1693 Collins Nautical Chart of the Isle of Wight, the Solent, and the Approaches to Portsmouth and Spithead.
[The Isle of Wight and the Solent Approaches]
$800
1 in stock
Description
The Royal Navy’s Home Waters.
This chart of the Isle of Wight and the Solent from Captain Greenville Collins’s Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot of 1693 surveys one of the most strategically significant maritime corridors on the southern coast of England, the sheltered channel separating the island from the Hampshire mainland and giving access to the great naval anchorages of Portsmouth and Spithead. It is among the most practically consequential plates in the atlas, covering waters that saw more Royal Navy traffic than almost any other in Britain, and its density of hydrographic information reflects the critical importance of accurate navigation in a channel where the consequences of error were measured in ships of the line.
The Map in Detail
The island is prominently shown across the lower portion of the sheet, its coastline crisply outlined and its settlements, topographical features, and coastal landmarks clearly depicted. Opposite, the mainland coast traces the harbors and inlets of Hampshire, including the intricate channels leading toward Portsmouth and Spithead. The waters between are filled with dense rhumb-line networks and soundings, indicating the complexity of navigation in this heavily trafficked channel. Shoals, sandbanks, and anchorage points are clearly indicated throughout, while the orientation of the Solent as a sheltered passage is made visually apparent. Collins’s chart emphasizes both coastal morphology and navigational utility, and the overall clarity of the engraving reflects its function as a working sea chart for professional mariners operating in waters they needed to know precisely.
Historical Context
The Solent was the operational heart of English naval power in the late seventeenth century. Portsmouth, at its eastern end, had been the principal base of the Royal Navy since the reign of Henry VII, and Spithead, the sheltered anchorage between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, was where the fleet assembled before major operations and where it returned after them. The waters Collins surveyed had seen the departure of the Armada-fighting fleet in 1588 and would see the departure of Nelson’s fleet for Trafalgar in 1805. In 1693, the year of the Coasting Pilot’s publication, those same waters were the staging ground for the naval campaigns of the Nine Years’ War, in which William III’s England was engaged in a major continental conflict against Louis XIV’s France.
The strategic importance of accurate charts of the Solent approaches could not have been more immediate. The Isle of Wight itself served as a natural breakwater, protecting the anchorage at Spithead from Atlantic swells, and its position made it as much a piece of naval infrastructure as a geographical feature. Collins’s survey of these waters, combining the rigor of a professional hydrographer with the practical experience of a naval officer who had operated in them, gave the Admiralty its most reliable cartographic record of the approaches to its principal base.
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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