JEFFERYS, Thomas (1719-1771)
Curacao From The Dutch Originals Of Gerard Van Keulen Regulated by Astronomical Observations
London: Printed for Robert Sayer, 20 February, 1775. Engraved map, uncoloured, with four coastal recognition profiles and inset Plan of Fort Amsterdam. Sheet size: 21 3/8 x 28 1/2 inches.
A detailed English chart of Curaçao, bringing Dutch Van Keulen's hydrography into Jefferys’ great West Indian atlas tradition, with unusually rich detail for the island’s harbours, anchorages, plantations, salt ponds, forts, ruins, and coastal approaches.
This finely engraved chart presents Curaçao as both a navigational subject and a colonial working landscape. The island is shown in considerable detail from West Hoek and St. Christophers Mount in the northwest to Little Curaçao off the southeastern point, with hachured relief, roads, plantations, wells, ponds, ruins, and coastal landing places carefully engraved throughout. The map belongs to the English adaptation drawing on the established Dutch Caribbean hydrography charting tradition and bringing it into the large-format London atlas market of the later eighteenth century. Along the western shore, the map identifies Savenets Bay for barks, Knippe Bay for barks, Santa Cruz Bay, St. Johns Haven, Piscadero Bay, St. Michaels Haven for boats & small craft, and Piscadoris for barks, giving a practical sequence of anchorages and small-craft landing places. Around the island are soundings, banks, shoals, and offshore hazards, including the banks off the south coast and the shoals surrounding Little Curaçao. Two scale bars are supplied, in sea leagues and Dutch miles, reinforcing the maps mixed English and Dutch cartographic inheritance. Inland, the chart records named estates and settlements, among them Savonets Plantation, Ascension, Verkuyl Plantation, Ruyters Quarter, Pond Plantation, and Hato, a salt lake. The southeastern portion includes Fresh Water, Salt Water, a chapel in ruins, and a note marking the site where the French landed in 1673. These details give the map value beyond coastal navigation, preserving a compact but unusually informative picture of Curaçaos eighteenth-century settlement pattern, agricultural use, water sources, and defensive geography. The inset Plan of Fort Amsterdam gives the islands principal harbour complex in enlarged form. It shows Bay St. Ann, the entrance to Schotte Gat, Fort Amsterdam, Orange Fort, the parade, roadstead, soundings, small vessels, and the narrow passage into the inner harbour. This was the strategic and commercial center of Curaçao, and the inset makes clear that the island was valuable within the Dutch Caribbean: its protected harbour, defensible entrance, and position as an entrepôt in the southern Caribbean. Across the upper right are four engraved coastal profiles showing the Appearance of Curaçao from several eastern approaches, including views with Table Mount and Little Curaçao. These recognition views would have helped sailors identify the island before closing with the coast, and they add a distinctly practical maritime character to the sheet. Together with the Fort Amsterdam inset and the detailed naming of harbours and anchorages, they make this one of the most useful and visually engaging eighteenth-century English charts of Curaçao. Thomas Jefferys was one of the leading English cartographers of the 18th century. From about 1750, he published a series of maps of the Americas, that were among the most significant produced in the period. As Geographer to the Prince of Wales, and after 1761, Geographer to the King, Jefferys was well-placed to have access to the best surveys conducted, and many of his maps held the status of "official work." Jefferys died on 20th November 1771, but Robert Sayer (in partnership with John Bennett) 'having acquired the sole property of the Plates' and other material relating to the work, 'minutely followed' Jefferys' plans for The West India Atlas although Sayer does note that additional work was done using various sources to ensure that the information was up to date.
See also: D. Gestetner "Thomas Jefferys': West-India Atlas, 1775" in MapForum, issue 7 (2005), pp.40-48 & issue 8 (2005), pp.30-35; Phillips 2699.
Item #42754
Price: $1,500.00