FIRST STATE of JAMES COOK’S FIRST MAJOR CHART. Cook (1728-79) sailed for Canada as a young sailing master on Captain Simcoe’s ship ‘Pembroke’ in 1758. The day after Louisbourg fell Cook met Samuel Holland ashore at Kennington Cove surveying the region. Fascinated, he spent the day with him learning eagerly from a master. Before the end of the year Cook had produced his own survey of the Bay of Gaspee which so impressed Simcoe that he had it sent to London where it was immediately published. This was Cook’s first chart. His second was a result of his accompanying the fleet which sailed up the treacherous waters of the St. Lawrence River and took Quebec in 1759. The most decisive action of the war. The most reliable chart of the St. Lawrence river at that point was that of Deshayes published by de Fer in 1702 (Kershaw 618). It was largely down to the excellent survey work of Cook that the fleet of 49 warships was able to travel relatively unharmed up and down the river. Sir Charles Saunders was the Commander of the fleet who received a hero’s welcome on his return to England 26 December 1759. His equal in charge of the land forces, General James Wolfe, had died in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. ‘A permanent contribution to the safe navigation of the St. Lawrence came out of the Quebec campaign. All soundings and bearing taken had been reported to the master of the flagship (Cook) in order that existing charts might be improved. In April 1760 Saunders informed the Admiralty that he had readied the materials for a new, detailed chart of the St. Lawrence and he received permission to publish. The first edition appeared on 1 May 1760 under his imprint’ (Dictionary of Canadian Biography), the chart offered here.

‘This chart was drawn from particular surveys of the following places; and published for the use of British navigators, by command of the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty Charles Saunder, Pall Mall, May 1st., 1760.’ Relief is shown pictorially and by hachures, soundings are shown in fathoms, settlements, ship channels and anchorage’s are all displayed. It includes text and 17 coastal views. Also numerous insets: River St. Lawrence from Quebec to Isle of Orleans, River St. Lawrence from Richelieu Falls to the English Bank, Bay of the Seven Islands, Mingan Island, Mingan Harbor, Gaspee Bay (the result of Cooks survey the previous year) and the River St. Lawrence from English Bank to Green Island.

A second state published in 1775 includes two further insets: ‘Havre St. Nicholas’ and ‘Pointe aux Allouettes or Larks Point’. After an extensive search examples of the first state could only be located at the Library of Congress; Harvard; British Library, National Archives of Canada; Bibliotheque Nationale, Quebec; and Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. As a result of the St. Lawrence chart he was made surveyor of Newfoundland. The resulting atlas of the island survives in just four known examples. Beaglehole ‘The Life of Captain James Cook’; Cumming ‘British Maps of Colonial America’ p. 52; Heidenreich & Dahl ‘The French Mapping of North America, 1700-60’ in ‘The Map Collector’ no. 19 pp. 2-7; Kershaw 672; Sellers & Van Ee no. 234; Skelton & Tooley ‘The Marine Surveys of James Cook in North America 1758-1768’, no. 2; Stevens & Tree 74.