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Description

Scarce map of Guyana and contiguous regions, including insets of the Berbice River, Surinam River, Cayene and the entrance to the Essequebo and Demerari Rivers, along with a number of inset views.

This variant edition notes that it is "Approved by the Chart Comittee of the Admiralty."

Fine coastal chart of Guyana, with descriptions on how best to navigate along the coastal regions. Includes a note on how the sea changes color as progress is made away from the coast "the Water Changes to a Dirty White growing Browner and Thicker as you stand in".

Captain Edward Thompson was sent to Guyana to take control of the colonies of Demerara and Essequibo, after the English had taken the Colonies from the Dutch. After preparing as much of the defenses as he could with the resources at hand, he sailed back to England to protect a convoy of English merchants. However, while he was gone a French squadron captured the colonies, so he was subjected to a court martial for leaving his post without orders. In April 1782, Thompson was acquitted.

This map is dedicated to the Merchants of Barbadoes and Guyana.

Condition Description
Minor offsetting.
William Faden Biography

William Faden (1749-1836) was the most prominent London mapmaker and publisher of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. His father, William Mackfaden, was a printer who dropped the first part of his last name due to the Jacobite rising of 1745. 

Apprenticed to an engraver in the Clothworkers' Company, he was made free of the Company in August of 1771. He entered into a partnership with the family of Thomas Jeffreys, a prolific and well-respected mapmaker who had recently died in 1771. This partnership lasted until 1776. 

Also in 1776, Faden joined the Society of Civil Engineers, which later changed its name to the Smeatonian Society of Civil Engineers. The Smeatonians operated as an elite, yet practical, dining club and his membership led Faden to several engineering publications, including canal plans and plans of other new engineering projects.

Faden's star rose during the American Revolution, when he produced popular maps and atlases focused on the American colonies and the battles that raged within them. In 1783, just as the war ended, Faden inherited his father's estate, allowing him to fully control his business and expand it; in the same year he gained the title "Geographer in Ordinary to his Majesty."

Faden also commanded a large stock of British county maps, which made him attractive as a partner to the Ordnance Survey; he published the first Ordnance map in 1801, a map of Kent. The Admiralty also admired his work and acquired some of his plates which were re-issued as official naval charts.

Faden was renowned for his ingenuity as well as his business acumen. In 1796 he was awarded a gold medal by the Society of Arts. With his brother-in-law, the astronomer and painter John Russell, he created the first extant lunar globe.

After retiring in 1823 the lucrative business passed to James Wyld, a former apprentice. He died in Shepperton in 1826, leaving a large estate.