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A monumental and exceptionally rare nautical chart authored and published under the direction of Penelope Steel, one of the only women known to have produced maritime charts in the early nineteenth century. Spanning the southeastern seaboard of the United States from Cape Canaveral to Cape Hatteras, this large-format, three-sheet chart is a standalone publication within the Steel’s New and Correct Chart of the Coast of North America series, prepared at a time of mounting geopolitical strain between Britain and the United States.

Issued in 1808, the chart reflects Britain’s urgent need for reliable navigational intelligence in the western Atlantic, as maritime tensions with the United States escalated in the wake of the 1807 Chesapeake–Leopard Affair and the implementation of the U.S. Embargo Act later that year. British commercial and naval vessels continued to operate along the American coast despite deteriorating relations (although a reduction in commercial traffic might have influenced the extreme rarity of the chart), and privately published charts such as this, later selected by the Admiralty Chart Committee for supply to the fleet, filled an essential void in hydrographic coverage during the years preceding the War of 1812.

Inset plans detail five critical American ports: St. Augustine, the Savannah River, Port Royal, Charleston, and Cape Fear River. The main chart renders in close detail the barrier islands, shoals, river mouths, and soundings of the Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina coasts. Rhumb lines and compass roses crisscross the Atlantic approaches, emphasizing the chart’s practical function for British mariners making landfall from the open ocean.

Penelope Steel assumed leadership of the Steel family chart-publishing business following the death of her husband, David Steel Jr., in 1803. She maintained and expanded the firm’s output during a period when women were almost entirely excluded from technical authorship. Issued under the name “P. Mason” after her 1806 remarriage to William Mason, this chart demonstrates her continued command of the firm’s navigational publications.

Rarity

Extremely rare. OCLC locates only one institutional example of this chart, held by the British Library.