Can’t make it to our fundraiser on September 26th? You can still be part of the fun by bidding in our online auction.

We’re auctioning off a high-quality fascimile print of “Harbour of Casco Bay, Portland, 1720”, a rare antiquarian map by Cyprian Southack, the original of which is in the Tate House Museum collections.

About the map:

Cyprian Southack (1662-1745) drew his map “Harbour of Casco Bay and islands adjacent” in the 1690s. It was first published in The English Pilot, The Fourth Book, 1721. Eventually a similar map was redrawn and printed in 1764 by John Mount, a London publisher. Between the 1690s and the 1740s, Southack drew 20 known maps of North America’s eastern coast. These charts were crucial navigation aids.

The Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education provides the following additional information:

European charts of the North American coasts were initially produced in very small numbers.  They were drawn by hand, one at a time. This reflected the small market for such charts. The English market for sea charts expanded through the seventeenth century until it could support an English-based chart-trade.

Before 1750, the main source for the new charts were ships’ masters who plied the eastern seaboard and who codified their accumulated coastal lore in their own charts. Of most interest in this respect was Cyprian Southack (1622-1745.) His general chart of the east coast (Boston, 1717) was the first map to be engraved on copper and printed in the colonies. He also produced an atlas of charts and sailing directions: The New England Coasting Pilot (Boston, 1729-33 in addition to The Harbour of Casco Bay and Islands Adjacent].

Southack’ s chart of Casco Bay is typical of the many highly detailed harbor charts which show water depths and potential hazards. Although Southack had carried an English expedition to the bay in 1698, he did not publish this map until 1720. In the meantime, his geographical image for Casco Bay become quite garbled; a 1699 manuscript map in the Public Record Office (London) is much more accurate! Even so, the map was the only one of the bay that was publicly available for most of the eighteenth century. It was quickly copied–in 1721–for The English Pilot, The Fourth Book and republished thereafter until 1794.

A big thank you to Grapheteria Custom Framing for printing and a generous in kind donation of the beautiful frame.