COOK, James & Michael LANE

Le Pilote de Terre-Neuve ou Recueil de Plans des Côtes et des Ports de Cette Île...

> click here to see the full size image.

Dépôt général des Cartes, Plans et Journeaux de la Marine Paris, 1784. Elephant folio (650 x 505 mm.), with title-page and ten double-page (640 x 930 mm.) and two single-page (640 x 465 mm.) engraved maps; some dusting, a few marginal tears and repairs; contemporary French mottled (cat's-paw) calf, royal arms stamped in gilt on each cover, on the front the legend "Service des Vaisseaux du Roi"; spine with alternating anchor and fleur-de-lys devices in gilt between raised bands. A magnificent volume, with a remarkable story. This is the very rare French publication of the maps by James Cook and his colleague Michael Lane resulting from the important survey of Newfoundland and Labrador carried out in the 1760s.

After the conclusion of the Seven Years' War, the Admiralty had ordered hydrographic surveys of the new British territories awarded by the Treaty of Paris. The Admiralty was most interested in naval surveys of Newfoundland, Labrador and strategic shipping routes in the Atlantic and St Lawrence. 'The charting of Newfoundland and southern Labrador by Cook, in the years 1763-7, and by his successor Michael Lane, in 1768-73, was unequalled, for thoroughness and method, by any previous hydrographic work by Englishmen; and it produced the first charts of this extensive and difficult coastline that could (in the words of a later hydrographer) 'with any degree of safety be trusted by the seaman'...' (Skelton & Tooley).

Cook's detailed and accurate charts were the foundation of his reputation as a navigator, and essentially the reason that he was given the command of the Endeavour. As Skelton notes, the Newfoundland survey 'occupied the formative years of the man who has been called 'the greatest explorer of his age, the greatest maritime explorer of his country in any age. Their end-products were the engraved charts... the first-fruits of Cook's earliest surveys'.

Some of the maps were separately published in the 1760s; two pamphlets of the 1770s describing individual maps rank as Cook's first published works (they are extraordinarily rare today: see Holmes 1-2 and Beddie 1931). A selection of Cook's maps first appeared as A Collection of Charts in 1769, published by Jefferys, and containing only ten charts (no copy is recorded in auction records for the last twenty-five years). It was republished as James Cook Surveyor of Newfoundland (San Francisco, 1965), with an introduction by R.A. Skelton which gives an authoritative history of the publication of the charts. Skelton could identify only four surviving copies of the 1769 publication.

The full survey was published as The North-American Pilot for Newfoundland, Labradore, the Gulf and River St. Laurence: Being a Collection of Sixty Accurate Charts and Plans, Drawn from Original Surveys: Taken By James Cook and Michael Lane, Surveyors, and Joseph Gilbert, and other Officers in 1775, shortly after Cook's return from his second voyage. Further editions appeared in 1777 and 1779. A second part (which had nothing to do with Cook's work) appeared in 1776. The North American Pilot was also published, partly absorbed into a larger work, by Sayer and Bennett in 1783-86 (the Sax copy made US$42,000 at Sotheby's New York, 16 January 1998, lot 179). The charts were also sold separately as loose sheets. The publishers Laurie and Whittle took over the publication, and produced editions in 1794, 1799 and 1806, with individual maps remaining in print for many years later. Skelton notes that two charts from the series were being offered in Laurie and Whittle's catalogue as late as 1886. All the eighteenth-century publications of Cook's maps are very rare on the market today (we have handled two copies of the 1775 edition in twenty years, while only three copies of the same issue appear in auction records in the last twenty-five years).

Cook's charts remained the standard works of navigational reference for those waters for over a century.

At this stage we know very little about the circumstances surrounding the French publication of the charts, nor how legitimate the publication was: the maps themselves were after all partly the result of territorial disputes between the British and the French. A delightful printed note on the title-page adds the remark that 'James Cook est celui qui s'est rendu depuis si célèbre par ses Voyages et ses Découvertes'. The French edition is extremely rare on the market.

This particular copy has a remarkable story. It first came into our hands in 2001, as a very large but distinctly ugly volume, in a binding of crude canvas, rather greasy and stained. In fact this crude covering, surely acquired during service at sea, proved to be the volume's saviour. Delicate work by our binder succeeded in removing the canvas to reveal a beautiful French binding of the 1780s, a rather glamorous cat's-paw mottled calf.

More was to come: it became clear that something on the binding had been cleverly concealed with camouflaged overlays of matching leather on both front and back covers. Further skilful surgery revealed that on both covers the French royal arms had been expertly concealed, as had the last two words of the legend on the front cover: SERVICE DES VAISSEAUX DU ROI. Our binder has removed the camouflage strips which are stored in an envelope with the binding: it is quite easy to see where they lay for two hundred and ten years or so.

Clearly what happened was as follows: the book was published "by order of The King" in 1784, and copies made their way onto the ships of the French Royal Navy. At some point during the height of the French Revolution - in 1789 or early in the 1790s - the ship that owned this copy must have called into port in France, and it must have been a matter of routine for the revolutionaries, with the zeal of the Taliban, to scour the former Royal naval vessel for any signs of the overthrown order. Perhaps the book and others like it would have been taken ashore to a special workshop to conceal its Royal overtones: or maybe the captain himself wanted to keep the book but knew that it would have to be "adjusted".

This splendid book was at one time in the collection of David Parsons.

Not recorded by Beddie or Holmes; see Skelton & Tooley, 'The Marine Surveys of James Cook'; see also Skelton's Introduction to 'James Cook Surveyor of Newfoundland' (San Francisco, 1965).

• AUD 96,000.00 > другие валюты
• номер заказа: 504_745

• продавец: Hordern House (AUSTRALIA)