A Chart of the South-east Part of Newfoundland, Containing the Bays of Placentia, St. Mary, Trepassy and Conception, from Actual Surveys by [GILBERT, Joseph; and Michael LANE] - 1775

London: "Printed for R. Sayer and I. Bennet", 1775. Engraved map. A spectacular chart 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 continued by Joseph Gilbert between 1767 and 1769 and Michael Lane between 1768 and 1773" (Tooley & Skelton op,cit.). Gilbert, a surveyor in the Newfoundland squadron and the master of the HMS Guernsey, would survey the coast of Labrador between St. Peter's Bay and Cape Bluff in 1767 and the following year chart the coast of southeast Newfoundland between the Bay of Placentia and Conception Bay. The present chart is based on the latter survey, with additions from Lane's surveys of the area between 1772-73. Cook held Gilbert in high esteem and the surveyor, although about the same age as Cook, would later serve as master of the Resolution on Cook's second voyage. The present chart is an example of the second state of the map, as published in the first edition of the North American Pilot , with Sayer and Bennett's 1770 imprint, "III" in the upper right corner and the magnetic variation for 1773 noted. It is preceded only by a very rare issue of the map published in Jeffery's 1769-1770 The Newfoundland Pilot . Skelton & Tooley, The Marine Surveys of James Cook in North America 13:III; Kershaw, Early Printed Maps of Canada 542; Phillips, A List of Maps of America , p. 1209.