A Chart of Part of the Coast of Labradore, from Grand Point to Shecatica, surveyed by Michael Lane in 1768, and Engraved by Thomas Jefferys Geographer to the King.. by LANE, Michael. - Thomas JEFFERYS, engraver (1719-1771) - 1775

London: "Printed for R. Sayer and I. Bennett", 1775. Engraved map. Insets plans of Mecatina Harbour, St. Augustine and Cumberland Harbour. A chart of the coast of Labrador from the survey that launched the career of Captain James Cook. At the conclusion of the French and Indian War, the British needed accurate charts of the territories that had been awarded to them in the Treaty of Paris. The areas that were of particular interest to the Admiralty included Labrador and Newfoundland. "On 19 April 1763 James Cook, Master R.N.. was ordered by the Admiralty to proceed to Newfoundland 'in order to your taking a survey of the Parts of the Coasts and Harbours of that Island'" (Tooley & Skelton, in The Mapping of America p.177). His appointment would have been based, in no small part, on the glowing endorsement of his commanding officer, who had written to the Admiralty in December 1762 "that from my experience of Mr. Cook's genius and capacity, I think him well fitted for the work he has undertaken, and for greater undertakings of the same kind". "The charting of Newfoundland and southern Labrador by Cook... and by his successor Michael Lane ... was unequalled, for thoroughness and method, by any previous hydrographic work by Englishmen [and also allowed Cook to master the art of practical surveying and navigation, in a way that brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society at a crucial moment. More immediately.] 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'" (Tooley & Skelton op. cit.). Cook started by surveying the northwest stretch of coastline in 1763 and 1764, then in 1765 and 1766 the south coast between Cape Ray and the Burin Peninsula, and in 1767 the west coast. His work was interrupted by what was to prove to be the first of his three great voyages to the Pacific, and the work on Newfoundland and southern Labrador was finished by Michael Lane between 1768 and 1773" (Tooley & Skelton). This copy is the second issue of the map as published in the first edition of the North American Pilot (preceded only by the very rare first issue of the map, without Sayer and Bennett's imprint, which appeared in Jeffery's Collection of Charts of the Coasts of Newfoundland and Labradore in 1769). Skelton & Tooley The Marine Surveys of James Cook in North America 13.XIX. Not in Kershaw, Early Printed Maps of Canada.