of Bermuda, was drawn and engraved by John Gibson (IMAGE #45), and initially published in the December 1763 issue of Gentleman’s Magazine, the first periodical in the Englishspeaking world to use the term “magazine” in a self-descriptive fashion, as well as the first to provide monthly news and commentary on topics of general interest to the educated public.

Published continuously for nearly two centuries following its founding in 1731 by the pioneering London publisher Edward Cave, Gentleman’s Magazine frequently enlisted contributions from several of London’s finest writers of that era, including Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift. The magazine helped to initiate the use of maps as visual aids for articles, employing them to delineate wartime battle lines, document long voyages, and provide pertinent information about areas with which Britain’s economic interests coincided.

In addition to John Gibson, several of England’s leading cartographers were associated with the publication, including Thomas Jefferys (IMAGE # 46), the official geographer to King George lll and arguably the most important British mapmaker of his day.

The map’s continental component references those territories formally ceded to Britain as part of the Treaty of Paris — most significantly Quebec and Florida — and freezes in time geographical allocations designed to maintain an uneasy truce, including a wide swath of land west of the Appalachian and Allegheny Mountains to be set aside fo the Native Americans (several tribes of which are named on the map), as well as claims by the French to a vast portion of the continent’s interior, a blueprint whose historical trajectory was upended by the imminent American Revolution and the new nation’s claim of “Manifest Destiny.” Of added interest is the presence of the Bahamas (including Providence Island) and the tip of Cuba at the bottom of the map, and the dividing line north of Lake Superior showing the limits of the Hudson Bay Company’s dominion.

The inset map of Bermuda (“Bermuda or Summer Islands”) clearly identifies and demarcates the island’s tribes, and provides an extensive toponymic detailing of the smaller islands, with particular attention paid to the strategic East End. Though portions of the reefs are designated, the full extent of their northern expanse is omitted, as is the entirely of their westward protrusion.

Conceivably, Bermuda’s appearance as a key element in the map’s overall composition was a reflection of the island’s growing value at that time to the British government, which several decades hence would utilize the island’s location and harbors to such strategically consequential effect in the War of 1812.

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Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703-1772) Carte Pour Marquer La Position des Isles Bermudes Paris / 1768 For biographical information on Jacque-Nicolas Bellin, see Image #42.

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In 1766 and 1768, Jacque-Nicolas Bellin produced two charts of the Atlantic that included appropriately scaled representations of Bermuda, with the island positioned in accordance to its distance from the North American mainland. The 1766 chart is titled Carte Reduit de l’Ocean Occidental (Compact Map of the Western Ocean), while the 1768 chart (IMAGE #44) is named Carte Pour Marquer La Position de Isles Bermudes (Map to Mark the Position of the Bermuda Islands). Both maps contain an image to the east of Bermuda named Roches pris pour la Bermude (Rocks Taken for Bermuda), tiny fictional islets nevertheless believed by many at the time to exist; though Bellin rightly doubted their existence, he included them out of an abundance of caution.

Despite the fact that Carte Pour Marquer La Position de Isles Bermudes includes a depiction of America’s southeastern seaboard — detailing points along the coastline between Port Royal (Virginia) and Cape Canaveral (Florida)— as well as identifying the islands of the Caribbean (including the Bahamas, Cuba,“I.S.Domingue” [Hispaniola], Porto Rico, “La Barboude” [Barbados], and Jamaica), the map primarily functions as a navigational chart, employing a network of rhumblines in combination with latitude and longitude bars to help mariners set courses throughout the Western Atlantic.

Carte Pour Marquer La Position de Isles Bermudes was initially published alongside a reprint of Carte des Isles Bermudes ou de Sommer (IMAGE #42) in Bellin’s 1768 book of sailing directions Description Geographique des Debouquemens qui sont au Nord de L’Isle de St. Domingue (Geographical Description of the Passages North of the Island of St. Domingue [Haiti]).

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Drawn and Engraved by John Gibson (c.1724-1792); Edited by Emanuel Bowen (1694-1767) (Titlepage) Atlas Minimus Illustratus: Containing fifty-two Pocket Maps of the World / (Map) North America London / 1774 For biographical information on Emanuel Bowen, see Image #40.

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John Gibson (c.1724-1792) was one of the most skilled and in-demand engravers in mid to late 18th century London. Among others, he engraved for Emanuel Bowen (IMAGE #40), Robert Sayer, Jean Palairet, John Rocque, Andrew Dury, and Benjamin Martin.

A contemporary of both Jacques-Nicholas Bellin (IMAGE #42) and Rigobert Bonne, Gibson began his career as an apprentice to engraver John Blunbell of the Stationers Company (essentially Britain’s publishing guild), followed by an apprenticeship to noted cartographer John Pine, who engraved the frontispiece of the 1723 Constitutions of the Free-Masons.

Over the course of his career Gibson produced a prodigious number of maps, with his most important work being the Atlas Minimus, a pocket-sized atlas originally published in 1758, with several subsequent editions. He was perhaps best-known for the maps he prepared for the Gentleman’s Magazine (IMAGE #43), especially the four-sheet map The British Governments of North America Laid Down Agreeable to the Proclamation of Oct. 7, 1763, with its inset Bermuda or Summer Islands (IMAGE #43), which he designed following the Treaty of Paris in 1763 (ending the Seven Years War between Britain and France). He also published the extremely rare Map of the Chief Roads in England (1765), and his work appeared in The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, The Universal Museum and The Univeral Traveller.

Gibson’s personal life was marred by the accumulation of debt, resulting in his being consigned to debtor’s prison for prolonged periods of time.

Titlepage and Map: IMAGE #45 consists of the titlepage for the 1774 edition of the Atlas Minimus Illustratus:

Containing Fifty-Two Pocket Maps of the World — dated by Roman numerals at the bottom of the page — paired with the map titled North America, which primarily details the continent’s eastern seaboard.

Considered one of the most attractive atlases published in the 18th century, John Gibson’s Atlas Minimus was produced in collaboration with famed cartographer Emanuel Bowen (IMAGE #40). First published in London in 1758, the atlas was an immediate success, and was reprinted several times throughout the 18th century and into the nineteenth. All of the maps were drawn and engraved by Gibson, with editing being provided by Bowen. Though the atlas ostensibly is devoted to the entire known world, the map collection of

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contemporary interest in the “New World” is evidenced by the fact that nearly one-third of the maps were of the North American continent. Included in the 52-map volume is a double-hemisphere world map; maps of the individual continents; maps of the British colonies of New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Carolina, Georgia, and New England; maps of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (as well as of Cape Breton Island); a map of French settlements in North America; and a map of the West Indies. Each map is accompanied by informative text. At the conclusion of the atlas, under the title “Late Discoveries,” is an account of the voyages of British explorer Captain James Cook.

On the map North America, locales along the coast are noted from north to south as follows: Cape Breton (Nova Scotia), Halifax, Boston, Cape Cod, New York, Philadelphia, Chesapeake Bay, Cape Hatteras, Cape Fear, and Florida. All points east of the Mississippi River fall under the jurisdiction of the “British Empire,” but west of the river and into the continent’s midsection the label “French Dominion” is applied, and what is now the American Southwest is designated “Mexico” or “New Spain.” The Northern Plains region is labeled “Parts Unknown’. Though present-day Canada is largely undetailed, “Hudsons Bay” and “Baffins Bay” are conspicuously present, above which lies the “Arctic Continent.”

South and southeast of the mainland the map identifies several islands of the West Indies, including the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Santo Domingo (present-day Dominican Republic and Haiti). Off the coast of the Carolinas the presence of Bermuda is noted as “Bermuda I.” and rendered by linking together three tiny circular figures that are surrounded by concentric swirls which likely represent the island’s reefs.

At the bottom of the map, italicized text enumerates the various colonial powers involved in the claims and cultivation of the continent, as well as making allowance for the “undiscovered western parts” still being “Inhabited by the Original Indians.”

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Sayer & Bennett [Robert Sayer (1726-1794) and John Bennett (1745-1787)] Map by Thomas Jefferys (c.1719-1791) The Bermudas or Summer’s Islands from a Survey by C. Lempriere London / 1775

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Thomas Jefferys (c. 1719-1791) was a British engraver, cartographer, and publisher who not only was the leading map supplier of his day, but was arguably the most important English map-maker at a transitional point in European publishing, when British cartographers were ascending to the most prominent position in the mapmaking trade. Highly regarded for his skill during his lifetime, Jefferys is chiefly remembered today for his charts of North America and the West Indies, many of which were published posthumously.

In 1735 Jefferys was apprenticed to Welsh mapmaker Emanuel Bowen (IMAGE #40), who enjoyed the distinction of being named Royal Mapmaker to both King George ll of Great Britain and King Louis XV of France. After establishing his own business in 1744, Jefferys earned early success with his town plans for the English Midlands and for publishing (with Thomas Kitchen) the Small English Atlas, while also being named Geographer to Frederick Prince of Wales in 1746. In 1753 and 1754, Jefferys’ career trajectory took a significant upward turn after he published Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson’s seminal, colonial-era Map of the Inhabited Part of Virginia, and for collaborating with Irish cartographer Bradock Mead on the renowned six-sheet wall map A Chart of North and South America, including the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Additionally, during this time period Jefferys published some of the earliest maps delineating the events of the Seven Years War between Britain and France, including the Explanation of the Map of the Seat of War, on the Coast of Choramandel, with an account of the War (1754); that same year, he published George Washington’s Journal of his expedition to Fort Duquesne, with a map of the interior of Virginia. Subsequently, Jefferys forged a close relationship with the British government, gaining access to officially produced manuscript materials and producing some of the most consequential maps pertinent to the progression of the war, many of which were published to popular effect in the British newspapers. In 1760 Jefferys was named Geographer to King George lll of Great Britain and, by war’s end, had become the preeminent mapmaker and publisher in London.

Jeffery’s post-war efforts to expand his business into large-scale county maps proved to be a major financial failure, and in 1766 he was forced to declare bankruptcy; in an effort to remain solvent he entered into a short-lived partnership with map publisher Robert Sayer (1726-1794), with whom he published A General Topography of North America and the West Indies in 1768. Many of Jefferys’ maps — which had been acquired

by Sayer following Jefferys’ bankruptcy — were included in collections published by Sayer following Jefferys’ death in 1771, under the titles American Atlas, North American Pilot, and West India Atlas, with Jefferys’ posthumously published work contributing heavily to the success of the partnership between Sayer and John Bennett (1745-1787), with the Sayer & Bennett publishing firm going on to become that era’s largest suppliers of British charts in the map trade. the map collection of

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Map: The Bermudas or Summer’s Islands from a Survey by C. Lempriere Based on Claude Lempriere’s 1738 map of Bermuda (IMAGE #38), Thomas Jefferys’ posthumously published The Bermudas or Summer’s Islands from a Survey by C. Lempriere first appeared in 1775 in Sayer & Bennett’s West India Pilot, and was considered by many to be the best chart of Bermuda theretofore published, remaining so until the Heather/Norie chart of 1805. Despite the fact that a number of collectors refer to it as the ‘Lempriere’ map, Jefferys’ map is actually an entirely new engraving, somewhat larger than Lempriere’s and with the island reconfigured on its natural alignment. Additional topographic detail than is contained in Lempriere’s The Bermudas or Summer’s Islands is included in Jeffery’s map, suggestive of the possibility that Jefferys was working from a comparably detailed Lempriere draft in combination with new information supplied to him. Jefferys’ large and elegantly composed map would go on to replace the English Pilot as the most widely-used nautical chart of Bermuda for at least the balance of the 18th century.

Dividing the island into tribes, Jefferys also sets forth all of the island’s major roads, both contemporary and those dating to the early days of the colony. Delineation of the island’s terrain includes representing the hills in hachured relief and indicating wooded areas.

Prominently, Jefferys labels the main island “BERMUDA,” and shows Tucker’s Town in its traditional cartographic form, albeit in less conspicuous fashion than some earlier maps. The nautical details of Jefferys’ map are highlighted by the inclusion of the surrounding reefs and descriptively notated channels, combined with a web of intersecting rhumblines. Textual insertions locate the prime areas for seasonal whaling and, perhaps most importantly, warn of the dangers posed by the western and northern reefs, where an “abundance of ships have been lost.”

The map’s title and scale bars are presented in a plain, utilitarian fashion in the upper left portion of the chart, while the bottom right corner of the map features a text providing a synopsis of Bermuda’s history, natural attributes, and people. Reminiscent of the text appearing on the face of Lempriere’s map, Jefferys’ text is titled Observations, and offers, in part, the following impressions: [Bermudians are] a handsome well-looking people, humane, generous, & extremely kind & hospitable to the few strangers who come amongst them. Their principal & most profitable employment is building of Sloops & small brigantines and snows of an excellent & most durable cedar wood, which they had once growing among them in great plenty, but from the great consumption is now on the decline. It is incorruptable & never troubled by the Worms. the map collection of

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Vessels built of it run for a long time, perhaps 6 or 7 years, without requiring the least repair, not even calking. They are of a peculiar construction & all of them are very fast sailors. These Islands have quarries of a soft white Stone of which the Inhabitants carry cargoes to the Continent. They produce very fine Mulberry trees & abound in great variety of wildfowl, chiefly of the aquatic kind. Their Sounds & surrounding seas are well stored with fish & Ambergrease is sometimes met with among their Rocks in lumps of considerable bigness.

The same year as the map’s initial appearance in the 1775 West India Pilot, a similar map was published by the French Depot-General de la Marine (Navy Board), and another was printed around the same time by the French cartographer Le Rouge under the title Les Bermudes Levees par Lampriere Determinees Astronomiquement a Londres Traduit de l’ Anglois A Paris Ches Le Rouge Ingen. Geographe du Roi (The Bermudas surveyed by Lampriere [sic] Astronomically Determined at London Translated from the English at Paris at the establishment of Le Rouge, Royal Geographical Engineer). In 1777 the map was published as Les Bermudes in Sayer & Bennet’s French language edition of the West India Pilot. (It would be re-published in the West India Pilot as late as 1787.) Owing to its reputation as the premier nautical chart of Bermuda, the map would yield numerous editions and versions over the following half-century, including updated and improved versions from 1794 until 1826 by Laurie and Whittle; elements of the map also appeared in Heather/Norie’s significant 1805 chart of Bermuda — as well as that chart’s derivatives — with these later efforts enjoying the benefit of having had Thomas Hurd’s monumental survey of the island to draw upon.

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Antonio Zatta (c.1722-c.1804) (Titlepiece) Le Colonie Unite Dell’ America Settentrionale (The United Colonies of North America / The Island of Bermuda) (Map) Le Isole Bermude (The Island of Bermuda) Venice / 1778

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Antonio Zatta (c.1722-c.1804) was an Italian cartographer and publisher who has been referenced as “probably the most important Italian map publisher of the late eighteenth century, responsible for a large number of atlases and single maps of considerable aesthetic and scientific merit.” (Pierluigi Portinaro and Franco Knirsch,The Cartography of North America [New York, NY: Crescent Books, 1987] )Though scant recorded information exists in the way of his personal biography, he is known to have been professionally active primarily in the years 1757-1797, creating historically consequential work at a time when Italy was long past its period of mapmaking prominence. His maps and atlases were known for their precise detailing, expert engraving, decorative embellishments, artistic vignettes, and informative accounts of the latest explorations and discoveries, including the first published chronicles of the islands newly uncovered by British explorer Captain James Cook (17281779) in the course of his voyages.

Zatta’s most significant cartographic achievement is generally considered to be his Atlante Novissimo, published in four volumes between 1775-1785 and regarded as one of the most beautiful of all 18th century atlases. In addition to Le Colonie Unite Dell’ America Settentrionale (Le Isole Bermude), his best-known maps include Nouve scoperte de’ Russi al nord (1776) and America Settentrionale (1780), both of which being prime examples of 18th century “speculative geography,” in which longstanding myths —eventually overturned by knowledge gleaned from future explorations — resulted in depictions of Chinese colonies in Vancouver Island (British Columbia) and the long-sought-after Northwest Passage.

Besides his cartographic endeavors, Zatta — along with contemporary publishers Giovanni Battista Pasquali and Giovanni Battista Albrizza — was responsible for the revival of Venetian fine printing, publishing lavish editions of Italian classics and collections of poems.

Titlepiece and Map: Le Colonie Unite Dell” America Settentrionale /Le Isole Bermude (The United Colonies of North America/Bermuda) is one of the most distinctive maps inclusive of Bermuda that was published in the latter half of the 18th century, owing in large part to its unique decorative elements.

Though seldom encountered in its intended form, the map was designed to be a 12-sheet set of maps which, when fully assembled as a wall chart, measured over four feet square in its depiction of the eastern part of North America. The map of Bermuda is actually a large inset map (appearing as part of the titlepiece), one of three such maps made part of the map collection of

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the overall design, with the others representing Jamaica and the southern half of Florida.

IMAGE #47 is a representation of the map’s titlepiece — which in the map’s fully assem-

bled condition appears in the lower right corner — with the rendering of Bermuda serving as either a central part of the wall chart’s titlepiece or as the frontispiece in a bound volume. Though the inset map of Bermuda was Zatta’s creation, the mainland portion of Zatta’s map was based on John Mitchell’s landmark Map of the British Dominions of North America (1755), which is generally considered to be one of the most important maps in American history, serving as a key reference for over two hundred years in the resolution of boundary disputes across the northern North American border, as well as a key element in the negotiation of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which formally ended the American Revolution.

The map’s decorative design places Bermuda on a piece of seemingly frayed and rolledup parchment, giving it the look of an ancient artifact, though arguably the most striking feature of the artistic embellishments is the titlepiece’s now famous vignette, featuring an overhanging cluster of palm trees, a swooping bird of prey, a beaver-like creature surveying the scene, and a collection of beehive huts in the distance. At the edge of the tableau sits a docked sailing ship bearing a flag of unknown origin, and a short distance out to sea is another anchored vessel. Overall, the illustration has been interpreted by some cartographic historians as representative of the oncoming changes to be wrought upon the American state of nature by European industriousness.

Toponymically, some of the same engraving peculiarities found in Herman Moll’s 1729 Island of Bermudos (IMAGE #32) are found in Zatta’s Bermuda map, perhaps most glaringly in the reproduction of the “miniature Bermuda” that appears offshore, originally intended in John Speed and Richard Norwood’s 1627 A Mapp of the Sommer Ilands (IMAGE #4) to measure the relative distance of Bermuda to the American mainland, but here depicting a non-existent island. Misspelled place-names are also duplicated from Moll 1729, such as “Barley Bay” instead of Bailey’s, “Sandy” Tribe instead of Sandys, and “Mooris Fort” instead of Moore’s. Still, the distinctiveness and quality of the map’s aesthetics have long made it a favorite among collectors, with variants in circulation that include pink and pale blue or green outlining or full parish coloring, along with an extremely rare state of the map that features a special “Presso Antonio Zatta” decorative imprint.

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Edward Orme (1775-1848); based on a painting by Dominic Serres the Elder (c.1722-1793) A Bermudian Sloop with a View Upon the Spanish Main/Bateau Bermudien et vu de la Cote du Continent Espagnol.

London / 1807

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Edward Orme (1775-1848) was a British engraver, painter, and important publisher of illustrated books. One of his three brothers, Daniel (1766-c.1832), was a noted artist, two of whose paintings are part of the permanent collection of Britain’s National Maritime Museum.

Born in Manchester, Edward Orme had one of his portraits accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1801. Over the course of his career, he completed over 700 etchings and paintings, some of which are in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Orme served as engraver to King George lll from 1799 to 1820, and to the Prince of Wales from 1799 to 1830.

From 1800 to 1824, Orme operated two printmaking shops in London, one on Conduit Street in Mayfair and the other on New Bond Street. During this time he published many books of aquatints and etchings, including Rudiments of Landscape (1801) and Historic, Military, and Naval Anecdotes (1819).

Following the closure of his shops, Orme concentrated on property development in the Bayswater area of London, where Orme Square is named after him.

Dominic Serres the Elder (c.1722-1793) was a French-born artist associated with the English School of Painting and with paintings of a naval or marine theme.

Originally slated to become a priest, Serres left his studies at the Benedictine School at Douai and traveled to Spain, eventually becoming the captain of a trading vessel and sailing to Havana, during which time he was captured by a British frigate and brought to England.

After being imprisoned for a short while, Serres settled in London, and though little is known about his training and early work, he listed his profession as “painter” on his marriage register in 1749. It is believed that he briefly studied with leading marine painter Charles Brooking in 1758, and then secured employment to document the events of the Seven Years War (1756-1763) for a British publisher, whereupon he produced re-creations of important naval battles (often worked up from sketches by Richard Short, a naval purser and skilled topographical artist), most notably a series of 11 paintings depicting the Capture of Havana in 1762; later the series would become part of the permanent collection of Britain’s National Maritime Museum.

During the 1760s, Serres exhibited with the Free Society of Artists and the Incorporated Society of Artists, and in 1768 he was the only marine painter among the Founding the map collection of

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Members of the Royal Academy of Arts (where he exhibited over 100 works by the time of his death in 1793).

In 1773, Serres received a royal commission to produce a set of paintings depicting King George lll’s inspection of the British fleet at Spithead (England). Serres would go on to artistically chronicle consequential battles that transpired during the American Revolution, including the American-led Penobscot Expedition (1779), the Great Siege of Gibraltar (1779-1783), and the Battle of the Saintes (1782), In 1780 Serres was named Marine Painter to King George lll (a position in which he was succeeded by his son, John Thomas Serres).

Serres’ final appointment came in 1792, when he was selected to serve as Librarian of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Print: A Bermudian Sloop with a View Upon the Spanish Main/Bateau Bermudien et vu de la Cote du Continent Espagnol.

This aquatint — originally published by Edward Orme —is based on a painting by Dominic Serres the Elder and was engraved by J. Clarke and J.R. Hamble. An extant print resides today in Britain’s National Maritime Museum.

Both engravers were British, and Clarke is known to have produced an engraved print titled Boadicea, which is part of the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hamble was a London-based landscape painter as well as engraver whose work was exhibited at the Royal Academy, and whose aquatints appeared in A Practical Essay in Painting Landscapes, by John Heaviside Clark (also known as Waterloo Clark, because of the sketches he made on the field directly after the Battle of Waterloo), with extant copies of the book in the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as the Yale University Center for British Art. A Bermudian Sloop with a View Upon the Spanish Main first appeared in an 1807 folio titled Liber Nauticus, which was compiled by Dominic Serres’ son, John Thomas Serres (1759-1825), who at the time was Marine Draughtsman to the Admiralty, and who also taught drawing at the Chelsea Naval School. John Thomas Serres in part produced this volume — which illustrates different types of sailing vessels and is comprised of work by both himself and his father — for the purpose of instructing his students in drawing.

At the time of this aquatint’s creation (early 19th century), during the period preceding the advent of The Steam Age, Bermudian sloops were produced for both local use and the map collection of

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for sale to buyers outside of Bermuda. Growing from its beginnings in the 18th century, the island’s maritime industry was comprised of groups of Bermudians who came together to provide maritime countries with some of the most desirable sea-going vessels of that era; these Bermudian sloops, built from the native Bermuda cedar tree (Juniper Bermudiensis), were often the first choice of buyers desiring speed and durability.

The tree itself was known to on occasion measure over fourteen feet in circumference.

Dr. Michael Duffy — a noted contributor to “The Oxford History of The British Empire, Volume ll” (1998) — stated that, in the very early 19th century, “the needs of a long-term war of attrition…required ever larger supplies and markets to counteract the everexpanding French power in Europe, and it was generally believed that where this might most advantageously be secured without the human and financial cost of Caribbean warfare was in mainland Latin America.” This aquatint depiction of a Bermudian sloop in the waters off the coast of Brazil in 1805 may reflect the veracity of this assertion.

Today, Bermuda’s maritime shipbuilding industry is long discontinued, and the island’s forests were devastated by “scale insects” introduced through the construction of U.S. military bases during the Second World War (an event known in Bermuda as “The Blight”), though modern efforts by Bermuda’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Parks have helped to protect the remaining cedar trees from extinction, with cedar wood in demand for architectural detailing, furniture, and souvenirs.

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John Thomson (1777-c.1840) The Bermudas or Summer Islands Edinburgh / 1817

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John Thomson (1777-c.1840) was a groundbreaking Scottish cartographer active in Edinburgh in the early part of the 19th century. Known as one of the leading proponents of the so-called “Edinburgh School of Cartography” — which flourished in Scotland between 1800 and 1830 — Thomson dispensed with the highly decorative features of earlier maps and replaced them with a style that highlighted detail and accuracy, an evolutionary shift whose methodology was shared by important contemporaries such as John Cary (c.1754-1835) and John Pinkerton (1758-1826). Thomson’s first major work, A New General Atlas of the World — first published in 1817 and reprinted as late as 1829 — was heralded as a breakthrough in British cartography, distinguished from other atlases of the period by the clarity and size of its copperplate engravings and the level of detailing. Thomson’s other major works were the New Classical and Historical Atlas (1829) and the Atlas of Scotland (1830), with the latter considered a significant achievement by virtue of the accuracy of its surveys and authenticity of its information. The Atlas of Scotland was the first large-scale atlas of that country organized by county, and consisted of 58 large format, double-page maps of the mainland, the Western Isles, Orkney, and Shetland, along with beautiful drawings of the mountains and rivers. Despite his early commercial success, and the level of respect accorded his work, Thomson’s determination to, in his words, “ensure greater accuracy than is to be found in any book of the kind published in this or any other Country,” eventually bankrupted his firm. His increasingly rare maps are today highly admired for their theretofore unseen levels of accuracy and detail, as well as their impressive size and vivid hand coloration.

Map: The Bermudas or Summer Islands The 1817 appearance of John Thomson and Co.’s The Bermudas or Summer Islands in A New General Atlas of the World marked the first time in several years that a new depiction of Bermuda was made part of a general atlas, albeit as part of a composite image with The Bahamas and Cuba on the same plate. Engraved by the important British cartographer and engraver Samuel John Neele (1758-1824), the map is rather spartan in construction — the naming and demarcation of the tribes is omitted — but the map’s topography is distinguished by its concentration on the island’s natural features, utilizing relief shading to depict elevated areas. Other distinctive characteristics include the simple yet elegant titlepiece, which takes the form of a commemorative-style “plaque,” of a kind often used to denote landmarks. The island’s status as a region on the brink of modernity is conveyed through the inclusion of telegraph signal stations, the delineation of four “building blocks” on what would become Front Street in Hamilton, and the depiction of “Tucker’s Town” in grid form. The limited road network the map collection of

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is also shown, as are the inshore reefs, albeit in a simplified fashion. The map’s scale bar uses the term “British Statute Miles” for the first time on a map of Bermuda.

The map was copied by Fielding Lucas for his 1823 Bermudas, and reworked, with the addition of parish boundaries, for inclusion in George Philip and Son’s New General Atlas of 1856.

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Phillipe Marie Guillaume Vandermaelen (1795-1869) Iles Bermudes ou Summer’s Island Brussels / 1827

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Phillipe Marie Guillaume Vandermaelen (1795-1869) was a visionary Belgian cartographer and geographer whose technological and methodological innovations led the eminent Belgian astronomer and mathematician Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1894) to reference him as being “of the same calibre as Hondius, Ortelius and Mercator.”

From an early age, Vandermaelen was fascinated by cartography, and reputedly taught himself mathematics, astronomy, and mapmaking, while avidly re-creating the geographic contours of the battles fought during the Napoleonic wars. After rejecting directorship of his father’s successful soapmaking business, he turned his attention to mapmaking, and from 1825-1827 published his first and most famous atlas, the Atlas Universel, which had an enormous impact on the world of cartography almost as soon as its first issues were published in the form of 40 installments of ten maps each, for a total of six volumes. (Quetelet’s comment was made following the publication of the first issues.) Vandermaelen’s folio-size atlas was of a type not previously seen: It was the first atlas produced by the then new printing process of lithography, rather than the theretofore traditional methods of engraving or etching. It was also the first atlas to depict the entire world in maps employing a single, large uniform scale — about 26 miles to the inch. Additionally, the maps were designed to be combined into a three-dimensional terrestrial globe with a diameter approximating 7.75 meters (nearly 25 feet).

As the first atlas in the world to represent the Earth on a single and exceptionally large scale, the Atlas Universel offered the widest, most complete and most precise representation ever achieved to date. (In the 1830s the Vatican declared it to be “the best atlas available.”) Many of the regions mapped in the atlas — including Australia, New Zealand, and the United States — were mapped in their entirety for the first time, and cartographic expert David Rumsey has written that “for many of the areas depicted, these maps are the largest scale maps made at the time, and most detailed, particularly in the American West,” an area that publishers had theretofore been virtually ignoring.

Far ahead of its time, the Atlas Universel adhered to the same principles — single scale and projection —advocated 65 years later for the first international world map project, proposed

by Professor Albrecht Penck (1858-1945) at the International Geographical Congress in 1891 in Bern, Switzerland. Serving as Vandermaelen’s gateway into the intellectual elite of Belgium, the Atlas Universel gained him membership in the Royal Academy of Sciences and Belles-Lettres of Brussels.

Vandermaelen’s record of achievement extended to the founding in 1830 in MollenbeekSaint-Jean of the Establissement geographique de Bruxelles, or the Brussels Geographical the map collection of

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Establishment. Built on property he inherited from his parents, Vandermaelen’s project — in addition to using its own lithographic printing press for cartographic purposes — produced textbooks, surveys, and dictionaries, and housed a library, a mappotheque, an ethnographic museum, a planetarium, a cabinet of comparative anatomy and physics and even a gallery of natural history, satisfying Vandermaelen’s wish of creating a cultural institute open to the general public. The extraordinary collection of maps, manuscripts, and other works amassed by the Establishment were eventually bequeathed to the Royal Library of Belgium, and has proven to be of great value to historians, especially as regards the transformations of 19th century Brussels.

In 1836, Vandermaelen was knighted for his services to geography and the intellectual community of Belgium. He died at age 73 in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, near the Geographical Establishment that he founded.

Map: Iles Bermudes ou Summer’s Island As with all the maps of Vandermaelen’s historically significant Atlas Universel, the image of Bermuda is created using a lithographic process, the first time the island appears on a map by way of this printing method. Also, in keeping with the other maps of this atlas, in which each of the depicted areas was cartographically portrayed for the first time on a uniform scale, Bermuda — formerly prominently configured on many maps — has here been cut down in size coincidental to its actual proportions, a precursor of future renderings. For these reasons Iles Bermudes ou Summer’s Island is a distinctive entry in the chronology of the mapping of Bermuda.

Vandermaelen’s Iles Bermudes ou Summer’s Island appears on a large page that also features Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, in the upper left-hand corner, with two wide columns of descriptive text separating the two images. Bermuda appears in an exaggerated, sketchlike form, particularly Flatt’s Inlet on the eastern portion of the map. Place-name detailing is nearly non-existant, with the exception of “Fort. George,” “I. St. Georges,” “St. Davids,” “Coopers Island,” and “I. Bermude” (the main island). The new capital of Hamilton is not labeled. Bermuda’s barrier reef, however, is well depicted, and the island is shown as surrounded by oceanic ripples, extending out into the Atlantic.

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Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge Islands in the Atlantic London / 1833

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The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was founded in London in 1826— mainly at the instigation of Whig MP Henry Brougham — as a nonprofit publishing house whose object was to disseminate scientific and similarly “high-minded” knowledge to the rapidly expanding segment of the reading public who could not afford formal higher education or expensive textbooks. Closely tied to London University, part of its overall mission to achieve egalitarian education lay in the area of cartography, with the endeavor to spread knowledge of world geography to the working and middle classes. The first SDUK maps were produced serially by the Baldwin and Craddock publishing house and were priced at 2 shillings each. The series ultimately contained over 200 maps and took over 14 years to produce in its entirety (1829-1844). Following the bankruptcy in 1837 of Baldwin and Craddock, the SDUK took over publication of early editions of the atlas — titled Maps of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge — releasing editions from 1838-1842. After 1842 the work was outsourced to London-based publishing house Chapman and Hall (which would later be partly owned by famed author Anthoney Trollope), which published editions from 1842-1844. In 1846, two years before the SDUK ceased operations, the plates to the atlas were sold to Charles Knight, who revised and reissued the atlas until 1852. Ownership of the maps then passed to George Cox, and then to Edward Stanford, with Stanford publishing the atlas until well into the 1860s. Letts, Son & Co. — the leading commercial producers of diaries and related publications in Victorian England — would then procure the plates, further updating and improving the maps for publication in several editions of their Popular Atlas in the 1880s.

In its day, Maps of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge was recognized as being unprecedented for its quality, scope, and cost-effectiveness, as well as the accuracy and beauty of its detailed city plans. This groundbreaking atlas is considered by many to be among the 19th century’s most impressive examples of mass-market cartographic publishing efforts.

Map: Islands in the Atlantic Originally published in 1833 by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) — and then passing through many hands, including Letts, Son & Co.— Islands in the Atlantic was engraved by the distinguished John Walker, who was the Official Hydrographer of the British East India Company.

Islands in the Atlantic is a composite map composed of 16 inset images on a single sheet, the totality of which includes the Azores or Western Isles, Faeroe Isles, Madeira Isles, Canary Islands, Princes Island, Anno Bon, Fernando Po, St. Thomas, Ascension Island, St. Helena, Tristan da Cunha Isles, Bermuda Isles, Trinidade Isles, Fernando Noronha, the map collection of

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and the Falkland Islands. Additionally, each inset notes whether the denoted island is in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, American, Brazilian, or French possession.

An idea put forth by at least one cartographic historian** is that, as mapmakers of the Victorian era began to reduce the world to its constituent elements, and as maps were also now being prepared to appeal to the middle and working classes, so began the diminishment of Bermuda in major cartographic endeavors. To this line of thought, Islands in the Atlantic is an example of this shift. Here, the “Bermuda Isles” appear in a tiny inset, with no topographical detailing and less than 10 of the island’s points of interest identified, though its size is presented accurately relative to the other depicted islands.

A generalized outline of “coral reefs” encircles the island, and the mouths of both Harrington Sound and Castle Harbour are drawn in exaggerated form. As different variants of the map appeared chronologically, the listed population of the island shifted — if ever so slightly — with one early version noting it as 10,000, while Letts, Son & Co.’s 1883 edition records the population as 11,796. **Jonathan Land Evans (Bermuda Maps, National Museum of Bermuda Press, 2017)

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Unknown Bermuda Islands c.1850

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The nautical chart Bermuda Islands — with an appearance suggestive of a sepia ink manuscript map — has an estimated creation date of c. 1850. Despite the fact that no date appears on the map, this estimated date of origin can be proffered owing in part to the period-specific nature of the map’s draftsmanship, as well as the inclusion in its detailing of the “Lighthouse” at Gibbs Hill, a structure which became operational in 1844. Though the cartographer goes unnamed, it seems clear that a skilled maritime draftsman is responsible for the chart’s composition. Additionally, the chart’s rough, sketch-like form and the idiosyncratic penmanship of its place-names is a further indication of its prospective classification as a manuscript map.

The mid-part of the 19th century is a period in which Bermuda was becoming a valuable part of the British empire — with the “Dockyard” employed by the Royal Navy as a vital base of operations in the Atlantic — though the island’s prominence in the world of cartography had begun to diminish. Many charts began to appear, however, in the wake of John Hurd’s monumental 1797 survey of the island, which resulted in the first vigorously surveyed chart of the reefs and inshore waters. Several years later, in 1805, William Heather and John W. Norie’s groundbreaking Heather’s Improved Chart of the Bermudas depicted for the first time in print the full extent of the encircling reefs.

Bermuda Islands follows in the wake of the Heather/Norie map with its delineation of the outer fringe of the surrounding reefs. In this regard it is like many of the other charts of the period that provided a similar depiction of the outer reef-line, beginning with the official publication in 1827 of Thomas Hurd’s survey in printed form (The Bermuda Islands), and continuing with examples such as watercolorist Richard Cotter’s 1828 chart Bermuda, Alexander George Findlay’s 1847 map The Bermudas or Somers’ Islands, Robert Montgomery Martin’s 1834 West Indian Islands and Adjacent Coast, Archibald Fullarton & Co’s The Bermudas from 1836, and Blackie and Son’s 1855 Bermuda Islands.

Though the place-name detailing on Bermuda Islands is sparse, several other place-names in addition to the Gibb’s Hill Lighthouse are identified, including: the Royal Navy’s “Dockyard”; “Admiralty House” (which at the time was the official residence for the senior officer of the Royal Navy in Bermuda); the original “Government House” (the official residence of Bermuda’s Governor); “Brackish Pond Church” (built in 1716 and now known as the Old Devonshire Church); “Bassets’ Cave” (referred to in William Zuill’s 1946 book Bermuda Journey as probably the largest cave in Bermuda, extending for over a mile); the “Ferry” (until the causeway was built in 1871, the Ferry transported people, horses, and carriages between St. George and the mainland); “Retreat Hill” (the site of the now de-commissioned Fort Victoria; the fort’s construction in 1842 is another indication of the the map collection of

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presumptive mid-century date of this chart); and “King’s Castle,” which dates to 1612 and is the oldest standing English fortification in the Americas, as well as the oldest stone building still in existence in Bermuda.

In terms of its import as a navigational aid, Bermuda Islands’s most salient feature is arguably the labeling off the island’s East End (“St. David’s Island”) of the entrance to what the map’s draftsman termed the “Main Channel” — presumably “The Narrows” — the vital ship’s corridor through the reefs that is the only safe conduit for large ships heading toward the two main anchorages on the island: the labeled “Murray’s Anchorage” on the East End and the West End’s Grassy Bay (unlabeled on the chart), the latter serving as the longtime home of the Royal Navy’s Atlantic fleet.

The history on a printed map of Bermuda’s critically important nautical passageway dates to 1804 when, in addition to “The Narrows” and “Murray’s Anchorage,” several important navigational features off the island’s East End — such as “Outer Hole,” “Inner Hole” and “Sea Venture Flats” — were named for the first time on a rare but consequential chart by Royal Navy warrant officer Murdo Downie. Titled A Sketch of the Passage into Admiral Murray’s New Anchorage, the chart also outlined for the first time in print “a track of the King’s ships sailing in and out of Murray’s Anchorage.” The chart went on to note that Murray’s Anchorage showed a depth of up to nine fathoms (54 feet), ample for even the largest vessels, and warned that “Great ledges of rocks several miles in extent” could be found north of the new anchorage.

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John Tallis (1817-1876) Islands in the Atlantic: Bermudas or Summers Islands London / 1851

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John Tallis (1817-1876) was a renowned English cartographer who is generally considered to be the last major producer and purveyor of decoratively embellished maps, with his creations singled out in particular for the high quality of their illustrated vignettes and ornately conceived borders. For many antiquarian scholars his work represents the conclusion of a cartographic tradition dating back to the 17th century’s Golden Age of Dutch Cartography.

Born in the Midlands region of England, Tallis arrived in London as early as 1838, though he had definitely set up shop as a publisher — in partnership with Frederick Tallis, most likely his brother — by 1842, an association that lasted until 1849.

Tallis first earned recognition in 1838, when he created a series of views of the streets of London — partially based on the prior work of John Cary and Aaron Arrowsmith — with views of the fronts and facades of buildings in the city’s central section. (Recently, these street views have been made part of a Google-produced historical overview of Victorian London.)

Over the course of his career Tallis published his maps and views under several different trading names (Tallis & Co., John Tallis, John Tallis & Co.). It was under the name John Tallis & Co. that he produced what was arguably his greatest (certainly his most famous) achievement: The Illustrated World Atlas. With their attention to cartographic detail and striking embellishments, Tallis’ maps became a prominent addition to the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, an event organized by Britain’s Royal Society (which included luminaries such as Prince Albert, Henry Cole, Francis Henry, George Wallis, and Charles Dilke) as a celebration of modern industrial technology and design. The atlas’ maps were principally drawn and engraved by the highly skilled British cartographer John Rapkin, though many other noted artists and engravers also took part in the process, including A.H. Wray, W. Lacey, H. Warren and J. Rodgers.

First published in serial form, the maps of the Illustrated World Atlas appeared in about 70 parts between 1849 and 1853, with each part selling for about one shilling in Britain or 25 cents in America, enabling purchasers to make regular small payments. Tallis’ maps — replete with vignettes highlighting indigenous peoples, far-flung cities, and points of interest — appealed to the great desire for foreign exotica that was in demand in the mid-19th century, and to a target audience for whom the expense and hardship of traveling was prohibitive. This followed from the progress of the nineteenth century having brought swift and dramatic changes in public awareness of distant places, with Tallis’ maps likely generating a good portion of the attendant interest. the map collection of

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The maps of Tallis’ Illustrated World Atlas were published as a complete volume from 1851 to 1865. After 1850-51, the maps were issued by the London Printing & Publishing Company, who left Tallis’ imprint intact, thus ensuring his enduring fame. Though most of the maps of the Illustrated World Atlas originally appeared in uncolored form, it was fairly common for 19th century libraries to commission colorists to “complete” the atlas. A number of the maps from the atlas were subsequently republished to around 1880 in history books published by Tallis (including The British Colonies) as well as in geographical dictionaries and encyclopedias. Largely regarded as the last of the highly decorative series of maps to be published, and considered as much a work of art as of geography, the Illustrated World Atlas is today highly prized.

Following publication of the IIlustrated World Atlas, Tallis would go on to be the founder and publisher in 1858 of the popular, London-based Illustrated News of the World and its supplemental section, the National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Personages. In the tradition of the Illustrated London News and Punch magazine, the Illustrated News of the World employed large woodcuts to depict local and world events — its first edition contained a rendering of the New Houses of Parliament — and its National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Personages used steel engravings to create likenesses of prominent individuals. Tallis sold the publication in 1861 for 1,370 British pounds, though the series of portraits in its Gallery section would be subsequently republished in a number of separate volumes.

Tallis’ repute today is such that the house he owned on New Cross Road in South East London has been designated by the British government as a “Building of Special Architectural or Historic Interest,” with a blue plaque on the wall to indicate its significance.

Map: Islands in the Atlantic: Bermudas or Summers Islands Perhaps the most striking aspect of John Tallis’ 1851 composite map Islands in the Atlantic is the placement of Bermuda on a vertical axis, though the map’s place-names generally face the viewer for ease of recognition. Tallis combined Bermuda, Madeira, the Azores, the Canary Islands, and the Cape Verde Islands on one plate, together with his standard decorative embellishments consisting of picturesque vignettes and an ornate border, though no scenes of Bermuda are illustrated. The map was drawn and engraved by Tallis’ primary collaborator, John Rapkin, whose skill and artistry are considered by many as the driving force behind John Tallis’ & Co.’s reputation as the the last bastion of English decorative cartography in the 19th century.

Tallis’ representation of Bermuda is titled Bermudas or Summers Islands, and for its size the map collection of

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is comprehensively detailed. (A hand-colored variant is known to exist, with the island outlined in pink.) The parishes are identified — though under the old nomenclature of “tribes” — and the reefs, particularly the outlying section north of the island, are extensively delineated. The map was printed using what was at the time the new technique of “steel engraving,” but despite the precision of this new method, the map contains several errors, perhaps due a lack of diligence in information gathering and a reliance on Susette Harriott Lloyd’s 1835 map Bermudas or Summers Islands (engraved by J. and C. Walker).

Thus, “King’s Castle” is transplanted to the Tucker’s Town peninsula, Gates Island is misnamed “Yales”, and Ely’s Harbour appears as “Ellice.” Also, though the scale-bar gives coordinates for “Dock Yard,” it does not appear on the map, and the lack of a corresponding longitude/latitude border renders its proper placement on the map uncalculable.

Tallis’ Islands in the Atlantic appeared in several books, and irrespective of the map’s place-naming inaccuracies, the beauty of its decorative elements and quality of its overall composition continue to be admired by cartographic scholars.

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A. Fullarton & Co. British West Indian Possessions, Northern: Bermuda, or Somers’ Islands Edinburgh or London / 1860

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Archibald Fullarton (active c.1809-1868) was a prominent Scottish engraver and publisher active in the first half of the 19th century. His maps — most of which are copper print engravings — are considered among the most decorative of that time period, and among the last produced by major publishers to utilize illustrated vignettes as a key element in their composition.

Fullarton’s initial publishing venture was established in 1809 when, in association with his friends William Somerville and John Blackie, he forged Edinburgh Blackie, Fullarton and Co. The partnership lasted until 1831, when the stock, plant and agencies were equally shared out, and Fullarton founded his own firm, Archibald Fullarton and Company, which would go on to expand from Glasgow into Edinburgh, Dublin, and London, specializing in popular Gazetteers and regional and world atlases, and eventually becoming one of the leading British publishers of the second quarter of the 19th century.

One of Fullarton’s major works was his Parliamentary Gazetteer of England and Wales, which was illustrated with a set of finely engraved county maps that reflected the changes wrought by the Great Reform Act of 1832, a law which introduced major changes to the electoral system of England and Wales. Gazetteers — essentially geographical dictionaries used in conjunction with maps or atlases to provide pertinent information about a particular region, country, or continent — became extremely popular in 19th century Britain, meeting public demand for information on an expanding empire. Fullarton’s well-received Parliamentary Gazetteer went through numerous editions, with the maps updated and revised. Another of Fullarton’s significant publications was A Gazetteer of the World: Or, Dictionary of Geographical Knowledge (1856), which proviced a concise description of geographical jurisdictions throughout the world, all beyond the British Isles.

Perhaps Fullarton’s most important achievement was his monumental Royal Illustrated Atlas (of Modern Geography), with a reputation for being the last highly decorative atlas published in England, with beautifully engraved maps and vignettes —colored with a mixture of printed color and hand color — produced by such notable period talents as George Swanston, August Petermann, John Bartholomew, and others. The Royal Illustrated Atlas was originally published in 27 parts, from 1854 to 1862, and as a single work in 1864 and 1874.

Map: British West Indian Possessions, Northern: Bermuda, or Somers’ Islands Fullarton and Company’s British West Indian Possessions, Northern: Bermuda, or Somer’s Islands, is part of a two-subject map which fits both Bermuda and Jamaica onto a single the map collection of

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plate, designed for economy of space. The map originally appeared in the 1860 edition of the above-referenced Royal Illustrated Atlas of Modern Geography, which also includes a map titled The West Indies (engraved by George H. Swanston) that contains both an inset titled The Bermudas as well as a separate grouping of inset maps named The Most Important of the Lesser British Islands on an Enlarged Scale.

The two maps are surrounded by views of local scenes and wildlife, though the vignettes of monkeys and raccoons that appear above the map of Bermuda seem more designed to illustrate the diversity of the British empire in general rather than portray the fauna one might come across in Bermuda. At least two of the other three scenes bordering the image of Bermuda are based on works produced by the British naval officer Richard Cotter (whose famed book of lithographic prints, Sketches of Bermuda or Somer’s Islands, was published in 1828). One of the map’s vignettes, of the “Government Dock Yard, Bermuda,” closely adheres to a Cotter watercolor hanging in the National Museum of Bermuda. Besides the view of the Dock Yard, the map also has illustrations of a “Bermudian Boat” and “Sperm Whale Fishing,” the latter image featuring a vivid re-enactment of this dangerous endeavor. These scenes are emblematic of some of the earliest attempts to transpose simulations of “real life” on the island onto a printed map.

The post-Thomas Hurd delineation of “The Reef” is extensive, and though the map is considerably detailed, the size of the print makes it difficult to read without enhancement, with identification of the parishes achieved by way of a numbering system and a key.

Though there are some engraving errors, such as “Hungary Bay” and “Walford Island,” the hydrographic detailing is amply set forth, including “The Narrows, “Chubb Cut,” etc.

British West Indian Possessions, Northern: Bermuda, or Somers’ Islands was not A. Fullarton & Co.’s first foray into cartographic representations of Bermuda: Earlier, in 1836, the company had produced a small, woodcut map of the island titled The Bermudas, which, despite its small size and sparse detailing, reflected post-1805 advances in the knowledge of Bermuda’s reefs.

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Illustrated London News Engraved by Edward Weedon (1819-1879) View from Spanish Point, Bermuda, showing the Dockyard, and the Fleet at Anchor in Grassy Bay London / 1862

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Edwin Weedon (1819-1879) was a highly respected English marine painter and printmaker primarily active between the years 1848-1872. He served as the chief maritime artist for the Illustrated London News from 1848 to 1872, and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850. His entry in the Royal Academy’s exhibition catalogue is titled A Dutch schuyt beating up the Scheldt.

The Illustrated London News was the world’s first illustrated weekly news magazine.

It was founded by Herbert Ingram (1811-1860), a reform-minded journalist and Liberal politician who is considered “the father of pictorial journalism.” The magazine debuted on May 14, 1842, with the inaugural edition costing sixpence and containing 32 woodcuts spread out over 16 pages. Targeting the middle class, the magazine was an immediate success, with a circulation of over 65,000 within a few months of its initial publication. By 1863, The Illustrated London News was selling more than 300,000 copies per week, an enormous figure in comparison to other British newspapers of the time.

Print: View from Spanish Point, Bermuda, Showing the Dockyard, and the Fleet at Anchor in Grassy Bay, This hand-colored, steel engraving by Edwin Weedon (1819-1879) first appeared in the April 12, 1862, edition of The Illustrated London News. Over the past century and a half, the print has gone on to become one of the most admired naval images originating in Bermudian waters, and has been reproduced in less expensive formats for popular consumption. Weedon’s vantage point was the prominent headland Spanish Point, located at the eastern entrance of Bermuda’s Great Sound, directly across Grassy Bay from the Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island, which was the principal base for the Royal Navy in the Western Atlantic Ocean between American independence and the Cold War. In the foreground of View from Spanish Point, Bermuda, Showing the Dockyard, and the Fleet at Anchor in Grassy Bay, lie eight vessels of the Royal Navy moored in choppy waters in Grassy Bay, with the Dockyard in the background. (Vessels situated in rough seas were a recurrent motif in Weedon’s work.) The eight ships — some only paritially pictured — are named (from left to right): Diadem, Nile, Immortalite, Melpomene, St. George, Hero, Aboukir, and Agamemnon.

Several rowboats fronted by Royal Navy flags and carrying British seamen are also pictured.

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J.M. Farnsworth (compiled for ‘The Royal Gazette Company, Ltd,’ Hamilton, Bermuda) Driving and Cycling Road Map of the Bermuda Islands New York, N.Y. / 1891 The map in this image is from the Second Edition, printed by Colton Ohman & Co. of New York City, 1898

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Based in part on James Henry Stark’s 1884 map The Bermuda Islands (from his Illustrated Bermuda Guide), J.M. Farnsworth’s Driving and Cycling Road Map of the Bermuda Islands (“Driving” here refers to carriage driving) was first published in 1891 by Gregory Vose Lee (son of Donald), who ran the Royal Gazette newspaper and stationary store in Hamilton from 1883 until his death in 1898. The map was promoted in the Lee family’s Bermuda Pocket Almanac, which in its 1900 edition stated: “In anticipation that cycling would prove a popular diversion in Bermuda, the cycling map by Mr. J.M. Farnsworth—on sale at the ‘Royal Gazette’ Stationary Store—was prepared some eight years ago. A second edition carefully revised to date and further improved has just been issued … During the last few seasons Bermuda had ladies and gentlemen in large numbers indulging in this exercise, previously restricted to the adventurous spirits of the sterner sex, and the same ardour for the exercise is likely to continue.”

The Driving and Cycling Road Map of the Bermuda Islands — published using the lithographic printing process and originally intended to fold down into a 6 1/4 x 4 in. folding case — details the island’s roads using a three-tier grading system which categorizes “The Condition of Road Surface” as “Best,” “Good,” or “Poor,” and the particular gradient as either “Ordinary,” “Steep,” or “Very Steep” (“Dangerous for Wheeling”). The “Bathing Beach” at Elbow Beach, then a modern designation, is listed, as are a number of other tourist destinations, including: “Moore’s House, “Walsingham Bay and Caves,” “Devil’s Hole,” “Lion’s Head,” Neptune’s Grotto,” “Mahogany tree,” “Sand Hills,” Natural Arch,” “Race Course,” “Ducking Stool,” “Admirals Ho[use] & Cave,” “Floating Dock,” “Dock Yard,” and “Steamer Channel” from Five Fathom Hole to Hamilton Harbour. Toponymic detailing also encompasses hotels, guesthouses, churches, and forts. Though several names are slightly misspelled, the map is generally considered to be up to date, and is inclusive of ferry routes. Above the main map is a circular inset map of Hamilton, delineating the street grid as well as important public buildings.

A review of the map appeared in the October 1892 issue of Goldtwhaite’s Geographical Magazine, as follows: “Evidently the ’cycler has invaded the Bermudas. J.M. Farnsworth, a well-known ’cycler, while taking a few weeks of rest at these islands, seems to have obtained the same by making a very unique driver’s and ’cycler’s map of these islands. Mr. Farnsworth is evidently an amateur at cartographic work, but he had nevertheless produced a much cleverer piece of work than is turned out by many of the professionals engaged in the same line.”

Considered a harbinger of modern tourist maps, the Driving and Cycling Road Map of the Bermuda Islands went through several editions, including a Second Edition published in 1898 in New York by Colton Ohman and Co., which notably included “New Ship Channel” and “Two Rock Passage,” along with designated berths for steamship lines.

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War Office / Directorate of Colonial Surveys Bermuda London / 1948

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In 1948, Britain’s Directorate of Colonial Surveys published the map Bermuda in its Colonial Office List: Map Supplement, which was a companion volume to the Colonial Office List, essentially a compendium of statistics and personnel relating to Britain’s overseas territories. Both volumes were printed every few years.

The map’s toponymic detailing is concentrated mainly on naturally-occurring geographic features along the coast, particularly bays and points (i.e. Jobson’s Point, Spanish Point, Albany’s Point). The island’s parish boundaries are demarcated, and the routes of its principal roads and the railway are indicated, with the railway making one of its final appearances on a map before being replaced by bus service in 1948. Post-War changes to the island’s cartographic depiction include the additions of “Kindley Airfield” and “Fort Bell.” Additionally, the U.S. Naval Base and its Tudor Hill facility are shown, as is the Dockyard.

The upper left portion of the map features an inset containing a drawn-to-scale rendering of Bermuda appropriately positioned relative to the American mainland and the islands of the West Indies, including the Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti/Dominican Republic (Hispaniola), and Puerto Rico, as well as the “Leeward Islands.”

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