Buccaneering Classic - With Early Visit to California Coast
Including an Account of Alexander Selkirk - the Real Life Basis for Robinson Crusoe
A celebrated privateering expedition to the Pacific. Captain Woodes Rogers set sail from Bristol with William Dampier, who served as pilot, in 1708.
After sailing down the coast of Brazil and rounding Cape Horn he made for the deserted island of Juan Fernandez to seek shelter from a severe storm. There Rogers rescued the celebrated Alexander Selkirk, a Scot who had been marooned several years before by Captain Stadling during Dampier's earlier voyage, and who has been immortalized as the prototype for the title character in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe... The expedition then cruised the coast of Peru, taking various prizes, reached California and crossed the Pacific to Asia - Hill.
Rogers’s 1709 capture of the Manila galleon at Puerto Segurio was the highlight of the circumnavigation. Rogers operated under letters of marque issued during the War of Spanish Succession, allowing merchant ships to engage in privateering against French and Spanish trade in the South Seas. His ties to piracy continued after his return to England when he was commissioned to suppress pirates in the Bahamas. Appointed Captain General and Governor by George I, he persuaded most to surrender under the King's pardon, but faced resistance from notorious figures such as Edward Teach, Charles Vane and Blackbeard, who fought to reclaim their former stronghold.
The map of the World by Herman Moll shows the track of the Duke and Dutchess.
- A Map of the World with the Ships Duke & Dutchess's Tract Round it from 1708 to 1711.
The four other maps, by John Senex, form a continuous chart of the Pacific coast from Acapulco to Ancon (just south of the Island of Chiloé).
States
Pagination conforms to the 1718 second edition. The 1712 first edition titlepage here in facsimile on old paper.
Provenance
Engraved armorial bookplate of Mathew Fortesque, of Stephenstown.
Herman Moll (c. 1654-1732) was one of the most important London mapmakers in the first half of the eighteenth century. Moll was probably born in Bremen, Germany, around 1654. He moved to London to escape the Scanian Wars. His earliest work was as an engraver for Moses Pitt on the production of the English Atlas, a failed work which landed Pitt in debtor's prison. Moll also engraved for Sir Jonas Moore, Grenville Collins, John Adair, and the Seller & Price firm. He published his first original maps in the early 1680s and had set up his own shop by the 1690s.
Moll's work quickly helped him become a member of a group which congregated at Jonathan's Coffee House at Number 20 Exchange Alley, Cornhill, where speculators met to trade stock. Moll's circle included the scientist Robert Hooke, the archaeologist William Stuckley, the authors Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, and the intellectually-gifted pirates William Dampier, Woodes Rogers and William Hacke. From these contacts, Moll gained a great deal of privileged information that was included in his maps.
Over the course of his career, he published dozens of geographies, atlases, and histories, not to mention numerous sheet maps. His most famous works are Atlas Geographus, a monthly magazine that ran from 1708 to 1717, and The World Described (1715-54). He also frequently made maps for books, including those of Dampier’s publications and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. Moll died in 1732. It is likely that his plates passed to another contemporary, Thomas Bowles, after this death.
John Senex (1678-1740) was one of the foremost mapmakers in England in the early eighteenth century. He was also a surveyor, globemaker, and geographer. As a young man, he was apprenticed to Robert Clavell, a bookseller. He worked with several mapmakers over the course of his career, including Jeremiah Seller and Charles Price. In 1728, Senex was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, a rarity for mapmakers. The Fellowship reflects his career-long association as engraver to the Society and publisher of maps by Edmund Halley, among other luminaries. He is best known for his English Atlas (1714), which remained in print until the 1760s. After his death in 1740 his widow, Mary, carried on the business until 1755. Thereafter, his stock was acquired by William Herbert and Robert Sayer (maps) and James Ferguson (globes).