Description

Joseph Frederick Wallet DES BARRES (1721 – 1824), Publisher; Thomas WHEELER, Surveyor.

[London: J.F.W. Des Barres for the Admiralty, circa 1778 – 1779].

 

Copper engraving with etching, on fine laid paper watermarked ‘LVG’, with a no. ‘8’ typestamped to verso (Very Good, overall clean, bright and crisp, just some very light toning along vertical centefold, soft additional horizontal fold, some minor marginal tears closed from verso, minor clean split to lower vertical centrefold closed from verso), 76 x 55 cm (30 x 21.5 inches).

 

This attractively rendered and detailed chart depicts an iconic place in American history, being Plymouth Bay, the scene where the Mayflower Pilgrims landed on ‘Plymouth Rock’ in 1620.  The chart represents the first scientific mapping of the bay, the result of trigonometrical surveys executed in 1774 by Thomas Wheeler, as part of the General Survey of the Northern District of British North America, an ambitious project to complete the scientific charting of the coastal regions of the continent north of the Potomac, led by the incomparable Captain Samuel Holland.  This is the first state of the chart, published by J.F.W. Des Barres, as part of his grand atlas, The Atlantic Neptune, and evinces his signature style of engraving with etching.

The chart shows the entire expanse of Plymouth Bay, which is guarded by two great sand bars, with the small but vibrant port town of Plymouth located on the southern part of bay, shown in outline, fronted by numerous wharves.  The coastal road is shown to weave past homesteads and arms and around coastal estuaries up to the Duxborough River.  On the way is the Duxborough Meet[ing House], which was then, in this period leading up to the American Revolution, a popular meeting place for those espousing patriotic sentiments.

In the seas, the many sandbars are bounded by stipple, bathymetric soundings dot the shipping passages, while the directions and heights of the tides are noted.

 

The States of the Chart

The Henry Newton Stevens Collection at the National Maritime Museum (Greenwich) is by far and away the largest, highest quality and most comprehensive archive of J.F.W. Des Barres charts in the world.  It has commonly been used to define the states of each of the charts, although, in some cases, additional states and variants are known.

The Henry Newton Stevens Collection lists 6 states (with the second state having 2 variants), of which the present example is of the first state.

 

A Note on Rarity

All charts from J.F.W. Des Barres’s Atlantic Neptune are rare, to varying degrees.  We are aware of 3 other examples of the present Plymouth Bay chart (albeit of varying states) as having appeared on the market over the last decade.

 

The General Survey of the Northern District of North America and J.F.W. Des Barres’s Atlantic Neptune

In 1764, Britain, which came to control all North America east of the Mississippi, established the General Survey of British North America, which had a mandate to create a complete and scientifically accurate map of all littoral areas of these domains.  For this purpose, British North America was divided into two parts.  The seasoned military surveyor Samuel Holland was appointed as the Surveyor General of the Northern District of North America, placing him in charge of overseeing the mapping of all the lands north of the Potomac River (while William De Brahm oversaw the Southern District, running from the Potomac to Key West).  As some parts of the regions concerned had already been mapped to a high degree of precision, the focus of the General Survey was ‘filling in the gaps’, by making systematic trigonometrical surveys of the areas not yet well mapped, employing the most advanced European techniques that have hitherto never been attempted in the Americas on such a grand scale.

From 1764 to 1775, Holland led expert teams to chart large parts of Quebec, the Canadian Maritimes and New England, as well as parts of New York and New Jersey.

During the surveying season of 1774, the General Survey moved to map the Massachusetts coast south of Boston, with one of Holland’s Deputies, Thomas Wheeler, charged with surveying the South Shore, including Plymouth Bay.

As the Massachusetts Gazette of Thursday, 5 May 1774 (cited in The Library of Congress Bibliography of Cartography, vol. 2, p. 59) records:

We have the pleasure to inform the public, that an Exact Survey of the Sea- Coast from the Bay of Fundy to this Port [Boston] (so much long wanted) is at length happily accomplished under the Direction of Capt. Holland; and that a further Survey, under the same Direction, from Boston to Plymouth, by Mr. Wheeler, and from Plymouth around the Cape to Rhode Island Government, by Mr. Blaskowitz, is intended; which when done will finish the whole east of this province [Massachusetts], and will be of great advantage to the Trade in the safety of Navigation. Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Blaskowitz came to Boston from Portsmouth last Week, and are immediately to proceed on said survey.

While Wheeler was able to execute his survey of Plymouth Bay without remarkable hindrance, the area was by that time a ‘patriot’ hotbed of discontent against the British colonial regime.  As a representative of the crown, Wheeler would have to have been mindful of whom he interacted with while fulfilling his charge.  In fact, less than a year after the survey, in the immediate wake of the Battles of Lexington and Concord (April 19, 1775), the local patriot militia, led by Colonel Theophilus Cotton, quickly moved to erase any British authority in the Plymouth area.

Most of the manuscripts from Holland’s General Survey of the Northern District of British North America, including Wheeler’s chart of Plymouth Bay, were handed to the eccentric but brilliant Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres to be published as part of his colossal atlas project, The Atlantic Neptune.

Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres (1721 – 1824) was a larger-than-life figure who had a transformative impact upon the Canadian Maritimes.  He was born in Basel, Switzerland, and studied mathematics at that city’s university under the famous Bernoulli brothers.  Possessing an ambitious and adventurous spirit, he saw few opportunities in his staid native land, so immigrated to Britain.  There he continued his studies at the newly founded Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, where he was trained in surveying.  In 1756, he enlisted in the Royal American Regiment, which was largely composed of well-educated Continental European soldiers, and left for Canada to fight in the Seven Years’ War (1756-63). While in Canada, Des Barres participated in the Siege of Louisbourg (1758) and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (1759), where the British took Quebec City.  In 1760, he was deployed to Halifax to plan the enlargement of the city’s defences and naval yard.  In 1762, he worked on surveys in Newfoundland with the young James Cook, the legendary future Pacific explorer.

In 1764, Des Barres was appointed as the Admiralty surveyor for Peninsular Nova Scotia.  He was commissioned with making a systematic trigonometric survey of the entire coastline of the peninsula.  While geographically a small region, this was a Herculean task, as the coastlines were amongst the most indented and complicated in the world, often beset by fog and storms.  From 1764 to 1770, Des Barres led his teams, often against great hardship and danger, to produce a series of remarkably precise sea charts, that when combined would form the first scientific general map of the coasts of Peninsular Nova Scotia.  Des Barres and his men also took the time to sketch the landscape they encountered, creating many of the finest and most historically important 18th Century images of Nova Scotia.

In 1770, Des Barres moved to London, where he was charged by the Admiralty with creating the first sea atlas of the British American colonies, The Atlantic Neptune.  This would prove to be no ordinary project, as, in good part, due to Des Barres’ eccentricity, perfectionism and workaholism, it turned out to be perhaps the largest and one of the most artistically virtuous cartographic publishing projects ever undertaken.  Des Barres not only employed his own charts but was given access to the best manuscripts charts in the Admiralty and Board of Trade archives, including those by the likes of Holland, Cook, De Brahm and others, creating a work of unrivalled scope and quality.

The atlases’ essence was best captured by a contemporary French journal, which described The Atlantic Neptune as “one of the most remarkable products of human industry that had ever been given the world through the arts of printing and engraving”.  Printed progressively over a span of a decade, from 1774 to 1784, at its largest extent it comprised five volumes including 115 maps and 146 views, many of which folded out to a massive size.  The atlases’ coverage extended all the way down the Atlantic Seaboard and along the Gulf of Mexico, and the lower Mississippi Valley, plus the addition of charts of key harbours in Jamaica. Importantly, the atlases’ volumes did not have set collations, as they were custom ordered, so varied in size and content.  The Atlantic Neptune assumed added importance upon the advent of the American Revolutionary War (1775-83), whereby Royal Navy commanders were in desperate need of working charts of North American harbours.  It is thus striking that, under such stressful circumstances, Des Barres still took the time to create charts and views of an utterly unique artistic élan.

In both a quest for perfection and through a sense of urgency, Des Barres produced many of his charts and views in numerous states.  It is remarkable that while admirals were pressuring Des Barres to finish charts of key harbours, such as Halifax, Boston, Newport and New York, he still stubbornly laboured over the decorative elements of the Neptune.  While these actions may have frustrated flag officers, we are today the beneficiaries of his artistic talent and dedication.  As for Des Barres, he returned to Canada in 1784, where he served variously as the Lieutenant Governor of Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton Island.  Amazingly, he remained daily active, in perfect health, until he passed away at the age of 102!

References: National Maritime Museum: HNS93A; SELLERS and VAN EE, Maps and Charts of North America and the West Indies, no. 960.  Cf. Alexander JOHNSON, The First Mapping of America: The General Survey of British North America (London, 2017), esp. p. 210; William CUMMING, British Maps of Colonial America (1974),pp.51-56; S. Max EDELSON, The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America Before Independence (2017); J.B. HARLEY et al., Mapping the American Revolutionary War (1978), pp. 25-8; Stephen HORNSBY, Surveyors of Empire: Samuel Holland, J.F.W. Des Barres, and the Making of the Atlantic Neptune (2011); Grace S. MACHEMER, “Headquartered at Piscataqua: Samuel Holland’s Coastal and Inland Surveys, 1770-1774,” Historical New Hampshire  (Spring/Summer 2002), vol. 57 nos. 1 &2, pp. 4-25.