Freycinet by Daniel Crouch Rare Books

The Freycinet Family Archives

Beginning in the 1960s, the descendants of Louis and Henri de Freycinet gradually divested themselves of the long-retained archives of the Freycinet family housed at L’Age-Bertrand near Bordeaux in the Charente. The current selection was acquired by a private Australian collector who gathered pieces as they became available over the last few decades.

Henri and Louis Freycinet

Louis Henri de Saulces de Freycinet (1777-1840), known as Henri Freycinet, was just sixteen years old when he enlisted in the French Revolutionary Navy in 1794. He distinguished himself aboard the ‘Heureux’, and was promoted to Enseign in 1796. However, the true making of him, and his younger brother Louis Claude de Saulces Freycinet (1779-1842), known as Louis Freycinet, was when they were both appointed to the Baudin expedition to “les terres australes”, in 1800; Henri aboard the ‘Géographe’, and his brother, aboard the ‘Naturaliste’. Together they were responsible for charting large swathes of the Western Australian coastline and Tasmania.

On returning to France in 1804, Henri was placed in command of the ‘Phaeton’. Initially patrolling the North Sea, his flotilla sailed for the Caribbean in 1805. By early 1806 they had reached Cayenne. On the 25th of March the ‘Phaeton’ was returning to Santo Domingo when it encountered the British ‘Reindeer’. In the ensuing skirmish, Henri was injured in the leg. The following day, the ‘Phaeton’ was again spotted, this time by the British vessel, the ‘Pique’, and another skirmish was soon underway. Again, Henri was injured, this time by being shot in the left shoulder, but more significantly by losing his right arm to a canon ball. The ‘Phaeton’ surrendered, Henri was taken prisoner, and to Jamaica, but by the 12th of June he was back in Santo Domingo, as part of a prisoner exchange.

In July of 1808, Henri was promoted to “capitaine de frégate”, and in 1809, took command of the ‘Elisa’. In November of 1810, while Henri was attempting to sail from Le Havre to meet the main French fleet at Cherbourg, the ‘Elisa’ ran aground and came under heavy British fire, ultimately foundering on rocks between Tatihou Island and Reville, near La Hougue. Henri was court-martialed, but acquitted, and never commanded an official vessel again.

After the restoration of the monarchy in 1814, Henri embarked on a second career, as a colonial administrator: firstly of the Isle de Bourbon, now Reunion, from 1821 to 1827; then of the notorious French penal colony of French Guiana, from 1827 to 1829, during which he was promoted to Rear-Admiral, and Baron; and lastly of Martinique, from 1829 to 1830. He died in Rochefort, Charente-Maritime, in southwest France, in 1840.

The Baudin Expedition

In 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte commissioned captain Nicolas Thomas Baudin (1754–1803) to complete the discovery of “Terra Australis”. He duly set forth with two ships, ‘Le Geographie’ and ‘Le Naturaliste’ in order to find a strait which supposedly divided the Australian island in two halves. The French zoologist François Auguste Péron (1775–1810), who had studied under the anatomist George Cuvier in Paris, was the naturalist of the expedition, and Louis Freycinet served as cartographer.

Meanwhile, Matthew Flinders was also attempting a circumnavigation of the Australian Continent, and the explorers met each other in the consequently named “Encounter Bay”. Although Flinders completed the task before Baudin’s expedition, he had the misfortune to be captured and imprisoned for six years at Mauritius on his voyage home, and his charts and manuscripts also held hostage. This allowed the French explorers to print their account of the new discoveries before Flinders, and to produce the first complete chart of the Australian continent in 1807.

When Baudin died during the voyage in 1803, Louis Freycinet took over command, much to the relief of all, and brought the expedition back to France. On the return of the expedition, Péron was charged with producing the narrative for publication. However, he died in 1810 before the second volume had been finished, with the result that the work had to be completed by Louis.

‘L’Uranie’

In 1817, Louis Freycinet took command of the corvette ‘L’Uranie’, “formerly ‘La Ciotat’, with a complement of 120 men, and 23 officers, including a priest and an artist, Jacques Arago, who also kept an account of the voyage. Of importance, and in contrast to the preceding D’Entrecasteaux and Baudin voyages, where dissension and conflict between the scientists and naval staff was evident, there was to be only one ship and the vast majority of its complement were to be naval personnel. The mission nonetheless grew into a full scientific enterprise part-charged with the investigation of the shape of the earth, terrestrial magnetism, meteorology, and natural science. Further adding to the comprehensive nature of the venture, the expedition report was to be presented under many varied headings, viz. geography, history, observations of the people, government, commerce, primary produce, industries and art. With 596 sub-classes listed under these headings according to Leslie Marchant in his seminal work, France Australe, it made the Uranie voyage ‘one of the most significant anthropological expeditions conducted by the French’” (McCarthy, WA Museum’s “Journeys of Enlightenment” exhibition 2008).

In order to help determine the sphericity of the earth, Freycinet and his crew measured the magnetism of the earth at three key different locations: Mauritius, Guam (between the Philippines and the Marshall Islands), and Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. He then calculated the degree of flattening for each hemisphere, and at the equator, and concluded that the earth was basically round.

Depot de la Marine

The Dépôt de la Marine, known more formally as the Dépôt des cartes et plans de la Marine, was the central charting institution of France. The centralization of hydrography in France began in earnest when Jean-Baptiste Colbert became First Minister of France in 1661. Under his watch, the first Royal School of Hydrography began operating, as did the first survey of France’s coasts (16701689).

The Dépôt itself began as the central deposit of charts for the French Navy. In 1720, the Navy consolidated its collection with those government materials covering the colonies, creating a single large repository of navigation. By 1737, the Dépôt was creating its own original charts and, from 1750, they participated in scientific expeditions to determine the accurate calculation of longitude.

In 1773, the Dépôt received a monopoly over the composition, production, and distribution of navigational materials, solidifying their place as the main producer of geographic knowledge in France. Dépôt-approved charts were distributed to official warehouses in port cities and sold by authorized merchants. The charts were of the highest quality, as many of France’s premier mapmakers worked at the Dépôt in the eighteenth century, including Philippe Bauche, Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, Rigobert Bonne, Jean Nicolas Buache, and Charles-François Beautemps-Beaupré.

SPILBERGEN, Joris van; and Jacob Le MAIRE

Untitled charts of the Pacific, New Guinea, and the Strait of Le Maire.

Publication [Lugduni Batauorum, apud Nicolaum à Geelkercken, 1619].

Description Double-page engraved chart.

Dimensions 155 by 435mm (6 by 17.25 inches).

References Allen, ‘North American Exploration: A New World Disclosed’, 1997; Suarez, ‘Early Mapping of Southeast Asia’, 1999, pages 202-204; Zaide, ‘Philippine Political and Cultural History: The Philippines since preSpanish Times’, 1957.

£1,400.00

A detailed chart of the route taken by Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten from Porto Desire across the Pacific to New Guinea, with insets of their route along the north coast of New Guinea, and through the strait that was named for him: “Fretum le Maire”, to the south of Tierra del Fuego.

Published in Joris van Spilbergen’s ‘Speculum orientalis occidentalisque Indiae navigationum’ (1619). In 1614 the VOC enjoined Spilbergen to sail with six vessels to the Moluccas via the Straits of Magellan. The five-year circumnavigation was the first carried out with the official support of the Dutch government. Although officially a trading mission, Spilbergen was authorised by the VOC to use force to disrupt the Spanish Pacific trade (Allen).

Once the Seventeen Provinces had freed themselves from Spanish rule in 1581, they no longer had access to the Habsburg trading empire and needed to establish their own presence in the Pacific. Spilbergen himself believed that “the best and only means of reestablishing our affairs in the Indies and of making ourselves entirely masters of the Moluccas is, in my opinion, to dispatch a fleet and armada direct to the Philippines, in order to attack the Spaniards there, and to overpower all the places and strongholds it may be possible to conquer” (Zaide).

After various mutinies and even more numerous acts of piracy, Spilbergen sailed through the Straits, he and his fleet captured and occupied Acapulco for a week, and then commenced their voyage across the Pacific in November of 1615. En route they discovered many islands, eventually reaching the Ladrones or Mariana Islands, and finally the Philippines where they spent a month raiding Manila-bound shipping, and the Dutch East Indies. There Spilbergen met up with Le Maire, who had discovered a new passage to the Pacific and had explored the Tuamotou Archipelago. Le Maire’s voyages gave decisive evidence against the supposed existence of a massive southern continent and formed a catalyst to Tasman’s discovery of New Zealand and Australia.

Jacob Le Maire and Cornelis Schouten’s voyage from Texel in June, 1615, was a mission to find a new route to reach the Spices Islands which would break the trade monopoly of the VOC (which had been grant a monopoly trade through the Strait of Magellan). The pair succeeded by rounding South America south of the Straits of Magellan. The new cape was name “Horn” (or “Hoorn”) after Shouten’s ship which had been lost due to fire at the Patagonian port Desire. In doing so they also dispelled the myth of a great southern continent joined to South America.

Le Maire and Schouten would continue to sail across the Pacific, discovering numerous islands along the way, and sailing up the northern coast of New Guinea. By September 1616 Le Maire reached Ternate in the Moluccas, the headquarters of the VOC. Initially well received, they were soon accused of having encroached on the rights of the Company and were tried, found guilty and shipped home on Spilbergen’s ship which was completing its own trip around the world. Le Maire died on the return voyage and his journals were taken by the Company. Schouten and Spibergen published an abbreviated version of the journals; but it was not until 1622, after a long trial, that Isaac Le Maire was able to regain custody of his son’s journals and to publish them in full.

SANSON d’ABBEVILLE, Nicholas;

L’hydrographie ou description de l’eau au c’est a dire des mers, golfes, lacs, destroits et rivieres principales, qui sont dans la surface du globe terrestre par le S. Sanson d’Abbeville, Geogr. ord. ie du Roy.

Publication A Paris, Chez l’auteur, rüe de l’Arbre secq pres de St. Germain l’Auxerrois, avec privilege du roy pour vingt ans, 1652.

Description

Double-page engraved map, with contemporary hand-colour in outline.

Dimensions

400 by 540mm (15.75 by 21.25 inches).

References Shirley, ‘The Mapping of the World’, 394.

£1,200.00

The second of Sanson’s world maps, both double-hemisphere, preceded by his ‘Mappe-Monde, ou Carte Generale Du Monde’ (1651). Both maps were initially published separately, and then in his atlas, the first French atlas of the whole world, from 1658. In this map California appears as an island, and Sanson has changed “Nouvelle Albion” in the northwest part of North America to “Terra de Iesso”. “Terre Australe”, the great landmass in the southern hermisphere is very confused: Sanson includes a diagonal line across the map, a vestage of the chain of islands that were part of Gerard Mercator’s concept of “Terra Australis”; New Guinea and Australia are similarly rudimentary outlines, although they are shown separate from “Terre Australe”.

“Vuyle

WIT, Frederick de; and Joannes

LHULIER

Tabula Indiae Orientalis, emendata.

Publication Amsterdam, F. de Wit, 1662 [or later].

Description

Double-page engraved map, with fine handcolour in outline.

Dimensions 460 by 570mm (18 by 22.5 inches).

References Woods ‘Mapping Our World’, 153.

£800.00

De Wit’s comprehensive map of southern Asia clearly shows the extent of the Dutch East India Company (VOC)’s power in the region in the midseventeenth century and hints at the results of Tasman’s second expedition of 1644. “The Republic’s eastern trading domain is tangible here, with a fleet powering across the Indian Ocean, and its ships and ports in evidence from India to Japan. The map gives the impression of dominion over many nations, though in truth the Dutch ‘empire’ was less territorial than formalistic, a coastal network of strongholds backed by naval power and treaties that held little sway over interior lands” (Woods).

This map extends from Persia in the west to China and Taiwan in the east, and shows northern “Hollandia Nova”, bearing three significant place names: “Van Diemens Landt”; “Baya van Diemen” and “Vuyle hoeck” (the last a disparaging term meaning something like “rotten corner” and evidently relating to the inhospitable coastline). These were among the names given to places on the north coast of Australia by Tasman during his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of VOC.

CORONELLI, Vincenzo Maria

Untitled globe gore of the northern coastline of Australia.

Publication Venice, Vincenzo Coronelli, 1696-1697.

Description Engraved globe gore with Italian text below and on the verso.

Dimensions 470 by 350mm (18.5 by 13.75 inches).

References Clancy, ‘The Mapping of Terra Australis’, 1995, 2.13; Clancy and Richardson, ‘So they came South’, 1988, page 93; National Library of Australia, ‘Mapping our World: Terra Incognita to Australia’, 2014, pages 175-177; Tooley, ‘Mapping of Australia’, 1979, 352.

£1,000.00

This globe-gore was published in Vincenzo Maria Coronelli’s ‘Isolario’, and although not intended to be part of a globe itself, part of a brilliant marketing strategy that reused the engraved plates originally prepared for the globes, in atlas format.

The small, but powerful image, derives from a trio of gores printed for Coronelli’s second terrestrial globe of 1692-1693, and clearly follows a post-Tasman view of Australia, bearing some considerable similarity to the map of New Holland by Melchisedech Thevenot. Text notes the discoveries of the Dutch, “Terra di Pietro Nuyts Scoperta l’anno 1627, 26. Genaro”. The portion of Australia visible here, is named ‘Het Niew Hollandt’ and, largely as a result of the positioning of the platemark, completely free and clear of the parts of Southeast Asia that it is often shown tangled with. A note, near the top of the map says that “some think this land is Marco Polo’s “Lochac”, because Polo had reported that “it was on “terra firma” (i.e. continental), it was isolated, and because his text, particularly Ramusio’s edition, implied a southerly location” (Suarez). Coronelli had been repeating this information on his maps and globe-gores since 1688, when he was so convinced that he included an elephant in the middle of the “red centre”. Other vignettes further reveal the depth of Coronelli’s misunderstandings, and include deer and windswept palm trees.

The text beneath the image, is a brief description of, New Guinea, “Nouva Guinea”.

THORNTON, John; and Samuel

THORTON

A New Mapp Of the Island of Bombay and Sallset [and] an untitled manuscript chart of the Arabian Peninsula, Gujarat, and the Malabar coast of India.

Publication London, Hydrographer to ye Hono.ble EastIndia-Company; at ye Signe of ye Plat in ye Minories, [1711-1715].

Description

Double-page engraved chart, heightened with colour wash; with full-page fair copy manuscript chart, pen and ink and colour wash on verso.

Dimensions 505 by 590mm (20 by 23.25 inches).

References

Skelton & Verner, ‘John Thornton. The English Pilot. The Third Book’, 1970.

£6,000.00

The first printed chart to show a recognisable Bombay - with a manuscript chart of the Malabar Coast on the verso

‘A New Mapp of the Island of Bombay and Sallset’

First published, as here, in John Thornton’s edition of ‘The English Pilot. The Third Book … the Oriental Navigation’ (1703), the first printed sea atlas of southeast Asia and the East Indies. Dedicated to the “hono.ble the Governor, Deputy Governor and Committees of the East India Company”, the chart is largely unchanged from when it was first appeared in Thornton’s ‘Atlas Maritimus,...’ of 1685, less than fifteen years since “Bombay” had finally been wrested by the English from the Portuguese, in 1661, as part of the dowry and treaty of Charles II’s marriage to the Portuguese infant, Catherine of Braganza.

As the original map accompanying the treaty was lost, the exact location, size and shape of the island remained a bit of a mystery for some time. Nevertheless (or maybe because), in December of 1667, the Privy Council created a charter giving the English East India Company “full Power to Governe, Order and direct in the said Island, as is Usuall in any other his Majesty’s Plantations”. By 1668, the Company had sole proprietorship, the command of a fort, a small English garrison, its stores, and about ten or twelve thousand inhabitants, mostly Portuguese, in exchange for £10 per annum. Eventually, Bombay was to become the English East India Company’s third major settlement, after St. Helena and Madras; and the rest is history.

The great ‘English Pilot’ project had been started by John Seller in 1671, with the first edition of the ‘Oriental Navigation (Third Book)’ published in 1675. Seller’s financial troubles, however, precluded any further editions, and it was not until four years after his death, in 1701, that the ‘Third Book’ was reissued by Thomas Mount and William Page. To confuse matters, John Thornton published a rival edition in 1703. Thornton was part of the consortium that had overseen the publication of the first edition of 1675, and his position as hydrographer to the East India Company meant he had a ready supply of charts of the area. A subsequent edition of 1711 would be published by his son Samuel and, after Samuel’s death in 1715, the plates were acquired by William Mount and Thomas Page. The following year they issued a new edition complete with Thornton’s charts.

An untitled chart of the Arabian Peninsula, Gujarat, and the Malabar coast of India.

This appears to be a fair copy of a near contemporary VOC chart of the area, possibly even a portion of Linschoten’s chart, ‘Deliniantur in hac Tabula, Orae Maritimae Abexiae, Freti Mecani: al Maris Rubri: Arabiae, Ormi, Persiae, Supra Sindam’ (1596) which later informed the map by Bellin, ‘Carte des Costes de Perse, Gusarat, et Malabar. Tiree de la Carte Francoise de l’Ocean Oriental’ (1740), which most closely resembles this chart.

SENEX, John

A New Map of Asia From the latest Observations. Most Humbly Inscrib’d to the Right Hon.ble George Earl of Warrington.

Publication [London], Revis’d by I. Senex, [1721].

Description

Double-page engraved map, with contemporary hand-colour in outline.

Dimensions 490 by 565mm (19.25 by 22.25 inches).

References NLA Bib ID: 1785952.

£800.00

With an inset of the “Ice Sea”

A map of all of Asia, including eastern Europe, the Middle East, China, India, Southeast Asia, the East Indies, and the northern coastline of Australia. A small inset lower left of “ye supposed N. Coast of Asia” is given in the lower left “to avoid too great a contraction of the scale”, and features “The Ice Sea”, and “Unknown Parts”.

DAMPIER, William; and Emanuel BOWEN

A Map of the Discoveries made by Captain William Dampier in the Roebuck in 1699.

Publication London, Printed for T. Woodward, 1744.

Description Engraved chart, pale waterstains.

Dimensions 210 by 325mm (8.25 by 12.75 inches).

References Preston & Preston, ‘A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: the life of William Dampier’, 2004.

£250.00

“The least known to Europe of any of the Eastern Countries”

The map includes a long note about the history of European discovery of New Guinea, beginning with that of Schouten, and ending with Dampier’s circumnavigation of the Island of New Britain, which “is of the greatest importance...”

Engraved by Emanuel Bowen for John Harris’s ‘Navigantium atque itinerantium bibliotheca, or, A complete collection of voyages and travels’ (1744-1748).

Dampier and Captain Charles Swan, a reluctant pirate, joined forces in 1686 and set off on a voyage to the East Indies. The voyage was difficult, and Swan remained in the Indies, but Dampier continued on to New Holland (Australia, only recently known to Europeans). He noted the size of the landmass, and made a survey, becoming the first recorded Englishman to set foot on the Australian mainland. After being voluntarily marooned in the Nicobar Islands, Dampier eventually made his way back to England in 1691. His first travel account was published in 1697, and caught the attention of The Admiralty, who commissioned Dampier to return to New Holland the following year.

The voyage was not a success. The crew were suspicious of their former pirate captain, and the ship, HMS ‘Roebuck’, was unsound. The first lieutenant, George Fisher, clashed with Dampier from the moment the ship left England, and Dampier eventually had him put ashore and imprisoned in Brazil. They reached New Holland successfully, and explored the area a little further, but the crew was hit by scurvy. The ‘Roebuck’ eventually sank off the Ascension Islands, and the crew had to make their own passage back to England. When he returned in 1701, Dampier was court-martialled for his treatment of Fisher.

BELLIN, Jacques-Nicolas

Carte des variations de la Boussole et des vents généraux que l’on trouve dans les mers les plus frequentées dressée au Dépost des cartes de la marine pour le Service des vaisseaux du Roy, par ordre de M. le Duc de Choiseul, colonel général des Suisses et Grisons, Ministre de la guerre et de la marine, par le S. Bellin, ingenieur de la Marine, Censeur royal de l’Académie de marine, et de la Société Royale de Londres, 1765.

Publication Paris, Depot de la Marine, 1765 [but 17921804].

Description Double-page engraved chart.

Dimensions 585 by 910mm (23 by 35.75 inches).

References

NLA Bib ID: 3306502; Phillips, 590; Shirley, ‘Maps in the atlases of the British Library’, M.BELL-1a.

£1,000.00

Magnetic variation in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans

Separate publication, with price “Cinquante Sols” lower right, and the stamp of the Depot de la Marine with initials “R.F.” (Republic Francaise, 17921804) either side of an anchor.

First published in 1765, when it was the first French chart to show magnetic variation, in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The map represents decades of work by several luminaries of the Enlightenment. The scientific study of magnetic variation was initiated by Edmund Halley and William Dampier, who respectively commanded the first two English scientific voyages to take systematic magnetic bearings at sea. In 1702, Halley first published his world map incorporating data from many sources, and showing “isogonic lines” of equal magnetic value in the Atlantic Ocean. However, as magnetic variation remains in constant flux Halley’s chart inevitably became obsolete. In 1744 the Royal Society commissioned two of its members, William Mountain and James Dodson, to collate and compile some 50,000 individual magnetical observations gleaned from the logbooks of Royal Navy and East India Company officers. The project was so complex that both men ultimately conceded they did not believe variation came “under the direction of any one general law”.

When Louis Freycinet took command of the corvette ‘L’Uranie’ he was charged with the investigation of the shape of the earth, terrestrial magnetism, meteorology, and natural science, in order to help determine the sphericity of the earth. Freycinet and his crew measured the magnetism of the earth at three key different locations: Mauritius, Guam (between the Philippines and the Marshall Islands), and Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. He then calculated the degree of flattening for each hemisphere, and at the equator, and concluded that the earth was basically round. It is therefore very likely that Louis Freycinet would have been very familiar with the chart.

Provenance

1. Probably Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet; 2. Freycinet family archives

COOK, Captain James; and Robert BENARD

Carte de la N.le Galles Merid. le Ou de la Côte Orientale de la Nlle. Hollande Découverte et visitée par le Lieutenant J. Cook Commandant de L’Endeavour, Vaisseau de sa Majesté 1770.

Publication [Paris, Chez Nyon l’aine..., chez Merigot le jeune..., 1774].

Description

Double-page folding engraved chart, old folds.

Dimensions

380 by 800mm (15 by 31.5 inches).

References

Tooley, ‘Australia’, 342.

£600.00

Where the ‘Endeavour’ hauled up

Oriented with west at the top, this chart shows the east coast of Australia from Point Hicks to Cape York, and is testament to Cook’s extraordinary achievement on his first voyage. Cook’s original manuscript chart is in the British Library, and it was first printed in the first official account of Cook’s first voyage by Hawkesworth.

While charting the coastline for this map, on the 10th of June, 1770, HMB ‘Endeavour’ ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, and began to sink. In a desperate attempt to regain buoyancy, the crew threw everything heavy that they lay hands on overboard, including six cannon. At the next high-tide they were successful, in no small part because the ‘Endeavour’ was a low-drawing “flat”-bottomed bark, and not a deep-drawing ship with a keel. This also meant that the crew could haul the Endeavour ashore, in order to make the necessary repairs, which took about six weeks, at what is now known as Endeavour River, near Cooktown, in Queensland, which is marked on this chart.

Published as plate 16 in volume III, ‘Cartes et figures des voyages entrepris par ordre de Sa Majeste britannique, actuellement regnante, pour faire des decouvertes dans l’hemisphere meridional, et successivement executes par le Commodore Byron, le Capitaine Carteret, le Capitaine Wallis, & le Capitaine Cook, dans les vaisseaux le Dauphin, le Swallow & l’Endeavour : rediges d’apres les journaux tenus par les differens commandans & les papiers de M. Banks par J. Hawkesworth’ (1774).

MOORE, John Hamilton; and Captain James COOK, et al

A Chart of the Islands discovered in the Neighbourhood of Otaheite.

Publication London, Published by Alexr. Hogg at the Kings Arms, no. 16 Pater noster Row, [1778-1782].

Description Engraved chart.

Dimensions 205 by 365mm (8 by 14.25 inches).

References NLA Bib ID: 3535646.

£750.00

The Society Islands

Published in John Hamilton Moore’s ‘A new and complete collection of voyages and travels: containing all that have been remarkable from the earliest period to the present time... : comprehending an extensive system of geography, describing, in the most accurate manner, every place worthy of notice, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America...’ (1778-1780).

On his first voyage, with HMB ‘Endeavour’, from 1768 to 1771, Cook spent three months in Tahiti observing the Transit of Venus across the sun, the official purpose of his voyage, as commissioned by the Royal Society. This “rare solar event, occurring every 120 years, during which the planet Venus crosses in front of the sun. The event comes in pairs 8 years apart. By noting the start and stop times of the transit from widely spaced locations on Earth, English astronomer Edmund Halley reasoned that scientists could calculate the distance to Venus using the principles of parallax. From these measurements, Halley hypothesised that scientists could then measure the scale of the solar system” (National Library of Australia).

CAUVET, Paul-Gilles, after

Untitled plan of the Vielle Ville de Aix-en-Provence “Pour servir aux observations sur le triangulation des Eng.s”.

Publication [Aix-en-Provance, c1781, or later].

Description

Large original manuscript plan, pen and ink, graphite, and colour wash, on several joined sheets, watermarked “360”.

Dimensions 435 by 755mm (17.25 by 29.75 inches).

References Association Française de Génie Civil, online; The Trustees of the British Museum online.

£1,200.00

Vielle Ville de Aix-en-Provence

A detailed and complex plan of the oldest part of the city of Aix-en-Provence, incorporating draft plans for the modernisation of the area to the southwest of the famous “Le Cours” (since 1876, the Cours Mirabeau), where the Place de la Rotonde is, and the Fontaine de la Rotonde now stands. The original design for revitalising the area was submitted by celebrated local architect and designer, Paul-Gilles Cauvet in 1781. However, work did not begin on the Place de la Rotonde until 1840, with completion in 1850. The fountain was opened in 1860.

The plan also shows the results of a triangulation survey, with a central point to the west of the city. Much attention is given to local water sources, in the west, and running through the city, perhaps connected to the future route of the Canal Zola, which was completed in 1854, and which was the first water source for the Fontaine de la Rotonde.

Provenance

Freycinet family archives

LOTTER, Tobias Conrad; after Thomas KITCHIN; and T. MANN

Carte de l’Ocean Pacifique au Nord de l’Equateur. d’Apres les dernieres Decourvertes faits par les Espagnols, les Russes et les Anglois, jusqu’en 1780.

Publication Augsburg, Tobias Conrad Lotter, 1781.

Description Double-page engraved chart, with contemporary hand-colour in outline.

Dimensions 495 by 570mm (19.5 by 22.5 inches).

References Kershaw IV:1137.

£1,000.00

The first separately-issued map to depict Hawaii

An extensive note beneath the map, in French and German, states that this chart is based on one first published in ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine’ of December 1780, which published important notices on the progress of Cook’s Third Voyage, his death, and interalia the existence of Hawaii. The map from the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ by Thomas Kitchin, initially appeared in the July 1780 issue, without marking the tracks of the Cook’s voyage. A revised version appeared in December, with the addition of Cook’s route. Both Lotter’s map, and Kitchin’s, predate the first “official” map to show Hawaii, which appeared in the official account of Cook’s final voyage published in 1784, as does a chart showing Cook’s discoveries in Hawaii in John Rickman’s unofficial account of 1781.

The Hawaiian Islands have been of great importance to the Grand Voyager of the Pacific Ocean since Captain James Cook first set foot on the island of Kauai in 1778. He named the islands after the Earl of Sandwich, and returned to a year later to meet his untimely death.

In 1820, the first Christian missionaries arrived. Shortly afterward, Western traders and whalers came to the islands, bringing with them diseases that devastated the native Hawaiian population.

Provenance Freycinet family archives

ANDERSON, George William; and Captain James COOK

Chart of the Friendly Islands.

Publication London, Published by Alexr. Hogg at the Kings Arms, no. 16 Pater noster Row, [1784-1786].

Description Engraved chart.

Dimensions 235 by 355mm (9.25 by 14 inches).

References David, ‘The Charts and Coastal Views of Captain cook’s Voyages’ 2.111A; NLA Bib ID: 3539186.

£400.00

“Rose Island” by any other name

A chart of the Tonga Islands, featuring Tongataboo, now Tongatapu, Eooa and Annanooka in the Hapaee islands. Showing the tracks of Cook’s ships ‘Resolution’ and ‘Adventure’ in 1773, and then of the ‘Resolution’ and ‘Discovery’ in 1777.

Leaving Guam in May of 1819, the ‘Uranie’ headed south and back towards the east coast of Australia, with Tonga en route. As they neared Fiji, the ship came to Samoa, which Freycinet named for his wife Rose, who had stowed away on the voyage.

Published in Anderson’s ‘A new, authentic, and complete collection of voyages round the world: undertaken and performed by royal authority: containing a new, authentic, entertaining, instructive, full, and complete historical account of Captain Cook’s first, second, third, and last voyages...’ (1784-1784).

The

DEPOT DE LA MARINE

Ile de Zanzibar.

Publication [Paris, Dépôt de la Marine, from 1815].

Description

Fair copy manuscript chart, pen and black ink on paper, watermarked with a crowned posthorn in a shield, countermarked “L” (for Louis XVIII?).

Dimensions

370 by 465mm (14.5 by 18.25 inches).

References

See Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE SH 18 PF 212 DIV 9 P 5.

£15,000.00

A detailed chart of the island of Zanzibar, surrounding islands and roads, from the Freycinet family archive, a fair copy of an original manuscript map, probably prepared by the Depot de la Marine, and once the basis for Alexander Dalrymple’s chart ‘Plan of the Island of Zanzibar on the East Coast of Africa: From a French Manuscript’, published on April 17th, 1784. The chart may have been prepared for Henri Freycinet, who served as governor of the, not-sodistant, Île Bourbon (Reunion Island) from 1821 to 1826.

Zanzibar had been of significant interest to the French from the earliest decades of the eighteenth century, as part of their local slave trading operation. French merchants from the Mascarene Islands, Ile de France, now Mauritius, Bourbon, and Reunion, “required a regular and growing supply of slave labor for the colonial plantation economy, based on coffee and sugar, which mushroomed on the twin islands” (Alpers).

The period between 1771 and 1784, when this chart was probably drawn, was dominated by “a new singleness of purpose by all concerned parties and by the beginnings of serious French activity north of Cape Delgado, which was the northern limit of Portuguese influence” (Alpers). Zanzibar soon became the focus of all coastal trade north of Cape Delgado, and the centre of the French slave trade.

After the restoration of the monarchy in 1814, Henri Freycinet embarked on a second career, as a colonial administrator: firstly of the Isle de Bourbon, now Reunion, from 1821 to 1827; then of French Guiana, from 1827 to 1829, during which he was promoted to Rear-Admiral, and Baron; and lastly of Martinique, from 1829 to 1830. He died in Rochefort, Charente-Maritime, in southwest France, in 1840.

Provenance

1. Louis Henri de Saulces de Freycinet; 2. Freycinet family archives

“...The island is low and almost surrounded by mangroves”

DEPOT DE LA MARINE

Plan de la Baye Des Passes & de l’Isle de Quiloa sur la Cote d’afrique.

Publication [Paris, Depot de la Marine, c1789].

Description

Fair copy manuscript chart, pen and ink on laid paper watermarked “Annonay” (before 1799).

Dimensions 525 by 705mm (20.75 by 27.75 inches).

References See Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE SH 18 PF 212 DIV 10 P 4 D.

£5,000.00

An exceptionally detailed, and apparently unpublished chart of the island of Quiloa, now Kilwa Kisiwani, and surrounding islands and roads, off the coast of Tanzania, East Africa. From the Freycinet family archive, this is a fair copy of an original manuscript map, probably prepared by the Depot de la Marine. The map is inscribed on the front and back “Monsieur de Freycinet”, and may have been prepared for Henri Freycinet, who served as governor of the, not-so-distant, Île Bourbon (Reunion Island) from 1821 to 1826.

The map contains a note, stating that: “The banks and dotted reefs are exposed at low water are all thick and thin, the sea rises fourteen feet, the island is low and almost surrounded by mangroves. The trees at Point Curingi are Mapou [kapok], which are visible before the land. The longitudes were observed from the village of Curingi”.

Alexander Dalrymple published a similar chart, ‘Plan of the Bays and Islands of Quiloa on the East Coast of Africa... From a French MS’ (May 31st. 1789), although it is not nearly as detailed.

Kilwa Kisiwani has been an important trading post for at least 2,000 years, and makes an appearance as such in Ptolemy’s ‘Geographia’. From “the eleventh century the sultans of Kilwa grew rich from control of the gold trade. Gold was mined at Great Zimbabwe far off in the interior, and carried by caravan and then by boat to Fatimid Cairo, passing through Kilwa on its way north. Kilwa grew in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and is mentioned by several early chroniclers. The most significant standing ruins from this period are the Great Mosque and the Palace at Husuni Kubwa. The palace was unrivaled in East Africa for its architectural sophistication and splendor. Founded in the fourteenth century, the Great Mosque was, up until the sixteenth century, the largest mosque in subSaharan Africa. In 1498, the Portuguese arrived in East Africa and quickly asserted control over the region’s trade. They built a fort at the edge of the town, which was completed in 1505” (World Monuments Fund online). The period between 1771 and 1784, when this chart was probably drawn, was dominated by “a new singleness of purpose by all concerned parties and by the beginnings of serious French activity north of Cape Delgado [East Africa], which was the northern limit of Portuguese influence” (Alpers).

Provenance

1. Probably Louis Henri de Saulces de Freycinet; 2. Freycinet family archives

FADEN, William

A New General Chart of the World. Exhibiting the Whole of the Discoveries made by the late Captain James Cook, F.R.S. with the Tracks of the Ships under his Command: Also those of Capn. Phipps (now Lord Mulgrave) in his Expedition to the North Pole.

Publication London, Published by Wm. Faden, Geographer to the King, Charing Cross. January, 1st, 1787.

Description

First edition. Double-page engraved map, with contemporary hand-colour in full, frayed at the edges, soiled.

Dimensions 435 by 600mm (17.25 by 23.5 inches).

References NLA Bib ID: 2100591.

£800.00

“OWhyhee where Capt. Cook was Kill’d”.

An early map of the world, to show all three voyages made by Captain Cook (1768-1771, 1772-1775, and 1776-1779), plotted in great detail. Also, the route of Captain Constantine John Phipps, later Baron Mulgrave, towards the North Pole, in 1773.

Provenance

Freycinet family archives

DEPOT DE LA MARINE; after Jean-Baptiste LISLET-GEOFFROY

Carte a le Vue Madagascar, comprise entre la Baye de St. Luce et la Valee D’Amboule.

Publication [Paris, c1788].

Description Fair copy manuscript chart, pen and black ink, and graphite, on laid paper with no discernible watermark.

Dimensions 340 by 550mm (13.5 by 21.75 inches).

References See Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE SH 18 PF 216 DIV 4 P 6 D.

£3,000.00

The only hope for survival for the French islands in the Indian Ocean

Based on the original manuscript map drawn for the Service hydrographique de la marine consacrée aux côtes méridionales de l’île de Madagascar, by Lislet-Geoffroy, now in the BnF. It shows “Le route de Lislet Geoffroy”, from the Baye de St. Luce to the summit of Mount Iancourvironde, and beyond to Ambouleoueve. The verso is inscribed: “Plan de la Valle d’Amboule par M. Lislet-Geoffroy”.

The chart may have been prepared for Henri Freycinet, who served as governor of the, not-so-distant, Île Bourbon (Reunion Island) from 1821 to 1826. Agricultural production of the two French islands in the Indian Ocean (Île de France and Île de Bourbon) barely supported their populations, so imports from Madagascar, which had so far restisted colonisation, provided the only hope for the survival of the French colonies.

Provenance

1. Louis Henri de Saulces de Freycinet; 2. Freycinet family archives

WILKINSON, Robert.

An Accurate Map of the Islands and Channels between China and New Holland.

Publication London, R. Wilkinson, Jan.y 1st, 1794.

Description

Double-page engraved chart, with contemporary hand-colour in full.

Dimensions 235 by 295mm (9.25 by 11.5 inches).

References NLA Bib ID: 1563798.

£200.00

How to get from China to Australia

A relatively accurate map of Southeast Asia, including the Malay Peninsula, Cambodia, the Philippines, all of Indonesia, and the Spice Islands, with part of the northern coastline of Australia.

Provenance

Freycinet family archives

LA PEROUSE, Jean-Francois de Galaup, comte de; Francisco Antonio MOURELLE DE LA RUA; and Juan Francisco BODEGA Y QUADRA

Plan of the Entrance of the Port of Bucarelli on the North West Coast of America.

Publication London, G.G. & J. Robinson, Paternoster Row, Nov 1st 1798.

Description Double-page engraved chart.

Dimensions 405 by 520mm (16 by 20.5 inches).

References Hill, ‘Pacific’, 975.

£250.00

A chart of Bucareli Bay, in Alaska, first named in a 1775 by Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, commander of the ship ‘Sonora’, in honour of Antonio Maria de Bucareli y Ursúa, the Viceroy of New Spain. With a long note: “*This longitude is determined by La Pérouse’s chart of the north west coast of America; the Spanish chart from which the present plan has been reduced fixes the longitude of Port Bucarelli at 140°15’”.

Published in the ‘Charts and Plates to La Perouse’s Voyage’ to accompany ‘A voyage round the world, performed in the years 1785, 1786, 1787, and 1788 by Boussole and Astrolabe, under the command of J.F.G. de La Pérouse. Published by order of the National assembly under the superintendence of L.A. Milet-Mureau’ (1798-1799), an English translation of ‘Voyage de La Perouse autour du monde’. An unabridged translation of the original edition in French of La Perouse’s ‘Voyage,... autour du monde’ (1797).

Provenance

Freycinet family archives

ANONYMOUS; FREYCINET, Louis Henri de Saulces de

Plan de la rade de Cherbourg et du Port Militaire.

Publication [Paris, after 1806].

Description

Original manuscript bird’s-eye view, pen and ink and colour wash on laid paper, watermarked with Napoleon’s crowned imperial eagle.

Dimensions 625 by 900mm (24.5 by 35.5 inches).

References See ‘Napoleonic Wars’, Britannica online.

£500.00

The action of November 15th, 1810

A superb bird’s-eye view of the strategic defensive harbour of Cherbourg on the French side of the English Channel, where Henri Freycinet met his nadir. During the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1814), the superior British Navy adopted a (largely successful) strategy of blockading French ports, so-muchso that the French were finding it hard to operate in their own territorial waters. During the autumn of 1810, a British squadron patrolling the Baie de la Seine, isolated the French squadrons at La Havre and Cherbourg. In November of 1810, while Henri, in command of the ‘Elisa’ was attempting to sail from Le Havre meet the main French fleet at Cherbourg. His vessel ran aground and came under heavy British fire, ultimately foundering on rocks between Tatihou Island and Reville, near La Hougue. Henri was courtmartialed, but acquitted, and never commanded an official vessel again.

In 1802, as part of his master plan to invade Britain, Napoleon Bonaparte re-ignited work on the fortification of Cherbourg harbour that had begun under Louis LVI and his engineer Louis Alexandre de Cessart (1719-1806) as early as 1781, but foundered during the Revolution. The vignettes to either side of the map view, directly relate to the remarkable engineering projects initiated by de Cessart. As described in great detail in the second volume of his ‘Description des travaux hydrauliques’ (1806-1808), Cessart’s plans for the harbour wall construction included the deployment of enormous timber “cônes”, which would be built on shore and towed into place before being sunk in place to form the basic skeleton for the entire outer wall or “mole”.

Provenance

1. Louis Henri de Saulces de Freycinet; 2. Freycinet family archives

ROSILY-MESROS, François Étienne de;

Plan Hydrographique de la Baie de Cadiz levé en 1807, sous la direction de Vice-Admiral Rosily par le lieutenant de vaisseau A.M.A. Raoul, et l’élève hydrographe A.P. Givry. Publie par Ordre son Excellence Le Comte Decrees, Vice Admiral, Ministre de la Marine et des Colonies, Inspecteur general des Cotes de la Meidterranee etc.

Publication Paris, Depot General de la Marine, 1811.

Description Revised. Double-page engraved chart.

Dimensions 590 by 875mm (23.25 by 34.5 inches).

References Herson, ‘For the Cause: Cadiz and the Peninsular War. Military and Siege Operations from 1808 to 1812’, 1992.

£800.00

What price Cadiz?

Separate issue, with “Prix Trois Francs” lower right.

After Columbus’s discovery of America in 1492, Cadiz soon became the home of the Spanish treasure fleet, and a target for foreign countries seeking to strike at the heart of the Spanish Empire. Sir Francis Drake famously destroyed much of the Spanish fleet there in 1587; it was blockaded by the British in 1797-1798, and bombarded by them in 1800.

In 1808 “Cadiz assumed a pivotal role in the relationship with Spain’s new allies. When Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the Iberian Peninsula, first to enforce the Continental System against Great Britain, and shortly afterwards, to put his own Brother on the Spanish Throne, he did not realize the difficulty of his task. Of all the other provinces and cities, only Cadiz remained free of French domination. It became the center of the new Revolutionary government and the focus for allied cooperation in Spain. Blessed with a good harbor and natural defensive barriers, Cadiz proved an ideal location for allied cooperation. It was besieged for thirty months, far longer than any other city would have to endure, and was never taken. Cadiz, along with Andalusia, served as a source of strategic consumption of -the French Army in the Peninsula, and contributed directly, to the loss of Spain for the French... The unsuccessful French siege of Cadiz is one of the most important military actions in the Peninsula. The successful allied defense of this key city made possible the survival of the revolutionary Spanish Government and facilitated the funneling of British arms, money, and soldiers into Spain for its fight against the French. Had Cadiz fallen, and with it the 1812 liberal constitution drafted by the Cortes, the latter history of Spain would have been far different. Had the French taken the last “free” city in Spain, the vicious guerrilla war against her troops may have lacked both reason and coordination in Andalusia. The British government would have had no cliental point of coordination or a secure base of operations. Cadiz served not only as the capital of the Spanish government, it also served as the focal point for Peninsular support operations for the British outside of Lisbon” (Herson)

After a month of vacillating, at the beginning of June, 1808, the Spanish of Cadiz officially revolted, turning their canon on the French fleet, under the command of Rear Admiral Maurice Rosily, in their harbour. After about ten days the French had capitulated, and the first naval victory of the Spanish Revolution against the Bonaparte regime had been won.

Britain was the ultimate victor of the Peninsular War in 1814, when Napoleon abdicated. However the effects of the battle were felt in Europe and America for many decades to come.

While all this was happening, Louis Freycinet was compiling the official account of the Baudin expedition, and Henri Freycinet was pursuing a successful career in Napoleon’s navy. In July of 1808, he had been promoted to “capitaine de frégate”, and in 1809, took command of the ‘Elisa’. In November of 1810, while Henri was attempting to sail from Le Havre meet the main French fleet at Cherbourg, the ‘Elisa’ ran aground and came under heavy British fire, ultimately foundering on rocks between Tatihou Island and Reville, near La Hougue. Henri was court-martialed, but acquitted, and never commanded an official vessel again.

Provenance

1. Inscribed on the verso: “Baie de Cadix - Ile d’[...]’, and “Baie de Cadix”, in different early hands;

2. Freycinet family archives

Near Adelaide

BAUDIN, Nicolas Thomas; Louis Claude de Saulces de FREYCINET; and Charles-Alexandre LESUEUR

Carte Generale de la Terre Napoleon (a la Nouvelle Hollande). redigee d’apres les travaux executes bord de la corvette le Geographe et de la Goelette le Casuarina par M. L. Freycinet, an 1808.

Publication [Paris, Publie par Decret Imperial sous le Ministere de son excellence le vice-amiral comte Decres, 1812].

Description Double-page engraved chart, pale waterstains.

Dimensions 555 by 810mm (21.75 by 32 inches).

References Hill, ‘Pacific’, 80; Tooley, ‘Australia’, 633 (separate issue).

£2,000.00

A chart of the south Australian coastline from Cape Adieu to Wilsons Promontory, showing Baudin’s discoveries in ‘Le Geographe’ and ‘Le Casuarina’. Plate no. 10 from ‘Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes... : partie navigation et geographie. Atlas par Louis Freycinet’ (1812). Decorated with two lovely cartouches designed by Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, depicting kangaroos, emus, parrots, and local flora.

The chart is one of the earliest of the coastline around Adelaide, “B. Dugueselin”, “C. Sully” and “C. Mondovi”, and includes the complete coastline of Kangaroo Island, “Ile Decres”, which had only been charted partially by Flinders a bit before. It extends eastwards to Portland, “Sealers Cove”, and Cape Nelson State Park, “Promontorie de Wilson”, and westward to the area of Nullarbor National Park.

The Baudin Expedition

In 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte commissioned captain Nicolas Thomas Baudin (1754–1803) to complete the discovery of “Terra Australis”. He duly set fort with two ships, ‘Le Geographie’ and ‘Le Naturaliste’ in order to find a strait which supposedly divided the Australian island in two halves. The French zoologist François Auguste Péron (1775–1810), who had studied under the anatomist George Cuvier in Paris, was the naturalist of the expedition, and Louis Claude de Saulses de Freycinet (1779–1842) served as cartographer. Meanwhile, Matthew Flinders was also attempting a circumnavigation of the Australian Continent, and the explorers met each other in the consequently named “Encounter Bay”. Although Flinders completed the task before Baudin’s expedition, he had the misfortune to be captured and imprisoned for six years at Mauritius on his voyage home, and his charts and manuscripts also held hostage. This allowed the French explorers to print their account of the new discoveries before Flinders, and to produce the first complete chart of the Australian continent in 1807.

When Baudin died during the voyage in 1803, Freycinet took over command, much to the relief of all, and brought the expedition back to France. On the return of the expedition, Péron was charged with producing the narrative for publication. However, he died in 1810 before the second volume had been finished, with the result that the work had to be completed by Freycinet.

Provenance

1. Pencilled annotations; 2. Freycinet family archives

Crossing the Atlantic

DEPOT DE LA MARINE

Carte Reduite de l’Ocean Atlantique: comprenant depuis l’equateur jusqu’ à 59 degrés de latitude sud dressee et publiée par ordre du roi sous le Ministere de son excellence M. le Comte Molé Pair de France, Officier de la Legion d’Honneur, Ministre de la Marine et des Colonies au Dépôt Général de la Marine en 1818.

Publication [Paris, Depot de la Marine], 1818.

Description Double-page engraved chart.

Dimensions 640 by 960mm (25.25 by 37.75 inches).

References

See Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Cartes et plans, GE SH 18 PF 117 P 15/1.

£1,500.00

Separate issue, priced ‘Prix Trois Francs’ lower right.

A large-scale chart of the southern Atlantic Ocean, with two carefully plotted voyages between Africa and America, and down the west coast of Africa to the Cape of Good Hope. The chart is dedicated to Louis-Mathieu, Comte Mole, who briefly held the direction of the Ministry of Marine, which he held until December 1818.

The first voyage begins on the 11th of January [?1820] at the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at St. Helene on the 23rd, and heading for the entrance to the Aprouague River in Guiane on the 12th of February.

The second voyage enters the chart at the Equator, 25 degrees west of the Paris Meridian on the 16th of December 1820, arriving at La Trinite on the 1st of January 1821, departing almost immediately for the Banc du Thelamaque, where it arrived on the 26th of January, before sailing off into the Indian Ocean on the 31st.

Various unnamed islands and outcroppings are annotated with the dates of their sighting, between 1795 and 1820.

Provenance

1. Annotated in pencil, in a near contemporary hand, with two voyages plotted in detail;

2. the Freycinet family archives

FREYCINET, Louis Claude de Saulces de

Plan du Comté de Cumberland à la Nouvelle-Galles du Sud, (Nouvelle–Hollande) comprenant la division de ce Comté en Districts. Rédigé par Louis de Freycinet [and] Colonie Anglaise de la Nouvelle - Galles du Sud, a la Nouvelle Hollande.

Publication

Paris, Imprimerie Royale for Pillet Aine, 1822.

Description

First issues. A pair of engraved maps on two sheets.

Dimensions

Both sheets: 320 by 235mm (12.5 by 9.25 inches).

References Hill, ‘Pacific’, 649.

£1,000.00

“Roguery’s classic shore” (Rose Freycinet)

An attractive pair of maps, in the first state before plate-numbers, which relate to the sojourn of Louis and Rose Freycinet in Sydney during November of 1819. Prepared by Louis Freycinet and published in ‘Voyage autour du Monde’ (1824-1844), the maps show: the County of Cumberland (the plains of Sydney), from Broken Bay south and inland to the Blue Mountains; and the coloney of New South Wales, with an inset detail of Van Diemen’s Land, and two schematic elevation profiles: the first showing altitude from Sydney to Bathurst; the second from Bathurst to Mount Ellendon.

The maps reflect Louis Freycinet’s innate skill as a map-maker and are filled with detail reflecting the extent to which the French commander and his officers travelled within the region (for example, three members of the expedition – Quoy, Pellion and Gaudichaud – were accompanied as far as Bathurst by William Lawson).

Rather unfortunately, the Freycinets were famously burgled on their first night in Sydney, losing all their “silver, table linen, our servants’ clothing and other effects had been stolen from the ground floor of the house we occupy. You know the purpose of this colony and what sort of people are to be found here in plenty; you will therefore not be astonished at this misdeed: might one not say it is roguery’s classic shore. It would be astonishing not to find thieves here as it would not to meet Parisians in Paris and Englishmen in London” (Journal). However, they seem to have made up for this by departing with more than their fair share of local souvenirs: “ two merino rams, with a view to introducing them to the flocks in France, joining, as curiosities and valuable specimens, eight black swans and a number of emus, [and] unbeknownst to the voyagers a number of convict stowaways, including a Frenchman” (McCarthy, WA Museum’s “Journeys of Enlightenment” exhibition 2008).

Provenance

1. Probably Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet; 2. Freycinet family archives

KNOBEL, J.C.B.

The District of Albany formerly t’Zuurenveld, being the eastern frontier of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, shewing locations of the settlers lately arrived from England, and Situation of the Town of Bathurst established by His Excellency Major General Sir Rufane Shaw Donkin, K.C.B., Acting Governor of the Colony, and including also Algoa Bay with Port Elizabeth, the village of Uitenilage, different missionary settlements &c.... 1820.

Publication London, Published by W. Faden, Geographer to His Majesty, 1st Jan.y 1822.

Description Double-page engraved map, with contemporary hand-colour in full.

Dimensions 540 by 855mm (21.25 by 33.75 inches).

References See Cory Library for Humanities Research, Rhodes University Library, Grahamstown, South Africa MP382.

£1,200.00

“Fine pasture country uninhabited and considered neutral ground”

The first map of the area south and west of the Great Fish River, the eastern border of the Cape Colony, which was to be given to English settlers in 1820. A note top left states that the area is blessed with “Fine Pasture Country, uninhabited, and considered as neutral Ground, since the Convention with the Caffre Chiefs, after the last disturbances in the Year 1819”.

In 1793, at the onset of the French Revolutionary Wars, the Cape of Good Hope, historically a very strategic trading post between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, was fiercely fought over by the British and the French. The British occupied the Cape in 1795, ending the Dutch East India Company’s monopoly in the region, although at the Treaty of Amiens (1802) the Dutch temporarily regained control until 1806. At the start of the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, the British once again took control, and the Cape became a vital base for Britain up until the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.

Provenance

Freycinet family archives

FREYCINET, Louis Claude de Saulces de; and Louis Isidor DUPERREY

Carte Generale de l’Archipel des îles Mariannes (Partie Méridionale) - Carte Générale de l’Archipel des Îles Mariannes (Partie Septentrionale) levée et dressé́e par M. L.I. Duperrey, Officier du Marine. Embarqué sur la Corvette du le Roi L’Uranie, Mars 1819.

Publication [Paris, Depot de la Marine, 1826].

Description Separate issue. 2 charts on one engraved mapsheet, watermarked “Depot de la Marine”.

Dimensions 850 by 590mm (33.5 by 23.25 inches).

References Hill, ‘Pacific’, 649.

£3,000.00

Annotated by Louis Freycinet

A fine separately issued example of this important chart, showing the route of ‘l’Uranie’ through the Marianas Islands in 1819, printed on “Depot de la Marine” paper, and annotated by Louis Freycinet in his familiar and distinctive style. Freycinet has added gridlines around most of the major landfalls on the map, a technique he used for added accuracy in the transfer of information and for further calculations. In the bottom left, adjacent to the island of Guam (the most significant island on the map and a major port of call for the Freycinet expedition), Freycinet has made some pencil calculations and remarks relating to the size of the island’s landmass. Lastly, there is a series of repeated corrections turning the letter “u” into “w”, in reference to the islands of Sariguan, Uracas, Aguigan, Guam, Almaguam and Guguan.

In a memorandum on Duperrey’s career, ‘Notice sur les Travaux de Mr. L.I. Duperrey’ (1842), Louis Freycinet singled out Duperrey’s work on Guam, in the southwestern corner of the archipelago, for particular notice as regards its accuracy and significance, noting that the mapping of the region was done in unusually favourable conditions. Guam was one of Freycinet’s key locations for determining the magnetism of the earth, and hence its sphericity.

Also issued as plate no. 8 from the Atlas volume, ‘Navigation et Hydrographie’, for the official account of his ‘Voyage autour du monde: entrepris par ordre du Roi... execute sur les corvettes de S.M. l’Uranie et la Physicienne, pendant les annees 1817, 1818, 1819 et 1820’ (1826).

Provenance

1. Extensively annotated by Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet; 2. Freycinet family archives

FREYCINET, Louis Claude de Saulces de; and Louis Isidor DUPERREY

Carte Générale de l’Île Guam, capitale des Îles Mariannes levée et dressé́e par M. L.I. Duperrey, Officier du Marine. Embarqué sur la Corvette du le Roi L’Uranie, 1819.

Publication [Paris, Chez Pillet Ainé, Imprimeur-Libraire, Rue des Grands - Augustins, N. 7, 1826.

Description

Full-page engraved chart, on paper watermarked “Depot de la Marine”.

Dimensions 850 by 580mm (33.5 by 22.75 inches).

References Hill, ‘Pacific’, 649.

£500.00

The magnetic qualities of Guam

An important chart, showing the route of ‘l’Uranie’ around Guam, in 1819. In a memorandum on Duperrey’s career, ‘Notice sur les Travaux de Mr. L.I. Duperrey’ (1842), Louis Freycinet singled out Duperrey’s work on Guam, in the southwestern corner of the Marianas archipelago, for particular notice as regards its accuracy and significance, noting that the mapping of the region was done in unusually favourable conditions. Guam was one of Freycinet’s key locations for determining the magnetism of the earth, and hence its sphericity.

Plate no. 9 from the Atlas volume, ‘Navigation et Hydrographie’, for the official account of his ‘Voyage autour du monde: entrepris par ordre du Roi... execute sur les corvettes de S.M. l’Uranie et la Physicienne, pendant les annees 1817, 1818, 1819 et 1820’ (1826).

Provenance

1. Probably Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet; 2. Freycinet family archives

FREYCINET, Louis Henri de Saulces de; and C.d MARTIN

Ile Bourbon. Plan General du Canal St Etienne partant de la rivière St. Etienne pour rendre a la Riv.re d’Abord. Hommage fai a Mr. de Freycinet, les traveaux ont ete execute sous son administration. L’Ingenieur en Chef, Heinasse.

Publication [Ile Bourbon], 1826.

Description Original manuscript map, pen and ink and colour wash on paper, signed “C.d Martin” lower left, on paper watermarked ‘J.Whatman Turkey Mill’.

Dimensions 615 by 890mm (24.25 by 35 inches).

References Archives Departmentales de la Reunion, ‘Cartes et Plans (XVIIe-XXe siècle) Inventaire numérique de la série’, CP 398.

£5,000.00

Water for sugar

A magnificent map of the course of the rivers St. Etienne and d’Abord, on the island of Reunion, surrounded by vignettes of the canal, sometimes elevated, that joins the two. Without doubt created for presentation to Henri Freycinet (1777- 1840), on his retirement as governor of Ile Bourbon, now Reunion, in the Indian Ocean, in 1826. As is stated on the view, work on the canal begun, with the intent of providing water for the sugar distilleries of Saint-Pierre, in 1820 when Henri arrived to take charge of Reunion.

After the restoration of the monarchy in 1814, Henri Freycinet had embarked on a second career, as a colonial administrator: firstly of the Isle de Bourbon, now Reunion, from 1821 to 1827; then of French Guiana, from 1827 to 1829, during which he was promoted to Rear-Admiral, and Baron; and lastly of Martinique, from 1829 to 1830. He died in Rochefort, CharenteMaritime, in southwest France, in 1840.

Provenance

1. Presented to Louis Henri de Saulces de Freycinet, by the chief engineer of the Canal works on the Ile de Bourbon, 1826; 2. Freycinet family archives

DUPERREY, Louis-Isidor

Carte de L’archipel des isles Gilbert et de la partie meridionale de l’archipel des iles Marshall, Dresse par M.L.I. Duperrey Capitaine de Frigate. Expedition de la Corvette de S.M. la Coquille (Mai 1824).

Publication [Paris, Firmin Didot for Arthus Bertrand, 1827-1829].

Description Engraved chart.

Dimensions

580 by 420mm (22.75 by 16.5 inches).

References Hill, ‘Pacific’, 517.

£450.00

More magnetism

The first complete chart of the sixteen atolls that make up the Gilbert Islands, now Kiribati, part of Micronesia.

Plate number 26 from the Atlas volume to the ‘Hydrographie’ of Duperrey’s ‘Voyage autour du Monde, executé per ordre du Roi, sur la Corvette La Coquille de sa Majesté, pendant les annies 1822, 1823, 1824 et 1825’.

The ‘Coquille’ “called at Brazil, the Falkland islands, Concepcion, Callao, and Payta. The Pacific islands visited were the Tuamotu Archipelago, Tahiti and the Society Islands, Tonga, Rotuma, the Gilbert and Caroline Islands, and the Bismarck Archipelago. Australia was visited twice, and explorations made of New Zealand and of the Maoris were of particular significance. Vast quantities of ethnographic and scientific data were collected. Before returning to Marseilles, Java, Mauritius, and Ascension were visited” (Hill 517).

At seventeen, Louis-Isidore Duperrey (1786-1865) was a young sub-lieutenant on Louis Freycinet’s voyage of 1817-1820, during which the ‘Uranie’ was wrecked in the Falklands. His own circumnavigation in the ‘Coquille’ (1822-1825) with its focus on science enabled observations of magnetic variation complementing those made earlier in the Pacific ocean by Freycinet.

Provenance

1. Probably Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet; Freycinet family archives

DUPERREY, Louis-Isidor

Plan de l’ile St. Augustin (de Maurelle). Levé par M. Lottin, Officer de la Marin [and] Plan de l’ile Rotouma.

Publication [Paris, Firmin Didot for Arthus Bertrand, after 1828].

Description 2 engraved charts on one full-page sheet.

Dimensions 550 by 425mm (21.75 by 16.75 inches).

References Hill ‘Pacific’, 517.

£250.00

Following in Louis Freycinet’s “footsteps”

A pair of charts of the islands of St. Augustin and Rotuma from the Rotuma group of the Fiji in Micronesia. The earliest confirmed European sighting of Rotuma was in 1791, when HMS ‘Pandora’ landed on the island in search of the mutineers from the ‘Bounty’.

Plate number 21 from the Atlas volume to the ‘Hydrographie’ of Duperrey’s ‘Voyage autour du Monde, executé per ordre du Roi, sur la Corvette La Coquille de sa Majesté, pendant les annies 1822, 1823, 1824 et 1825’.

Provenance

1. Probably Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet; Freycinet family archives

GAULTIER, Abbe; and Jehoshaphat ASPIN

Asia for the Elucidation of the Abbé Gaultier’s Geographical Games.

Publication London, John Harris, 1832.

Description

Double-page engraved map with contemporary hand-colour in outline.

Dimensions 385 by 480mm (15.25 by 19 inches).

References NLA Bib ID: 1686496; Tooley 132.

£300.00

A game plan for all of Asia

A map of all of Asia, including eastern Europe, the Middle East, China, India, Southeast Asia, the East Indies, and the northern coastline of Australia.

Published in ‘An atlas adapted to the Abbe Gaultier’s geographical games consisting of a set of maps coloured, and also another set containing merely the outlines of kingdoms and provinces, with the course of rivers, and the situation of the principal towns, islands, mountains, &c. &c’ (1832-1838).

Provenance

Freycinet family archives

The

LEBOURGUIGNON-DUPERRE, Gabriel-Cyprien; and Captain BARRAL

Carte Reduite de la Riviere de la Plata depuis les Caps Sainte Marie et Saint Antonine jusqu’aux iles de hornos et Buenos Aires. Levée en 1830, 1831 et 1832, par Mister Barral, Capitaine de Corvette, Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, Commandant la Gabare l’Emulation, secondé par Mister Lebourguignon Duperré, ingenieur hidrographe, et MM. Belvèze, Lieut de Van, Chevalier et France-mandoul, Lieut de Frégate. Publiée par ordre du Roi. Sous le Ministere de M. le Comte de Rigny, Vice-Admiral, Secretaire d’Etat au Departement de la Marine et des Colonies en 1833.

Publication Paris, Au Depot-general de Marine, 1833.

Description

Double-page engraved chart, on 2 joined sheets.

Dimensions 655 by 890mm (25.75 by 35 inches).

£500.00

Separate issue, price “Prix Deux Francs”.

The Rio de la Plata – River of Silver, is the estuary at the confluence of the Uruguay and Parana Rivers where they empty into the Atlantic Ocean; and now marks the border between Argentina and Uruguay. At the height of his powers, and while the Peninsular War was going well for him, Napoleon Bonaparte had thought that he might be able to extend his empire to include Spanish colonies in South America. However, that was not to be the case. By 1818 Argentina had won its independence from its Spanish rulers, and by 1830, Uruguay had attained its independence from the Empire of Brazil, which had formerly been a Portuguese colony.

Nevertheless, France retained its Caribbean colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique, and French Guiana on the coast of South America, the latter of which Henri Freycinet was such a successful governor, from 1827 to 1829, that he was promoted to Rear-Admiral, and Baron.

Provenance

1. Probably Louis Henri de Saulces de Freycinet; 2. Freycinet family archives

LEBOURGUIGNON-DUPERRE, Gabriel-Cyprien; ARAGO, Jacques Étienne Victor

Plan de la Rade de Buenos-Ayres dans le Rio de la Plata, levé en 1831. Par Mr. LebourguignonDuperre, Ingenieur-Hydrographe, Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, Seconde par M.r Belveze, Lieutenant de Vaisseau et MM. Chevalier et Arago, Lieutenant de Fregate; Sous les ordres et la direction de M.r Barral, Capitaine de Corvette, Commandant la Gabare l’Emulation. Publiée par ordre du Roi. Sous le Ministere de M. le Comte de Rigny, Vice-Admiral, Secretaire d’Etat au Departement de la Marine et des Colonies.

Publication Paris, Au Depot-general de la Marine, 1833.

Description Engraved chart on two joined sheets.

Dimensions 645 by 985mm (25.5 by 38.75 inches).

£500.00

Separate issue, priced “Prix Deux Francs” lower right.

A detailed chart of Buenos-Aires, when it was the independent capital of the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata. At the height of his powers, and while the Peninsular War was going well for him, Napoleon Bonaparte had thought that he might be able to extend his empire to include Spanish colonies in South America. However, that was not to be the case. By 1818 Argentina had won its independence from its Spanish rulers, and by 1830, Uruguay had attained its independence from the Empire of Brazil, which had formerly been a Portuguese colony.

Interestingly Jacques Arago is listed as a Lieutenant of the ’Emulant’. Arago had been a member of Louis Freycinet’s crew aboard the ‘Uranie’ for the 1817-1820 voyage. He died in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1855, having been blind since 1837.

Provenance

Freycinet family archives

FREYCINET, Louis Claude de Saulces de

Carte Generale de la Colonie Anglaise a la Nouvelle-Galles du Sud (Nouvelle-Hollande) redigee par Louis de Freycinet.

Publication [Paris], 1835.

Description Later edition. Double-page engraved map, proof before plate-number.

Dimensions 560 by 390mm (22 by 15.25 inches).

References NLA Bib ID: 1646264.

£1,500.00

The colonisation of New South Wales

First prepared by Louis Freycinet in 1822 and published in ‘Voyage autour du Monde’ (1824-1844), the map shows the colony of New South Wales, with nineteen counties, and an inset of “Nouvelle Hollande” upper left.

Provenance

Freycinet family archives

GAULTIER, Abbe; and Jehoshaphat ASPIN

A Plane Chart of the World on Mercator’s Projection, for the elucidation of The Abbe Gaultier’s Geographical Games.

Publication London, John Harris, St Paul’s Church Yard, 1838.

Description Double-page engraved chart, with contemporary hand-colour in outline.

Dimensions

385 by 485mm (15.25 by 19 inches).

References NLA Bib ID: 1192659.

£450.00

A game plan for the whole world

The tracks of the major explorations of the late eighteenth century are shown, and those of the early decades of the nineteenth, including that of Lieutenant W. E. Parry on the first voyage of the ‘Hecla’ in search of the Northwest Passage, in 1819.

Provenance

Freycinet family archives

DU PETIT-THOUARS, Abel Aubert

Carte Generale du Globe pour servir au voyage de circumnavigation de la Fregate La Venus. Sous le commandement de M. Du PetitThouars, Capitaine de vaisseau, Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur, 1836-1839.

Publication [Paris, Gide, 1841].

Description Separate issue. Double-page engraved chart, with contemporary hand-colour in full, frayed at the edges.

Dimensions 850 by 590mm (33.5 by 23.25 inches).

References Hill, ‘Pacific’, 518.

£1,500.00

“Carte trace de la route Suivie par la frigate la Venus” (Louis Freycinet)

A separately issued example. Subsequently published in the official account of Petit-Thouars ‘Voyage Autour du Monde sur la Fregate la Venus pendant les annees 1836-1839’ (1840-1843).

The voyage, “ostensibly to report on the whale fisheries in the Pacific, was actually primarily political in nature. The presence of the frigate ‘Venus’ in ports around the world would be of value to French commerce and diplomacy,... Du Petit-Thouars’s account of his stay in California in 1837 is one of the most important and complete records of the Mexican period in California... After visits to Sydney and Mauritius, the ship sailed home, arriving after a voyage of thirty months” (Hill).

Abel Aubert du Petit-Thouars (1793-1864) was nephew of the French botanist Louis du Petit-Thouars (1758-1831). He is credited with bringing the Marquesas and Society Islands under French protection. He rose to the rank of vice-Admiral in 1846.

Provenance

1. Inscribed on the verso, in a near contemporary hand: “Carte trace de la route Suivie par la frigate la Venus”;

2. Freycinet family archives

FREYCINET, Louis Claude de Saulces de; and HACQ, Jacques Marie

“Carte sur la quelle en marquee la route de l’Uranie a l’equateur magnetique...”.... “planche pour le volume pour magnetisme” (verso).

Publication [Paris, Imprimerie Royale for Pillet Aine, 1826-1842].

Description Engraved chart, proof before letters, with contemporary annotations, on wove paper watermarked “J. Whatman”.

Dimensions 620 by 325mm (24.5 by 12.75 inches).

References Hill, ‘Pacific’, 649.

£7,500.00

A publisher’s proof of great magnitude

Publisher’s proof of the folding engraved chart that would be included in volume VI of Freycinet’s ‘Voyage autour du Monde’ (1824-1844), ‘Magnetisme terrestre’ (1842), as ‘Tracé de l’Equateur magnétique pour les époques moyennes de 1773 et 1821, 1826’, by Jacques Marie Hacq, after Freycinet, and (probably) Brue.

The chart shows the track of Freycinet’s ship, the ‘Uranie’, as well as three lines of variation of the magnetic equator in 1773, 1800 (after Humboldt’s observations), and in 1821 (after the observations of Freycinet’s voyage). Upper left is the outline of the inset that would appear on the published map comparing the older lines with the newer ones.

The map itself appears only in outline, and is probably based on the charts of Andre Herbert Brue, who had accompanied Nicolas Baudin’s expedition to the Pacific (1800-1803), as had Freycinet, and whose ‘Atlas universal de géographie physique, politique, ancienne et moderne’, was published from 1822.

In 1817, Louis Freycinet took command of the corvette ‘L’Uranie’ charged, in part, “with the investigation of the shape of the earth, terrestrial magnetism, meteorology, and natural science. Further adding to the comprehensive nature of the venture, the expedition report was to be presented under many varied headings, viz. geography, history, observations of the people, government, commerce, primary produce, industries and art. With 596 sub-classes listed under these headings according to Leslie Marchant in his seminal work, France Australe, it made the Uranie voyage ‘one of the most significant anthropological expeditions conducted by the French’” (McCarthy, WA Museum’s “Journeys of Enlightenment” exhibition 2008).

Provenance

1. With annotations probably in the hand of Louis Claude de Saulces de Freycinet;

2. Freycinet family archives

DAY, William; and G. GRIEG

Lithographed for G. Greig’s Cape of Good Hope Directory & Almanac.

Publication London, Day & Son, Lithrs to the Queen, 1854.

Description

Lithographed chart.

Dimensions 345 by 425mm (13.5 by 16.75 inches).

References See University of Cape Town Libraries, Special Collections: the William and Yvonne Jacobson Digital Africana Program at UCT.

£750.00

A panoramic view of Table Top Mountain

A detailed plan of the important port city of Cape Town, including an extensive key, and showing major roadways, public parks, cemeteries, hospitals, churches, schools, and quarries, etc. With a panoramic view of Table Top Mountain from the bay along the bottom edge.

Published by William Day, the founder of Day & Haghe, the firm responsible for the plates for David Roberts’s ‘The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt & Nubia’ (1842–9). When Haghe left to become an artist, the firm continued as Day & Son, as here. The son, being William Day the younger (1823-1906), also referred to as “WJ Day”. “WJ Day experienced financial difficulties around 1861 related to his printing of banknotes for Louis Kossuth, who was reportedly planning a revolution against the King of Hungary, and was taken to court; he was forced from the firm c1865, it failed in 1867 and was later amalgamated with Vincent Brooks” (British Museum Collections online).

Provenance

Freycinet family archives

MONTERO y GAY, Claudio; and F. BRIGANTE

Carta Esférica de los Archipielagos de Calamianes, Cuyo y Semerara con los canales que forman entre si, y parte de las costas de Mindoro y Panay. H. 224 levantada en los años de 1850 á 1853, por la comision Hidrografica al mando del Teniente de Navío D. Claudio Montero.

Publication Madrid, publicada en la Dirección de Hidrografía y presentada a S. M. por el Exmo. Sr. D. Antonio Santa Cruz, Gefe de Escuadra y Ministro de Marina, 1856.

Description Revised. Engraved chart on 2 double-page sheets.

Dimensions 1040 by 735mm (41 by 29 inches).

References See Biblioteca Nacionale de Espagna ES.41091.AGI//MP-FILIPINAS,230A.

£1,650.00

Spanish Philippines

First issued in 1853. At the time this large and detailed chart was created Spain still controlled the Philippines (1565–1898) (mostly), and their cartographers were amongst the first to delineate the more than seven thousand of islands in the archipelago. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) had established a line of demarcation at 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, carving the world in two between Spain and Portugal, pole to pole. Spain had gained everything to the west, which was most of the Americas, except for the Brazilian bulge of South America; and Portugal, could claim lands to the east, including Africa… BUT,… where should the territories meet on the other side of the earth?

Charles V of Spain had a good idea: he married Isabella of Portugal in 1526, and signed a new treaty with Portugal, creating an antimerdianal line, in Zaragoza in 1529. Portugal “paid Spain 350,000 ducats for the Moluccas, and, to prevent further Spanish encroachment, the new line of demarcation was established almost three hundred leagues (or 17°) to the east of these islands. Portugal got control of all of the lands to the west of the line, including Asia, and Spain received most of the Pacific Ocean. Spain’s argument that the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the world into two equal hemispheres was not recognized in the Treaty of Saragossa: Portugal’s share was approximately 191°, whereas Spain’s was roughly 169°, with a variation of about ±4° owing to the uncertainty of the location of the Tordesillas line. Spanish interest in the Philippines, shown by the new treaty to be on the Portugal side of the line, would become an issue in the later decades of the sixteenth century” (Princeton University online).

In 1898, the Spanish–American War began in earnest, and the conflict extended to include the Philippines. Independence from Spain was declared in June of 1898, and in December, the islands were ceded to the United States, with Puerto Rico and Guam. The First Philippine Republic was instigated in January of 1899.

Captain Claudio Montero y Gay (died 1885), was a celebrated Spanish explorer, producing very detailed charts of the Philippine Islands bfor the Dirección de Hidrografía between 1854 and 1883. They were held in high enough esteem that both the British Admiralty and the Hydrographic Office of the United States Navy often republished them.

Provenance

Freycinet family archives

VINCENDON-DUMOULIN, Vincendon-Dumoulin, Clement Adrien; J.M. HACQ; and V. CARRE

Carte Generale de Ocean Pacifique dressée par Mr. C.A. VincendonDumoulin, Ingénieur Hydrographe de la Marine; publiée sous le Ministère de Mr. Romain-Desfossés, Contre-Admiral, Secrétaire d’Etat au Département de la Marine et des Colonies au Dépôt-général de la Marine en 1851.

Publication Paris, Dépot-général de la Marine, Juin, 1870.

Description Revised. Double-page engraved chart.

Dimensions 715 by 1040mm (28.25 by 41 inches).

References NLA Bib ID: 5664508.

£1,000.00

The later voyages of the Freycinet family

Separate issue, with price “Prix Deux Francs”, lower right, first published in 1851.

This large-scale chart, centred on the the Pacific Ocean, showing Southeast Asia, New Guinea, Australia, as “Nouvelle-Hollande”, and the west coast of North and South America, with lines of magnetic declination, is annotated throughout with the route of an extensive voyage of a scion of the Freycinet family across the Pacific ocean during 1875 and 1876.

The voyage, in an unnamed vessel, begins in the major seaport of Valpairiso, Chile, on the 18th of January 1875. The first recorded landfall is Nouka-Hiva (Nuku Hiva), the largest of the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, which inspired both Herman Melville and Robert Louis Stevenson, on the 18th of January, remaining there until the 20th of February. On the 20th of March the vessel arrived in Tahiti, remaining only 24 hours before setting sail for the French territory of New Caldeonia on the 21st of March, where it remained for a month before heading for the eastern coast of Australia, and Port Jackson (Sydney). It arrived on the 6th of July. On the 17th of July the vessel left Port Jackson, arriving in Otea (Great Barrier Island), New Zealand ten days later. On the 12th of August the vessel left Otea and sailed to Concepcion, on the coast of Chile 12th August, staying one month, before heading back to Valpairiso on the 15th of September, a voyage of two days.

After a long sojourn in Valpariso, the vessel began a series of relatively short hops from port to port up the coast: firstly to Coquimbooula Serena 23rd - 25th December; then Coquimbooula to Copiaco, 27th December to 1st January; then Copiaco to Point Iqique, 2nd - 7th January 1876; then Pt. Iqique to Arica 8th - 9th January; Arica to Pisco, 10th-16th January; Pisco to Truxillo, 16th January to 28th February; Truxillo to Payta, 28th February to 6th March; and then Payta to San Francisco from the 9th of March to April the 27th.

At the end of May, the vessel begins its journey home, leaving San Francisco for Tahiti on the 25th May. Arriving in Tahiti on the 27th of June, the vessel stayed in port until the 17th of July before rounding Cape Horn on the 29th August, after which there is no record.

Provenance

1. near contemporary pencilled annotations plotting an extensive voyage around the Pacific, and referencing distances and other charts in the margins; 2. Freycinet family archives

The

PETERMANN, August Asia.

Publication Gotha, Justus Perthes, 1876.

Description Double-page engraved map, with contemporary hand-colour in outline.

Dimensions 345 by 400mm (13.5 by 15.75 inches).

References Clancy, ‘Mapping Antarctica’, 10.21.

£100.00

A map of all of Asia, including eastern Europe, the Middle East, China, India, Southeast Asia, the East Indies, and the northern coastline of Australia. ‘Plate number 58 from ‘Stielers Handatlas’. The leading periodical of discovery in Germany was the ‘Geophische Mitteilungen Institut’ in Gotha, published by the firm of Justus Perthes under the professional control of Augustus Petermann. The standard atlas produced by Perthes was ‘Stielers Handatlas’. This atlas was revised frequently, with new discoveries often published within twelve months.

Provenance

Freycinet family archives

Adrien Hubert Brue (1786-1832) was only a boy when he accompanied Nicolas Baudin’s expedition to the South Pacific between 1800 and 1804, aboard the ‘Naturaliste’, and Louis Freycinet has inscribed the verso this chart attributing the shape of Australia to that expedition. Brue would eventually rise to the position of Geographe du Roi.

Paul-Gilles Cauvet (1731-1788) was a prominent and influential sculptor, architect, and designer to the court of Louis XVI of France. Not only was he the sculptor for Louis XVI’s brother, the comte de Provence, later Louis XVIII, but he was also director of the Académie de Saint-Luc, the guild of decorative painters and sculptors.

Captain James Cook’s (1728 - 1779) name was made with the three voyages he made to Australasia. The first, with HMB ‘Endeavour’, from 1768 to 1771, was supposedly made in order to observe the Transit of Venus across the sun, but Cook was actually under orders to search for “Terra Australis”, the mythical continent thought to lie at the south pole. Sir Joseph Banks, the eminent naturalist, accompanied the exhibition. The voyage took them to Tahiti and then New Zealand: Cook was the first European to set foot there. By 1770, they had sailed west past New Zealand and sighted land, which Cook named New South Wales.

Cook returned to the area three years later, this time with HMS Resolution and Adventure. He reached Australasia by a different route, completing the first crossing of the Antarctic Circle. At Huaheine, they were joined by a native called Omai, who became a member of Adventure’s crew and accompanied them back to England. In 1774 Cook continued through the Pacific from New Zealand, stopping at Easter Island. He was aided this time by new methods of calculating longitude and latitude, and concluded that “Terra Australis” did not exist.

Cook’s third and final voyage began in 1776. This time, the expedition sent out to explore a different region. They followed the coast of Australia (then called Van Diemen’s Land) and New Zealand and then sailed into the north Pacific, discovering multiple island groups along the way. Christmas Island was sighted and named on Christmas Day 1777, and on the 18th of January 1778 they sighted Hawaii. Captain William Bligh, the eventual commander of the ill-fated Bounty, was sent to check the depth of the water and thus became the first recorded European to set foot on the island. Cook stopped to reprovision and exchange goods with the islanders, participating in several ceremonies on apparently good terms. They then continued to California and made their way up the coast of America, passing through the Bering Strait before the frozen sea forced then to turn back and head south. Almost exactly a year after they had sighted Hawaii for the first time, the expedition returned to the north coast and stopped in Kealakekua Bay on 17 January 1779.

It has been suggested that the first visit of the voyage to Hawaii had been taken as a divine symbol by the islanders: their return into Kealakekua Bay, a harbour dedicated to the fertility god Lono, had happened to coincide with one of Lono’s religious festivals, and after one of the crew died their divine status was supposedly called into question. It is unclear exactly at what point tensions emerged, but when Cook was forced to return with a broken mast after attempting to leave on the 4th of February, the reception was hostile. The Hawaiians began to steal from the ships, and sparred with the crew. Eventually, they captured a small boat. While Cook was negotiating for its return, his crew opened fire and killed a Hawaiian leader; in the ensuing melee, Cook was killed.

Vincenzo Maria Coronelli (1650-1718) was an Italian cartographer and globe maker. He was apprenticed to a woodcut printer at ten years old, but then entered the Franciscan Order as a novice at thirteen.

In 1701, he was made Father General of the Order, but was removed from office by the Pope three years later after complaints from fellow clerics. Coronelli mainly lived and worked in Venice, but an opportunity arose to make his name when an early commission for two globes for the Duke of Parma brought him to the attention of the Cardinal d’Estrées, who summoned him to Paris to create two huge globes for Louis XIV. They each had a diameter of fifteen feet, and were built with trapdoors so they could be worked on from the inside. He was made royal cartographer to Louis XIV in 1681 as a result, and worked in Paris for two years. He collaborated with Jean Baptiste Nolin, who went on to become the French publisher for all of Coronelli’s work.

On his return to Venice, Coronelli was made cosmographer to the Republic, and granted a stipend of 400 florins a year. He printed globe gores in the ‘Libri dei Globii’ as well as producing pocket globes, and his large globe over a metre in diameter was owned by royalty across Europe. He issued the ‘Atlante Veneto’ in 1691, which was intended to be an extension of Blaeu’s atlas in three parts, covering hydrography and ancient and modern geography. One of the volumes was an isolario.

Coronelli was known as a careful scholar, and his work across Europe gave him access to the latest information. For example, he produced the first widely published European map of settlements in New Mexico, ‘America Settentrionale’ (1688), after being given the information by a former governor of New Mexico, Diego de Peñalosa.

Coronelli also founded the world’s oldest surviving geographical society, the Accademia degli Argonauti, who produced a printed version of the Paris globes. They were named for Jason and the Argonauts, the adventurers who set out to find the golden fleece; their symbol was the globe surmounted by a ship in full sail. A list published in the ‘Epitome cosmografica’ in 1693 reveals that the society counted princes, ambassadors and cardinals amongst its members. They were to receive a minimum of six copper engravings a month,

creating a a guaranteed market for his productions. Before his death, he had managed to produce six volumes of what he hoped would be a comprehensive encyclopedia, the ‘Biblioteca universale sacro-profana’.

William Dampier (1651-1715) “combined a swashbuckling life of adventure with pioneering scientific achievements” (Preston & Preston). His privateering career began with a stint in the Royal Navy, after which he joined a privateering expedition led by Captain Bartholomew Sharp in Jamaica. In 1685, he joined an expedition led by Captain John Cook which adventured along the east coast of Spanish America. The expedition met with Captain Charles Swan, a reluctant pirate whose crew had forced him to turn to privateering, and continued to write letters to the owners of his ship in London asking them for help throughout his raids. Dampier and Swan joined forces attacking Spanish shipping, and then set off to the East Indies on his first circumnavigation. The voyage was difficult, and Dampier writes that the mutinous crew were planning to kill the officers to eat them when supplies ran out. Swan “made a seasonable jape on the occasion of his hearing this. “Ah, Dampier” he said, “you would have made them but a poor Meal”. Dampier explains that he was “as lean as the Captain was lusty and fleshy”.

Swan remained in the Indies but Dampier continued to New Holland (Australia, only recently known to Europeans). He noted the size of the landmass, and made a survey, becoming the first recorded Englishman to set foot on the Australian mainland. After being voluntarily marooned in the Nicobar Islands, Dampier eventually made his way back to England in 1691. His first travel account was published in 1697, and caught the attention of Admiralty, who commissioned Dampier to return to New Holland the following year. The voyage was not a success. The crew were suspicious of their former pirate captain, and the ship, HMS ‘Roebuck’, was unsound. The first lieutenant, George Fisher, clashed with Dampier from the moment the ship left England, and Dampier eventually had him put ashore and imprisoned in Brazil. They reached New Holland successfully, and explored the area a little further, but the crew was hit by scurvy. The ‘Roebuck’ finally sank off the Ascension Islands, and the crew had to make their own passage back to England. When he returned in 1701, Dampier was court-martialled for his treatment of Fisher.

William Faden (1750-1836), began his career as apprentice to a Fleet Street engraver in 1764, and in 1773 went into partnership with the heirs of engraver Thomas Jefferys. Initially publishing under the name Faden and Jefferys, he followed his predecessor by specialising in maps of North America, resulting in the publication of a collection of them in the ‘North American Atlas’ in 1777. Twice honoured by the Royal Society for his work, he became Geographer to the King in 1783, and was chosen in 1801 to create and print

the first of the Ordnance survey maps. When Faden decided to sell his printing plates for sea charts, many went to the Admiralty, and entered service as official Admiralty charts.

Faden was undoubtedly the leading London commercial mapmaker and publisher of his day, and very successful. In 1823, he retired, selling the business to James Wyld, in whose hands, and those of his heirs, the business remained among the first rank of map-publishers of the nineteenth century.

Jean-Baptist Lislet-Geoffroy (1755-1836) was born on the French island colony of Réunion, east of Madagascar, the illegitimate son of Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy, and Niama a freed slave. In 1772, at the tender age of 16, he accompanied the French naturalist Philibert Commerson to the erupting volcano at Piton Bert, Réunion, as local guide and herbalist, and painted a rather famous watercolor of the scene. Soon afterwards Lislet-Geoffroy moved to Madagascar, where he became student apprentice to Bernard Boudin de Tromelin, with whom he served throughout the Anglo-French War (1778-1783). From 1780 he trained as a cartographer, and was eventually commissioned to map Madagascar, followed in 1794 by the Seychelles. In 1786, Lislet-Geoffroy was elected to the Royal Academy of Sciences (Paris) as a corresponding member. His chart of Madagascar, ‘Carte réduite des îles de France et de La Réunion’ was first published in 1797, and then in English in 1819 by Aaron Arrowsmith.

Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse (1741 - ?1788) was a French naval officer and navigator, whose expedition disappeared while exploring off the coast of Australia. La Perouse had an exemplary record in the French navy, commanding French vessels attacking Hudson Bay during the American War of Independence, and when the Paris Academy of Sciences decided to send an expedition to the Pacific to expand on the discoveries of Captain James Cook, he was a natural choice. The expedition set off in 1785, aiming to explore the northwest coast of America with a view to establishing a fur trade, stake a French claim on the American coast, and find a northwest passage to the Pacific. Louis XVI himself took a personal interest in the venture, keen for France to equal the discoveries made by their rival England under Captain James Cook. The expedition comprised two ships: ‘La Boussole’, under La Perouse’s command, and the ‘Astrolabe’. The expedition went first to Alaska, then headed south to California. They then sailed around into the Pacific (the commander of the ‘Astrolabe’ and eleven of his men were killed in Samoa) and headed to Australia after hearing the British were intending to begin a colony there. They arrived in Botany Bay after Arthur Phillips and his First Fleet convoy of convict ships, and after a few months of civil coexistence, set sail in March 1788. This was the last time that the expedition was seen alive.

The ships had disappeared without trace, igniting a fever of speculation in France. La Perouse had sent copies of his expedition journal and maps back to France at every stop, ensuring that the voyage was well documented, and his last bulletin sent at Botany Bay had outlined his planned route. When he failed to reach Mauritius by December 1788 as planned, it raised fears; his wife Eléonore moved to Paris so she could hear news of him as soon as it came. Even during the turmoil of the Revolution, the Society of Natural History petitioned the National Assembly to send a rescue mission; Louis XVI supposedly asked after La Perouse on the way to the block. Their fate remained a mystery for almost half a century, until the English explorer Peter Dillon found French goods while trading with natives in Polynesia, indicating that ‘La Boussole’ and the ‘Astrolabe’ had visited Vanikoro, one of the Santa Cruz Islands (now the Solomon Islands). In 1828, the French explorer Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d’Urville also visited the island, where locals told him that they had massacred men from ships wrecked nearby as they came ashore, although some of the crew managed to escape. D’Urville found wreckage from the ‘Astrolabe’ on reefs off the coast of Vanikoro, corroborating their story. None of the crew were ever found, although some of d’Urville’s informants claimed that they had made a vessel and escaped, and a couple had apparently continued to live on the islands for some years, one of whom was identified as a “chief” by locals. It has been suggested that the remaining members of the expedition were still alive in 1790. Captain Edward Edwards, commanding the HMS ‘Pandora’, saw smoke signals from Vanikoro whilst searching for mutineers from the Bounty. He had already found fourteen in Tahiti, who were being held in a small cage on deck. Reasoning that mutineers would not advertise their position, he ignored them and sailed on, and the final chance of solving the mystery of the expedition was lost.

The wreckage of La Boussole would not be found until 1964, and the ultimate fate of La Perouse remains unknown.

Tobias Conrad Lotter (1717-1777) was just one of many engravers who advanced their careers by marrying into a prominent publishing family; the son of a baker, Lotter married the daughter of mapmaker Matthaus Seutter and began working at the Seutter firm in 1740. Over the next four years, he produced plates for Seutter’s greatest work, the ‘Atlas Minor, praecipua orbis terrarum imperia, regna et provincias’. Upon the deaths of his fatherand brother-in-law, Lotter inherited the firm’s plates, with which he built up his own business and soon became one of the most successful publishers of cartographic material in Germany.

Augustus Petermann (1822-1878) was an “important figure in the second half of the nineteenth century as a geographer and promoter of exploration, with an island and mountain range in Antarctica named for him by German explorers. He became director of the Geographical Institute of

Justus Perthes in Gotha in 1855, with direct access to the publishing house, influencing publication of a series of detailed maps of Antarctica. He founded a geographical periodical ‘Petermann’s Mittheilungen’ which for 24 years published the latest information on discovery” (Clancy).

Nicholas Sanson d’Abbeville (1600-1667) is considered the father of French cartography in its golden age from the mid-seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth. Over the course of his career he produced over 300 maps; they are known for their clean style and extensive research. Sanson was largely responsible for beginning the shift of cartographic production and excellence from Amsterdam to Paris in the later seventeenth century.

Sanson was born in Abbeville in Picardy. He made his first map at age twenty, a wall map of ancient Gaul. Upon moving to Paris, he gained the attention of Cardinal Richelieu, who made an introduction of Sanson to King Louis XIII. This led to Sanson’s tutoring of the king and the granting of the title ingenieur-geographe du roi.

His success can be chalked up to his geographic and research skills, but also to his partnership with Pierre Mariette. Early in his career, Sanson worked primarily with the publisher Melchior Tavernier. Mariette purchased Tavernier’s business in 1644. Sanson worked with Mariette until 1657, when the latter died. Mariette’s son, also Pierre, helped to publish the ‘Cartes générales de toutes les parties du monde’ (1658), Sanson’s atlas and the first French world atlas.

John Senex (1678-1749) was apprenticed to the London bookseller Robert Clavell in 1695, branching out on his own in 1702. Between 1703 and 1706 Senex formed an early partnership to produce instruments with Jeremiah Seller and Charles Price, the successors of John Seller. Senex continued in partnership with Price until 1710, and then joined forces with John Maxwell, by which time he had gained a reputation as a successful publisher of atlases, maps and geographical texts.

When Price left to work with rival George Willdey, Senex soon became the more successful of the two companies, with Price ending his career and his life in a Fleet Street prison. In 1728 Senex was appointed Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1738 he presented a paper to the Society with suggestions for making a celestial globe into a procession globe. His globes were held in such high regard that one appears in a portrait by Richard Wilson of George III and his brother Frederick with their tutor: “if we can judge from survival rates and geographical spread, he was the greatest globe-maker of his day” (Worms).

Following his death, Senex’s publishing interests were continued by his widow, Mary. In 1755 most of his stock was acquired at auction by the Scottish astronomer James Ferguson. Only one set of plates escaped, the Senex-Price celestial pocket globe and those for a newly engraved matching terrestrial sphere, which went to the instrument maker George Adams.

John Thornton (1641-1708) was a leading English chart-maker, active between 1667 and 1708. He was apprenticed to John Burston in the Draper’s Company in 1656; at the time, and despite the name, the Draper’s Company was the epicentre for the leading makers of manuscript charts in England, with Burston a prominent figure in the “school” and Thornton emerges as a skilled practitioner both as a maker, and possibly as an engraver. He described himself as Hydrographer to the East India Company and Hydrographer to the Hudson Bay Company, although he is not recorded as such in the records of either company.

He was the first member of the “school” to make the transition from manuscript to printed charts, publishing three charts relating to the Americas or Atlantic in 1673, but his career path changed dramatically in 1677 when he entered into partnership with a group, including William Fisher, to assist John Seller in continuing his chart publishing business. When the partnership ended Thornton retained some of Seller’s materials, and moved firmly into publishing.

The core of his business was chart publishing, the most important of his atlases being the ‘English Pilot. The Fourth Book’ (1689), the first English sea atlas devoted to the English colonies in North America and the West Indies, published jointly with William Fisher, and much reprinted.

John was succeeded by his son Samuel (c1665–1712) on his death in 1708, but Samuel died shortly after, and the stock was acquired by Mount and Page.

Robert Wilkinson (c1768-1825) was successor to the Bowles firm, and published his own ‘Atlas classica’ in 1797, containing 46 maps of countries and regions discussed in ancient literature, both scriptural and secular. Wilkinson published a range of maps by his predecessors, being content to reuse the existing plate stock with little interest in improving it.

Frederick de Wit (c1630-1706) moved to Amsterdam in 1648 and studied under Willem Janszoon Blaeu, and by 1654 he began his own business. He was already a well-established cartographic artist, engraving a plan of Haarlem around 1648 and providing city views for Antonius Sanderus’s ‘Flandria Illustrata’. He issued his own map of the world, ‘Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Tabula’, as both a wall map and a folio in 1660. Two years later, he began to print atlases, which developed from small compositions mainly compiled of prints from bought stock to larger productions containing his own work. By the 1770s, de Wit was making atlases of over one hundred and fifty maps. After marrying Maria van der Way, a native of Amsterdam, de Wit was granted the privileges of a citizen, and became a member of the city’s guild of St Luke in 1664. He published a lavish maritime atlas in 1675, ‘Orbis Maritimus ofte Zee Atlas’, known for its elaborate decoration.

In 1695, he published a book of city views of the Netherlands, ‘Perfekte aftekeningen der steden van de XVII Nederlandsche provincien’; the plates were later bought by the Blaeu family and reused for their town books. After de Wit died his widow Maria continued the business until 1710. His son was a successful stockfish merchant and so did not follow his father into cartography.

Bibliography

Burden, ‘The Mapping of North America’, 1996.

Clancy, ‘The Mapping of Terra Australis’, 1995.

Clancy and Richardson, ‘So they came South’, 1988.

Hill, ‘The Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages’, 2004.

McLaughlin, ‘The Mapping of California as an Island’, 1995.

National Library of Australia, ‘Mapping our World: Terra Incognita to Australia’, 2014.

Preston & Preston, ‘A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: the life of William Dampier’, 2004.

Sabin, ‘A dictionary of books relating to America, from its discovery to the present’, 1868-1936.

Schilder, ‘Australia Unveiled’, 1976.

Schilder, ‘Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica’, 2013.

Schilder, ‘Sailing for the East’, 2010.

Shirley, ‘The mapping of the world: early printed world maps, 1472-1700’, 2001.

Suarez, ‘Early Mapping of Southeast Asia’, 1999.

Tooley, ‘Mapping of Australia’, 1979.

Van den Broecke, ‘Ortelius Atlas Maps: An Illustrated Guide’, 2011.

Zaide, ‘Philippine Political and Cultural History: The Philippines since pre-Spanish Times’, 1957.