This VERY RARE WORK is a French edition of Captain Greenvile Collins’ landmark atlas entitled the ‘Coasting Pilot’ first published in 1693. The ‘Coasting Pilot’ was “The first systematic survey of British coastal waters and the first marine atlas of British waters engraved and printed in London from original surveys” (Verner). Since the late sixteenth century navigators in the waters of the British Isles had utilised the printed charts of the Dutch. During the mid-seventeenth century England fought three wars with the Dutch and her reliance on the work of the enemy was a clear source of embarrassment. The Dutch had private charts which were clearly superior to English sources.

On 23 June 1681 Charles II commissioned Captain Greenvile Collins to make a survey of the coasts of Great Britain, a task undertaken between 1681 and 1688. Collins was an officer in the Royal Navy who from 1669 to 1671 had sailed with Sir John Narborough on his expedition to the Straits of Magellan and the Chilean coast. He was master of the frigate ‘Charles’ from 1676 to 1679 and served extensively in the Algerian war. He was promoted to Commander in 1679 and retained that rank until his death in 1694. In carrying out his survey Collins used two vessels, first the ‘Merlin’ and then the ‘Monmouth’. Hampered as so many English cartographers of his era were by lack of funds the finished work first published in 1693 is not quite as accurate as it could have been. However the ‘Coasting Pilot’ is a remarkable surveying achievement, and a landmark in the charting of British coastal waters. It remained in print for a hundred years, long after it had been superseded.

The French government commissioned its official hydrographer Jacques Nicolas Bellin to translate a large section of the ‘Coasting Pilot’ for the use of French seamen. Bellin chose to illustrate only 19 charts omitting the three major rivers on the North Sea coast; the Thames, Humber and Tyne. That for Edinburgh however was included, quite possibly because the recent Scottish Rebellion was still fresh in French memories. The text was issued as a supplement in Bellin’s ‘Essai Geographique sur les Isles Britanniques’ issued in the same year. Considering its proximity and importance it is curious that the chart of the Isle of Wight was omitted. Provenance: private German collection. Shirley (2004) M.Bell 4a; Verner ‘Captain Collins’ Coasting Pilot’, in ‘Map Collectors’ Circle’ no. 58 pp. 42-7.