Sign In

- Or use -
Forgot Password Create Account
Description

Provides one of the First Accurate Descriptions of Bouvetøya

A detailed and fascinating chart of the South Indian Ocean, showing some of the most important journeys of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This includes Cook's 1776 voyage and du Fresne's 1772 voyage. Outstanding detail is provided. In the bottom left, two segments of text discuss the discovery of various islands in the region.

The map itself depicts the routes of at least fifteen separate voyages and charts their daily positions. In addition, Horsburgh depicts five different routes that he deems optimal, to be chosen depending on the season, destination, and prevailing conditions. The coasts of East Africa and Madagascar are shown in detail, with soundings to the edge of the nearshore shelf. Numerous islands and shoals are depicted, including Kerguelen, Mauritius, Christmas Island, and the Nazareth Banks.

Several penciled lines cross the map, with dots every couple hundred kilometers. It is very likely that this map was used to chart at least three voyages across the Indian Ocean, all heading in the direction of Madras and taking the southern passage. Two take the quickest way, while one tracks just north of Horsburgh's suggested monsoon-season route. 

The two pieces of text in the bottom left of the map are of particular note. The first discusses Bouvet's Island, which lies off the map and will be discussed further below. The second discusses four islands supposedly discovered by Marion du Fresne in 1772, but of which no later accounts document. Several phantom islands do in fact dot the map, but Honsburgh takes care to label them as such, either providing extensive notes or simply commenting "doubtful."

Bouvet Island

Bouvet Island (Bouvetøya) lies several thousand miles west of this chart in the south Atlantic Ocean. The island was first spotted more than three-quarters of a century before this map was made, but not found again until 1808. This map was one of the first sources to clarify the general cartographic confusion regarding the island.

Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier and his crew found the island in 1739 but were unable to land or circumnavigate the island, leaving the possibility open that this represented a large southern continent. This is sometimes shown in the mid-18th century maps of the South Atlantic. Bouvet named the Cap de la Circoncision on the northeast corner of the island. Cook set out to search for this island on his second voyage but was unable to locate it due to his westerly position. It was then believed that this may be a phantom island, though Captain Lindsay of the SE&S Swan would find the island again in 1808.

Horsburgh was able to convince Samuel Enderby, owner of one of the major sealing companies and future namesake of Enderby Land, to let him access the journals of the Swan. Horsburgh correlates the two discoveries using his sources, as well as a possible 1803 sighting, to give a more complete description of the island. He manages to place it more accurately, but this position is still slightly incorrect.

The first landing on the island would occur several years after the publication of this map. It would be annexed by Norway in 1927, and the description "high, and covered with snow" still very much applies.

James Horsburgh and the Quest for Better Navigational Charts

The need for more accurate charts was forcibly brought home to James Horsburgh on May 30, 1786, when his shipwrecked off the coast of Diego Garcia 'in consequence of an error in her chart'. For almost the next twenty years Horsburgh gathered information about the sea lanes traveled by the East Indiamen, both from his own observations - most particularly during a seven-year period when he commanded a ship called the 'Anna' - and from the work of others. The value and importance of his observations and the resulting charts was swiftly recognized, and they were published over a lengthy period, with revisions being made as they were needed.

Horsburgh was rewarded by being elected a member of the Royal Society in March 1806 and, more importantly from a financial point of view, he was appointed hydrographer to the East India Company in October 1810.

Condition Description
Minor toning along centerfold.
James Horsburgh Biography

James Horsburgh (1762 -1836) was a Scottish hydrographer who worked for the British East India Company (EIC) and charted much of China, Southeast Asia, India and contiguous regions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Horsburgh went to sea at the age of sixteen and was captured and imprisoned by the French at Dunkirk. After his release, he made voyages to the West Indies and Calcutta. In 1786, as first mate in the Atlas, Horsburgh sailed from Batavia to Ceylon and was subsequently shipwrecked on the island of Diego Garcia. This disaster influenced him in his decision to produce accurate maps after he found his way back to India.

EIC hydrographer Alexander Dalrymple published three of Horsburgh’s earliest charts of the Straits of Macassar, of the western Philippines, and of the tract from Dampier's Strait to Batavia. In 1799, Dalrymple published Horsburgh’s Observations on the Eastern Seas on behalf of the EIC.

Meanwhile, Horsburgh continued his sailing career in the Carron, which had been taken up by the British government as a transport to the West Indies and, on his return to England, sailed again for Bombay. There, in April 1798, he was appointed to the command of his old ship, the Anna, and during the next seven years he made two voyages to England, besides several to China, Bengal, and Madras.

On the return trips to England in 1799 and 1801, Horsburgh became acquainted with the London scientific community including Sir Joseph Banks, the astronomer Nevil Maskelyne, and Henry Cavendish. Horsburgh kept barometric records for Cavendish during his voyages from 1802 to 1804, which elucidated the diurnal variation in the open sea between 26°N and 26°S. It was these measurements and his high society contacts that assured Horsburgh nomination and approval as a Fellow of the Royal Society upon his retirement from the sea in 1806.

Horsburgh continued to publish on nautical navigation. In 1806, he released Memoirs Comprising the Navigation to and from China. Next, in 1809 and 1811, Horsburgh finalized Directions for Sailing to and from the East Indies, China, New Holland, Cape of Good Hope, and the interjacent Ports, compiled chiefly from original Journals and Observations made during 21 years' experience in navigating those Seas, also known as the India Directory. These publications made Horsburgh a likely candidate for the position of hydrographer to the EIC, a post he gained in 1810. While serving as hydrographer he revised the Directory, with subsequent editions in 1816-7, 1826-7, and 1836. He also oversaw the compilation and publication of the EIC’s Atlas of India in 1827.

Horsburgh died in 1836. However, his legacy lived on. Friends and admirers in Canton raised a memorial subscription and erected the Horsburgh Lighthouse on Pedro Branca in the Strait of Singapore.  With the permission of his children, the Admiralty took up the Directory and released editions in 1841, 1852, 1855, and 1864. After his death and with the demise of the EIC, his charts passed to the Admiralty Hydrographic Office, who reissued them.