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Description

A rare Spanish sea chart of New York Harbor, from José Joaquín de Ferrer y Cafranga's sea atlas, the 'Portulano de los Estados Unidos', published in Madrid in 1818.

Presented here is one of the rarest sea chart's of New York Harbor, from José Joaquín de Ferrer y Cafranga's Portulano de los Estados Unidos (1818). Ferrer's sea atlas featured many of the earlest printed Spanish charts to focus on major ports in the United States and British North America (Canada), and was a key element of a great 'Enlightenment' project to modernize Spain's naval and cartographic capabilities.

At the time that this chart was printed, New York was the greatest port in North America, by both value and volume, and had recently eclipsed Philadelphia as the largest city in the young American republic. This attractive chart is oriented in an unusual angular fashion with north appearing in the upper left corner. It embraces the region from Lower Manhattan, through the Verrazano Narrows down to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. The map includes copious nautical information, including bathymetirc soundings, shoals and the lcoations of buoys, while onshore the coastal topography is conveyed through carefully executed hactures and shading. A fine navigator's profile view is located in the upper right corner, centered on the Sandy Hook Lighthouse, the gateway to New York's Outer Harbor.

Ferrer employed J.F.W. Des Barres, A Chart of New York Harbour (London, 1779) as the source for his chart. In turn, Des Barres' chart was based on surveys conducted in the autumn of 1776 by the British naval officers John Knight and John Hunter aboard the HMS Eagle, the flagship of the Royal Navy force that supported the successful invasion of New York in September of that year. Importantly, Knight and Hunter's project represented the first scientific survey of New York Harbor.

On the Portulano de los Estados Unidos

The Portulano de los Estados Unidos is an exceedingly rare Spanish sea atlas featuring charts of American and Canadian harbors. It was developed by the astronomer and geographer José Joaquín de Ferrer y Cafranga, one of the leading figures of the Spanish Enlightenment. It was created as an integral part of the Spanish government's grand project to develop and publish a comprehensive scientific hydrography of the Americas. The Portulano features 11 finely-engraved charts of major harbors in the United States and Canada, based on the best British and American sources. One of the rarest of all of the sea atlases of its era, we are aware of only 5 complete examples in institutional collections, and the present example is the only one we are aware of as having appeared on the market in modern times.

Ferrer devised the Portulano de los Estados Unidos as the final part of a great Enlightenment project devised by the Armada Real (Spanish Navy) to create a comprehensive sea atlas of key harbors in the Americas, predicated on advanced scientific surveys. The first part of this project was realized with the publication of the Portulano de la America Setentrional, published in Madrid in 1809, it detailed numerous harbors in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.

In the early 1790s, Ferrer resided in Cadiz, the headquarters of the Armada Real. While he still worked as a merchant, he became attached to the Armada's San Fernando Observatory. Ferrer became closely acquainted with the leading Spanish explorers and cartographers of the era, including Dionisio Alcalá Galiano and Cosme Damián de Churruca y Elorza. He also gained the notice of Admiral Jose de Mazarredo y Salazar, who in addition to being a legendary battle commander was one of Spain's greatest hydrographers.

Ferrer was recruited by Mazarredo and the explorer Vicente Tofiño de San Miguel to play a key role in creating a sea atlas of important New World harbors. Up to this time, due to Spain's official policies of cartographic secrecy, very few hydrographic surveys of Spanish colonial ports were ever published. The Armada relied on foreign and often very outdated maps, and Spain's participation in the American Revolution highlighted the urgency of acquiring accurate geographical and hydrographical intelligence.

In 1792, Mazarredo and Tofiño dispatched two scientific mapping expeditions to the Americas in order to gain the required intelligence necessary to realize the project. First, Churrucca was charged with mapping the coastlines of various islands and harbors between Trinidad and Cuba. Second, Joaquín Francisco Fidalgo was charted with surveying the coast of the Spanish Main and Central America from Trinidad to Coast Rica.

As Churrucca and Fidalgo made progress on their endeavors, they regularly sent manuscript charts to Cadiz. Ferrer helped to supervise the publication of many of these charts as separately issued 'Cartas Esfericas' until he left Spain for exile abroad in 1799. Amazingly, in spite of the turmoil caused by the ongoing Napoleonic Wars, the surveyors completed their respective missions by 1805.

The Portulano de la America Setentrional was printed in Madrid by the Dirección de Hidrografía in 1809 and featured 106 charts of ports in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. It was re-issued in Madrid in 1818, and another edition was printed in Mexico City in 1825. The content of the 1818 Madrid edition is identical to the 1809 edition, save for the addition of the line "Aumentado y corre-gido [sic] en 1818" to the title page. The Mexico City edition was entirely re-engraved on new plates and each chart featured altered titles.

In 1814, Ferrer returned to Spain after 15 years abroad, and endeavored to complete the mapping project that had been commenced by the navy's Dirección de Hidrografía over 20 years earlier. The Spain that he had returned to had recently been liberated from the long French occupation and had seen the return of a conservative royalist government. However, since 1810, most of her colonial possessions in South and Central America had broken out into rebellion, a process that would result in their independence from Spain within the proceeding decade. Facing the loss of these colonies, as a merchant, Ferrer realized that bolstering trade with the United States and British North America would be an increasingly important priority for the Spanish economy. Up to this time, there were virtually no printed Spanish charts of the harbors of these regions.

In devising his atlas, Ferrer carefully analyzed the most accurate American and British sea charts of the East Coast. These sources included charts from J.F.W. Des Barres' Atlantic Neptune (London, 1775-81), Robert Laurie & James Whittle's The North American Pilot (London, 1800) and Edmund M. Blunt's American Coast Pilot (Newburyport, Mass., 1804), amongst others.

The Portulano de los Estados Unidos was published by the Dirección de Hidrografía in Madrid in 1818, along with the second edition of the Portulano de la America Setentrional, and was intended to be a sequel to the earlier atlas.

The contents of the Portulano de los Estados Unidos are as follows:

  • 1. [Port Royal Sound, South Carolina] Plano de Puerto Real, en la Carolina del S.
  • 2. [Charleston, South Carolina] Plano de la Barra y Puerto de Charleston.
  • 3. [Delaware Bay and River] Plano de la Bahia y Rio de la Delaware;
  • 4. [New York Harbor] Plano del Puerto de Nueva York.
  • 5. [Newport, Rhode Island] Plano de NewPort en la Isla Rode.
  • 6. [Boston Harbor] Plano de la Bahia y Puerto de Boston.
  • 7. [Newburyport, Massachusetts] Plano de Puerto de Newburyport;
  • 8. [Portsmouth, New Hampshire] Plano del Puerto de Portsmouth.
  • 9. [Saint John, New Brunswick] Plano de la Entrada y Puerto del Rio Sn. Juan en la Bahia de Fundi.
  • 10. [Halifax, Nova Scotia] Plano del Puerto de Halifax.
  • 11. [St. John's, Newfoundland] Plano del Puerto de Sn Juan de Terranova.

José Joaquín Ferrer y Cafranga (1763-1818)

José Joaquín de Ferrer y Cafranga was a Spanish Basque cartographer and astronomer, and was one of the last great figures of the Ilustración Borbonica, or the Spanish Enlightenment. He was born into an affluent and well-connected family in Pasajes de San Pedro, in the Basque Country. He was the older brother of the politician Joaquín María de Ferrer y Cafranga (1777-1861), who served as Prime Minster of Spain and Mayor of Madrid. Encouraged to seek his fortune as a merchant in the colonial trade, in 1780, he joined the Real Compañía Guipuzcoana, and set sail for Venezuela. While en route, his vessel was intercepted by Admiral Rodney's British naval squadron, and Ferrer was taken to England. He was paroled and while in London he had the opportunity to gain formal training in astronomy and surveying, as well as gaining a fluent command of the English language. Ferrer subsequently returned to Spain and reconnected with the mercantile communities.

In 1787, Ferrer sailed for Lima, Peru, and not long after his arrival, met with considerable success as a commercial trader. He took advantage of his extensive business travel to refine his skills in astronomy and surveying. While on a trip to Mexico, he notably calculated the precise geographic position and heights of several of the region's highest peaks, including Mounts Jalapa, Perote and Orizaba.

As already mentioned, Ferrer spent most of the 1790s in Cadiz assisting the Armada Real in their endeavors leading to the production of the Portulano de la America Setentrional. However, Ferrer, who held distinctly liberal beliefs, became disaffected with the political situation in Spain, and set sail for America in 1799.

For the next 14 years, Ferrer was based in New York, and while earning a lucrative living as a merchant, found ample time to pursue his passions in astronomy and geography, traveling widely through America and the Caribbean. In 1809, several of his papers were published within the presitigious Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.

In 1813, Ferrer travelled to London to study at the Greenwich Observatory, where he became acquainted with some of the Britain's leading intellectuals. The following year he studied at the Institute de France in Paris. Shortly thereafter, Ferrer returned to Spain, where he commenced work on the Portulano de los Estados Unidos.

While the Portulano was in production in Madrid, Ferrer dedicated himself full-time to the pursuit of academic projects. He became a fellow of the Real Academia de la Historia and the Real Sociedad Vascongada (Royal Basque Society). Ferrer retired to Bilbao in 1817, and died on May 18, 1818. Unfortunately, it is likely that he never saw a completed example of the Portulano de los Estados Unidos.

The Rarity of the Portulano de los Estados Unidos

The Portulano de los Estados Unidos is exceedingly rare. We are aware of only 5 complete examples, as well as a single incomplete example residing in institutional collections. We are not aware of any other examples appearing at auction or in dealers' catalogs during the last 25 years. There are a few examples of some of Ferrer's individual charts in institutional holdings, although we can find no record of any appearing on the market during the same period.

Of the copies held in institutions, 3 of the complete examples of the Portulano de los Estados Unidos appear as part of the 1818 edition of the Portulano de la America Setentrional, and can be found at Stanford University; M.D Anderson Library, University of Houston and at Harvard University. The Library of Congress and the British Library each possess a complete stand-alone example of the Portulano de los Estados Unidos, and Harvard University has an incomplete stand-alone example with only 9 of the 11 charts (lacking New York Harbor and St. John's, Newfoundland).

Condition Description
Copper engraved sea chart, a fine example with a strong engraving impression.
Reference
P.L. Phillips, Atlases in the Library of Congress, no. 4522 (incorrectly assuming date of 1809). (Cf). A.A. Galiano, Biografía del astrónomo español Don José Joaquín de Ferrer y Cafranga (Madrid, 1858); L. Martín-Merás, ‘La expedición hidrográfica del Atlas de la América septentrional, 1792-1805’, in Revista de historia naval, Año nº 25, Nº 98, 2007, pp. 25-42.