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Manuscript Sea Chart of "The Stream of Florida" and The Atlantic Ocean

This is a fascinating hand drawn map of the Atlantic Ocean, offering an early image of the Gulf Stream (here called "The Stream of Florida"). 

The numbering at the top left suggests that it was originally intended to illustrate a journal or report of some sort.  Appearing on paper watermarked with the date of 1804, it was likely influenced by several American maps published in the preceding years illustrating the Gulf Stream, an important topic in modern navigational circles in the early 19th Century as trade between North America and Europe increasingly required faster and more reliable transit.

The map is seemingly drawn from a map of the Gulf Steam published by the American Philisophical Society in 1799, illustating an early model of the Gulf Stream from the Gulf of Florida north to the Grand Bank then curving southeast to west coast of Africa.  The map is based upon a chart is chart published by Robert Sayer in his West India Pilot in 1787.

Pownall and The Atlantic Ocean

The most likely base map for the manuscript is The Atlantic Ocean, by Governor Pownall, first published first by Robert Sayer circa 1787 and the aforementioned Americn Philosophical Society map of 1799.

Robert Pownall served as lieutenant governor of New Jersey from 1775 to 1757, and as governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony from 1757 to 1760. Prior to those appointments he traveled North America for two years. The chart of the Atlantic was not his first cartographic work. In 1755, Pownall contributed to a corrected version of Lewis Evans' famous map of North America.

Pownall's chart and this manuscript map show roughly the same area . Many of the place names and the location of these names indicate that the Pownall chart served as a base for this manuscript. For example, the location of most of the major place names are similar, particularly "South North Carolina", "Caribee Islands", and "Bahama or Lucayos". Some place names have spellings that suggest error ("Carved Rock" instead of "Carvel Rock" in the Azores) or idiosyncrasy on the part of the manuscript author ("Louisianah", "Great Bank" instead of "Grand Bank"). 

There are no rhumb lines or sounding depths, indicating that this map was never meant for navigation, although there are wind arrows. There is also the Gulf Stream, here called "The Stream of Florida" which was of interest to those with scientific leanings in the late eighteenth century, like Thomas Pownall. First illustrated by Benjamin Franklin in his Chart of the Gulf Stream published in Paris in 1782, the topic of the Gulf Stream was then a major topic of discussion, with a number of articles published in Philadelphia in the 1790s by the American Philosophical Society and other describing the Gulf Stream.