Maps of Colonial New England - The Atlantic Neptune

Boston, seen between Castle Williams and Governor's Island, distant 4 miles : Appearance of the high lands of Agameticus, N.E. with Penobscot Hills, to the eastwards, at 3 to 4 leagues off shore ; Boston Bay, the light house bearing N.W.b.W distant one league ; The entrance of Boston Harbor
From the Atlantic Neptune
 

Or, All I Wanted to Know Was Did the Fishing Fleet Typically Return in Late November?


While foraging for information about the New England cod fisheries in the colonial and post Revolutionary times, I found a page about boats: Vessel Types of Colonial Massachusetts. Among the illustrations were some of Boston Harbor around the mid late 1770s. These were identified as from the Atlantic Neptune. They looked handy, as if I might want to use them sometime. A little research revealed that the Atlantic Neptune was a four to five volume collection of maps as a maritime atlas published between 1775 and 1780. While early plates are sold at a collector price, high quality scans are available from a number of public domain sites.

Boston Rare Maps has this informative description of the Atlantic Neptune:

"The chart was issued in The Atlantic Neptune, an atlas of North American waters used by British navigators throughout the American Revolution. In its most comprehensive form, the Neptune provided coverage from the Gulf of St. Lawrence south and west to the Gulf of Mexico. The charts were of an extraordinarily high quality, remained the standard for decades, and were often copied and reissued by American and European engravers and publishers.

The Atlantic Neptune is most frequently associated with publisher J.F.W. Des Barres, whose surveys of Nova Scotia composed one of its volumes. However the Neptune’s many New England charts, plans and views were based on surveys overseen by Samuel Holland, a Dutch-born surveyor and engineer who entered British service during the French and Indian War. After the War Holland had proposed to the Board of Trade “an accurate and just Survey… upon… a general scale and uniform plan” of North America east of the Mississippi. (Harley, p. 27) This was to be a “geodetic” survey following the most advanced methods then in use in Europe, but applied for the first time in North America: The locations of control points would be established by rigorous astronomical observation, intermediate areas pinpointed by triangulation, and details sketched in from direct observation."


More foraging took me quickly to the Boston Public Library which has a number of plates that can be examined in great detail as well as downloaded. Some of the BPL maps have an overlay option, and I spent a lot of time adjusting the opacity and zooming in and out on this map of greater Boston.


From the BPL:
"This survey of Boston Harbor, first published in 1775 in Des Barres's Atlantic Neptune, was the pre-eminent chart of the harbor produced in the 18th century. It was used by the Royal Navy during the American Revolution, and long after that conflict by American and English merchants. The chart was based on surveys by George Callendar, master of His Majesty's Ship Romney, stationed in Boston Harbor in 1769. Displayed here is the fourth state of the chart which depicts the inland topography in great detail. Roads, taverns, streams and farmhouses are shown throughout the countryside." 
 
 


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