A Complete Example of Alexander Dalrymple's First Commercial "Atlas."
A Prized Rarity of 18th-Century Navigation and Exploration.
Note: The following catalog entry deals with a compilation of charts by the famed hydrographer Alexander Dalrymple, whose published works are extremely rare and, in many cases, bibliographically complex. We are indebted to Andrew S. Cook and his 1993 University of St. Andrews Ph.D. thesis, which, in five volumes, comprehensively catalogs Dalrymple's printed output. We make shorthand references to Cook catalog numbers in this catalog entry, and his input on this item was invaluable.
This remarkable bound volume of 202 maps, prepared in London in 1783, is a cartographic gem representing the entirety of Alexander Dalrymple's first commercial list of maps for sale. Dalrymple, a preeminent figure in the field of hydrography, created these charts in a period marked by significant contributions to the mapping of the world's seas and coasts. This volume, which might be termed Dalrymple's first commercial atlas, provides an exceptional treatment of various ports on the route from Europe to India, Southeast Asia, and China, with substantial content in Africa and the Middle East.
Alexander Dalrymple is, without question, the most important and influential British hydrographer of the 18th century. Originally employed as a civil servant in Madras, India, in the 1750s, Dalrymple began his career as an explorer in 1759, when he went east to chart and look for trading opportunities in the Philippines, Borneo, and Sulu. His career at this time and later was inextricably tied to the East India Company. The EIC, as it is often called, was a British trading company, chartered in 1600, that played a pivotal role in trade between Britain and Asia and eventually became a de facto colonial ruler in India before being dissolved in 1874. Dalrymple had a complicated relationship with the EIC, as he did with many people and organizations throughout his life.
Dalrymple's first charts were published between October 1769 and the end of 1771, primarily derived from his own observations in the East. He remained involved in chart compilation and publication in various capacities until 1779. It was in that year that the EIC assigned him to "examining the Ship Journals" and granted him an allowance of £500 a year for the expenses of publishing charts and nautical memoirs, and that became his primary focus.
Between 1779 and 1783, Dalrymple focused on preparing charts and views with a special focus on areas of importance during the American Revolution and Britain's consequent war with the Dutch and French. These were intended to help British ships avoid interception by the French and Dutch along the usual trade routes in the East. During this period Dalrymple was prolific in his output of coastal profiles and views of land, producing some 171 plates of this type between 1779 and 1783.
The Emergence of Dalrymple as a Commercial Map Publisher in 1783
This compilation of charts was assembled in May of 1783 (the last-dated chart bears an imprint of May 11, 1783), just after Dalrymple produced his first commercial catalog of maps the preceding month. That catalog, List of Plans of Ports, &c. 1783 (Catalogue A79), lists 202 charts, all of which are included in this volume. Cook (Vol. I, pages 117-118) describes the context of these publications:
By the terms of Dalrymple's contract [with the EIC] each chart, view or plan plate became his property after he had delivered 100 impressions to the Company. In 1783 he began consciously to exploit this developing asset by assembling sets of his publications for commercial sale... [Lenghty discussion of small-scale works offered for sale in preceding years.]
But in 1783 he included with Collection of Charts, Views of Land and Plans of Ports a separate price list for all his engraved plates, complete to April 1783, and incorporating plates from his 1772 and 1775 collections. The prices were by the set or individually: 202 plates of plans at 6d., 1s. or 2s. each or 3 guineas a set; 37 plates of views of land at 29. each or 1½ guineas a set; 10 small-format charts from 1s. to 4s. each or at 19s. a set; and 19 large-format charts from 2s. 6d. to 5s. each or at 3 guineas a set. Greater discounts were available on combined sets, the complete collection being offered at 7 guineas. Dalrymple also offered three maps he had had engraved, of Broach, the Madras lands, and Itchapour, and the five views Henry had drawn in south India in 1776, at set prices of 1½ guineas and 10s.6d. respectively. Dalrymple had revised the text of the 1775 Collection of Plans of Ports in 1782, and improved, modified or replaced eighty-one of the 83 plates during 1781 and 1782 for reprinting in 1783 together with his East India Company plates as part of this venture.
This set of maps was produced before Dalrymple indexed his charts into eighteen classes, a practice he started in 1786.
The Maps
The atlas includes charts derived from diverse sources, including contemporary and near-contemporary ship journals, famed explorers of preceding decades and centuries, and the published output of famous Dutch and French hydrographers, such as those of the Van Keulen family and Jacques-Nicolas Bellin.
The set includes 10 maps related to Atlantic Islands; 49 maps related to Africa; 13 related to Arabia and the Persian Gulf; 25 related to Pakistan, India, and Sri Lanka; 6 to Burma; 9 to Malaysia; 4 to Vietnam; 7 to China; 23 to the Philippines; 1 to Brunei; 51 to Indonesia; 3 to New Guinea; 1 to New Zealand; 1 to the Solomon Islands; 1 to Guam; 2 to Australia (including the Swan River); and 1 to Saint Paul Island in the southern Indian Ocean.
A complete list of maps is available upon request.
This Work in Context
The maps in this series are noteworthy in that they serve as an excellent supplement, or complement, to the larger-format chart books of the so-called East India Navigation that were being produced in London in the 1780s, namely Robert Sayer & John Bennett's The East India Pilot and The Oriental Pilot; Or, East-India Directory; as well as William Herbert's A New Directory for the East Indies... The lack of substantial overlap between Dalrymple's maps and those in 1782 Sayer & Bennett atlas (see Philips 9486) invites a question about the consciousness of Dalrymple's decision to avoid duplication. Whereas the larger-format works were heavy on general and regional charts and treatments of the most important ports, Dalrymple focuses on the smaller and less well-known locales along the routes to and from the East Indies. Thus, an owner of Sayer & Bennett's atlas would still find substantial utility in Dalrymple's set; however, Dalrymple's charts would probably not be sufficient in themselves to navigate to the East Indies. This is undoubtedly partially related to the requirements of the EIC, which was Dalrymple's first and primary audience.
Rarity
This book's made-to-order nature and lack of a title page or accompanying text contribute to its extreme rarity a general difficulty in tracing it in institutional collections.
The last substantial collection of Dalrymple charts to appear on the market was sold a decade ago in the September 2014 Sotheby's sale, The Library of Franklin Brooke-Hitching Part 2, D-J, Lot 363. That lot constituted a later collection of 454 charts assembled in 1789. It made £302,500 including premium (approximately $493,000).
Alexander Dalrymple (1737-1808) was a skilled hydrographer. He was born near Edinburgh and was the son of a Member of Parliament. As a teenager, Alexander—the eleventh of fifteen children—began a career with the East India Company (EIC). He worked as a writer for the Company and was posted to Madras in 1753. There, he rose to the position of sub-secretary and researched the English trade with Burma, Indo-China, and Borneo, quickly becoming an expert in Maritime Southeast Asia.
While a Company servant, Dalrymple sailed on three voyages around the Philippines, Borneo, Sulu, and other islands. He was testing hydrographic hypotheses, accessing archives, and making new charts on all of these voyages. In 1763, he resigned from the EIC and began a return trip to London, where he sought to promote a new trading opportunity at Balambangan. On his way home, he was named provisional deputy governor at Manila in April 1764, as the British then held the archipelago.
Back in London, Dalrymple continued to research the geography and hydrography of the South Seas and the East Indies. He published several works, including An Account of the Discoveries Made in the South Pacifick Ocean Previous to 1764 (1767) and An Historical Collection of the Several Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean (1769-71). The former of these made him the Royal Society’s preference to lead the South Pacific leg of the Transit of Venus observations of 1769; the Admiralty preferred a naval officer and chose Lieutenant James Cook instead. In both of these works, Dalrymple championed the hypothesis that there was a massive southern continent counterbalancing the northern continents.
Dalrymple also published many charts at this time, and he continued to lobby for a trade settlement at Balambangan. However, a disagreement with the EIC meant that he was removed from the proposed expedition to the island. In 1774, he began to publish his series of Plans of Ports in the East Indies, complete with sailing directions. Thanks in part to this successful venture, he managed to regain employment with the EIC in 1775, returning to Madras. There, he was ensnared in a scandal involving the Madras council which necessitated his return to London in April 1777.
On the return voyage, Dalrymple used a John Arnold chronometer and became an advocate for renewed and precise calculation of longitude to both signal the best routes during the proper seasons and to revise charts. He convinced the EIC to employ him on correcting their charts and publishing new ones, which he began to do in 1779. In the same year, he proposed a project that would create coastal charts for EIC ships from the Mozambique Channel to China. To this end, Dalrymple began publishing new charts annually. In fifteen years, Dalrymple published 550 plan and charts, 45 plates of coastal views, and nearly sixty books and pamphlets on navigation.
A Fellow of the Royal Society since 1771, Dalrymple was at the heart of a large circle of savants interested in geography. He was a close friend of Joseph Banks, James Rennell (with whom he had sailed in the East Indies), and William Marsden. Dalrymple contributed to the compilation of charts for the Vancouver expedition in the early 1790s, just one sign of his close relations with various branches of the government and the elite.
In 1795, his skills, erudition, experience, and social ties led him to be named as the first head of Britain’s newly-created Hydrographic Office (HO). His main task at this time was to sort the existing chart collection, while also evaluating the charts’ continued utility. By 1800, the HO was also tentatively engraving their own charts, although not performing their own surveying expeditions. While at the HO, Dalrymple proofed over 150 charts, as well as reprinted many of this own EIC plates, which by 1804 numbered 817. In 1806, Dalrymple published his EIC charts and sailing directions together in geographically-themed volumes, the Collection of Nautical Memoirs and Journals.
Things were not all rosy, however, as Dalrymple clashed with officials at the Admiralty over confidentiality of unpublished foreign charts and the direction of the HO. The Board of Admiralty fired him in late May of 1808. He died only three weeks later, on June 19, 1808.
In addition to the hundreds of charts he created in his lifetime, his personal working library was considerable. This library went on to form the core of the Admiralty library and of the HO’s own book collection. The Admiralty also bought over 400 of his copper plates, many of which were re-issued as Admiralty charts.