A decorative sea chart with an attractive title cartouche, rhumb lines, compass rose, cherubs etc. On 23 June 1681 Charles II commissioned Captain Greenvile Collins (d.1694) 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 It remained in print for a hundred years, long after it had been superseded.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 Map Collectors Circle no. 58, NMM 335.