Description
This chart of Boston Bay comes from a multi-volume collection of charts and views Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres called The Atlantic Neptune. Des Barres’s name is attached to the ambitious and exceptionally executed publication, but in actuality a small army of surveyors, hydrographers, engravers, calligraphers, and printers, as well as Des Barres, created the most scientifically accurate charts of the North American waters and coastlines at the time of their publication.
After growing up and studying mathematics in Basel, Switzerland, Des Barres moved to England, where he enrolled in the Royal Military College in 1753. Upon graduation Des Barres was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Royal American Regiment and sent to serve in the French and Indian War, where he was assigned to survey Quebec. When his superiors realized the extent of his talent, he was assigned to survey the entire coast of Nova Scotia. Working with a generously sized team and state-of-the-art scientific instruments and methodologies, Des Barres spent ten years, from 1763 to 1773, surveying the coast from spring to fall of each year. Over the winters Des Barres and his team created charts from their survey data. At the same time others, including Samuel Holland, were surveying the eastern seaboard of the American colonies.
When Des Barres returned to England in 1773 tensions were already growing between the American colonies and the British crown. In the spring of 1774 the British navy blockaded Boston’s port. The British navy, which had been relying on charts originally published at the end of the 17th century, desperately needed updated charts of North American waters. Des Barres seized the opportunity to secure funding from the Lords of the Admiralty and Parliament to publish a collection of engraved charts and views. From 1774 to 1782 Des Barres organized, edited, and oversaw production of The Atlantic Neptune, culminating in four volumes, two dedicated to Nova Scotia, one covering New England, and one for the St. Lawrence River and Gulf southwards to the Gulf of Mexico.
Due in large part to the American Revolution and the British navy’s resulting need for charts of the western Atlantic, Des Barres published most heavily at the beginning of his project. According to professor of geography Stephen J. Hornsby, Des Barres published at least 35 charts and 26 coastal views, of which 13 were of New England between April 1775 and November 1776, including the port of Boston. For his charts of New England Des Barres relied on surveys taken by Samuel Holland.
Des Barres sourced material for The Atlantic Neptune not only from Samuel Holland, but also James Cook, William Gerard De Brahm, John Knight, and other naval officers; he enlisted people to copy manuscript maps and charts; he commissioned calligraphers; he hired engravers; he worked with printers. Very few of the legions of people who enabled Des Barres’s success are credited in the pages of The Atlantic Neptune. But Des Barres and those who worked with him on The Atlantic Neptune created a masterpiece that set a new standard for nautical chart making at its time and remains valued for its elegant marriage of functionality and artistry.
References:
Hornsby, Stephen J. Surveyors of Empire: Samuel Holland, J.F.W. Des Barres, and the Making of the Atlantic Neptune. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011.
Krieger, Alex and David Cobb (eds.) with Amy Turner. Mapping Boston. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.