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This rare map of the Port St. Fernando de Omoa (Honduras), was published in 1771 in Captain Joseph Smith Speer’s The West-India Pilot, an extremely rare and valuable maritime atlas intended to guide British naval and merchant vessels through the Caribbean and Central American coastlines during the height of British colonial expansion and naval activity in the West Indies.
The map depicts the harbor of Puerto de San Fernando de Omoa, located on the Caribbean coast of present-day Honduras, an important Spanish fortification and port in the 18th century. Omoa served as a key defensive and commercial outpost for the Spanish Empire, particularly for protecting shipments of silver and other goods from inland Central America en route to Europe via Havana. The harbor is oriented to highlight the coastal geography, with depths marked in fathoms throughout the bay, emphasizing the chart’s nautical function.
The centerpiece of the map is the New Fort, a polygonal bastion fortification protecting the harbor and adjacent town. Just east of it is the Old Fort, which may have been an earlier structure or a supplementary battery. The town is shown with a regular grid of streets behind the forts, suggesting Spanish colonial urban planning. To the southwest of the bay, a Four Gun Battery is illustrated on a small promontory, indicating a layered defensive network controlling maritime access to the harbor.
Soundings are carefully recorded in fathoms, ranging from 2½ near shore to 17 in the harbor’s deeper central basin. This precision was essential for safe navigation, especially for larger vessels entering and exiting the port. A compass rose and scale bar (in fathoms) appear at the bottom center of the map, reinforcing its navigational purpose.
Speer’s West-India Pilot, from which this map is drawn, was one of the few British navigational guides to focus on the Spanish Main. Its appearance in 1771 came at a time of heightened Anglo-Spanish rivalry in the Caribbean. British interest in Omoa culminated in the 1779 assault during the Anglo-Spanish War, when British forces briefly captured the port.
