1693 Collins Nautical Chart of Kinsale Harbour, with Plans of Charles Fort and Rincorran Castle.
[Kingsale Harbour]
$400
1 in stock
Description
The Port That Decided Ireland’s Fate.
This chart of Kinsale Harbour from Captain Greenville Collins’s Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot of 1693 occupies an unusual place in the atlas. Collins’s official commission was formally restricted to the coasts of England and Scotland, and yet Kinsale, along with a handful of other Irish charts, appears in the Coasting Pilot as a voluntary extension of his surveying ambition beyond its official remit. That he chose to include it is entirely understandable: Kinsale was one of the most strategically significant harbors in the British Isles, its twin star forts commanding an approach that had determined the course of Irish history more than once. The chart is dedicated to Sir Robert Southwell, Vice Admiral of Munster and Principal Secretary of State for Ireland, a figure who also appears in the Bristol Channel chart of the same atlas, there as the host who received King William III on his return from Ireland in 1690.
The Map in Detail
The chart surveys the coastline from the lighthouse promontory of the Old Head of Kinsale westward to Ballymacus Point, taking in the broad sweep of the Bay of the Old Head and the sheltered estuary of the River Bandon as it opens into Kinsale Harbour. Depth soundings, sandbanks, and anchorages are distributed across the navigable waters. The harbour mouth is flanked by the two celebrated star forts: Rincorran Castle, the Old Fort, on the eastern shore and the formidable Charles Fort on the west, both rendered in plan and conveying their defensive mass and strategic command of the approach. The town of Kinsale itself, at the head of the tidal estuary, is depicted with streets and individual houses, an unusual degree of topographic detail for a primarily nautical chart. A single compass rose at the chart’s center sends a dense web of rhumb lines across the water, giving the sheet its characteristic radiating geometry. The dedicatory cartouche in the upper right is among the most elaborate in the series, an exuberant Baroque assembly of putti, ribbons, heraldic arms, and colored flags, surmounted by a pair of trumpeting cherubs.
Historical Context
Kinsale’s strategic importance to whoever controlled Ireland could hardly be overstated. The Battle of Kinsale in 1601, in which English forces defeated a combined Irish and Spanish army, had effectively ended the old Gaelic order and opened the way for the Ulster Plantation. The town and its harbor had remained a key military installation ever since, and Charles Fort, constructed in the 1670s as one of the finest examples of star fort architecture in the British Isles, was the physical expression of that importance. During the Williamite Wars of 1689 to 1691, Kinsale had been among the last Jacobite strongholds in Ireland, held against Williamite forces before finally falling in 1690. Collins’s decision to survey it despite his official commission ending at the Scottish border reflects both the harbor’s military significance and the patronage network that supported his project. Sir Robert Southwell, the chart’s dedicatee, was one of the most well-connected figures in the Irish administration, his role as Principal Secretary of State and Vice Admiral of Munster making him the natural patron for a chart of Ireland’s most important southern harbor. His appearance in two separate charts in the Coasting Pilot, here and on the Bristol Channel plate commemorating William III’s landing at King Road, underscores his centrality to the Williamite establishment that Collins served.
Publication History and Census
This chart appears as a plate in Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot, first published in London in 1693. The plates were reprinted throughout the eighteenth century by the Mount publishing dynasty, first as Mount & Page and later as Mount & Davidson, and surviving sheets are most commonly encountered as individual disbound leaves.
Cartographer(s):
Captain Greenville Collins (c. 1643–1694) was an English naval officer and pioneering hydrographer whose work laid the foundation for systematic coastal charting in Britain. Serving in the Royal Navy during the late seventeenth century, Collins gained practical experience in navigation and surveying at a time when reliable nautical charts of British waters were scarce. Recognizing the strategic and commercial importance of accurate maritime information, the English crown commissioned him in the early 1680s to conduct a detailed survey of the coasts of England and Wales.
Between roughly 1681 and 1688, Collins directed an extensive hydrographic survey of the English coastline, measuring depths, mapping shoals and sandbanks, and documenting harbors and navigational hazards. His work represented one of the first coordinated national charting efforts in England. The results were compiled into Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot, first published in 1693. The volume combined detailed engraved charts with sailing directions and coastal views, providing mariners with far more reliable guidance than previously available.
Collins’s atlas became the standard reference for navigation around British waters for decades and marked an important step in the professionalization of hydrography in England. His methods and charts influenced later surveying practices and helped improve maritime safety during a period of expanding naval power and overseas trade. Collins died in 1694, only a year after the publication of his landmark work, but his contributions established him as one of the earliest significant hydrographers of the British Isles.
Condition Description
Wear along the centerfold and margins. Image is nice.
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