1742 William Mount and Thomas Page Nautical Chart of Chesapeake Bay

This is a superb example of William Mount and Thomas Page's large nautical map of Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay, in the 1742 first state. It represents the dominant English depiction of the water approaches to Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey for most of the colonial period. Its place as the chief printed chart of these waters would last even beyond the publication of the demonstrably superior Atlantic Neptune.

A Closer Look

The map’s basic outline was derived from Augustine Hermann's 1673 Virginia and Maryland (Coolie Verner considered Thornton's Virginia chart 'a careful and exact copy of the Herman (sic)', but it was augmented in the north from other sources, as were its array of depth soundings and shoals. The westward-oriented chart covers the mid-Atlantic coast, from Staten Island to Virginia Beach. It includes the lower reaches of the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers. The Potomac is depicted as far as what is here termed Turkey Buzzard Point. Not to be mistaken for the modern peninsula of that name on the Patuxent River, 'Turkey Buzzard Point' was later shortened to Buzzard Point, which overlooks the juncture of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, and constitutes the southernmost tip of present-day Washington, D.C.

While it does identify the colonies, and names the counties within them, as a chart the work is focused on waterways and does not include detail of the interior, such as cities and roads. The chart is abundantly marked with rhumb lines and depth soundings, and sports two elegant compass roses.

Publication History and Census

Initially engraved in 1689 by John Thornton, for inclusion in his Atlas Maritimus. After a long run in that nautical atlas, the plate passed to Mount and Page just prior to Thornton's death in 1707-8, after which they began to publish the chart in their The English Pilot. The age of the plates necessitated their re-engraving to two new ones in and around 1742. The easiest point of recognition for these second plate examples is the lettering 'VIR GIN IA' for that colony's name. Coolie Verner’s cartobibliography of the Virginia maps appearing in The English Pilot enumerates two states for the second plate of the chart. The 1773 second state of the second plate exhibited the changed spelling of the place name 'Jarsey' to 'Jersey' as well as sporting a longer tail in the 'g' of Page's imprint. The spelling 'Jarsey' appearing on this example, as well as the long tail of the 'g', identify this as the first state of the second plate. Examples of this version of the map were included in editions of The English Pilot from 1743 to 1770. The English Pilot is well represented in institutional collections, but we see just four separate examples of this state of the chart in OCLC.