Antique World Map c. 1780 — Bowles, New and Accurate Map of the World

Every inscription on the sheet

The text on the sheet is English, with Latin names on the Moon and the star charts. It is given here letter for letter, with the sheet’s capitals and spellings; long s is shown as s, and raised letters (as in Capᵗ, Mʳ, Nº) are printed on the line. The panels outside the hemispheres are listed by their headings and opening words; inside the hemispheres, the notes, tracks and larger names. The long explanatory texts are not transcribed in full, and lines not read with certainty are left out.

• Title across the top: BOWLES’s NEW AND ACCURATE MAP OF THE WORLD, OR TERRESTRIAL GLOBE, laid down from the BEST OBSERVATIONS and NEWEST DISCOVERIES; particularly those lately made in the SOUTH SEAS, by ANSON, BYRON, WALLIS, BOUGANVILLE, COOK, and other celebrated CIRCUMNAVIGATORS: Illustrated with a variety of useful PROJECTIONS and REPRESENTATIONS of the HEAVENLY BODIES; the most approved ASTRONOMICAL and GEOGRAPHICAL DEFINITIONS, TABLES, and PROBLEMS; With an easy and familiar Explanation of the most curious and interesting Phœnomena in the UNIVERSAL SYSTEM. Below it: Printed for the Proprietor CARINGTON BOWLES, Nº69 in St Pauls Church Yard, LONDON.
• Upper left: The SOLAR SYSTEM, with orbits of the planets and of comets marked by years (among them 1337, 1472, 1618, 1680, 1682, 1723, 1759); COMETS or Blazing Stars; the note The Comet of 1680, according to Sr Isaac Newton in its nearest Approach to the Sun was 2000 times hotter than red hot Iron; The SUN and his Maculæ as Seen thro’ a Telescope; Saturn and his Ring as seen thro’ a Telescope; The Ring of SATURN.
• Top, between the circles: The Dimensions of the SOLAR SYSTEM (a table); The NORTHERN HEMISPHERE of the stars with ASTRONOMICAL DEFINITIONS; The Law of the Cometary System.; The SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE; A Representation of Part of the Universe; A TABLE of the Place of the SUN in the Ecliptic & Declination, with a side note that every fourth year the Sun’s place returns nearly the same, and columns of years from 1761 to 1808.
• Upper right: An ASTRONOMICAL LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE ANALEMMA; Jupiter and his Belts as seen thro’ a Telescope; Venus as seen thro’ a Telescope; Mars as seen thro’ a Telescope; Mercury as seen thro’ a Telescope.
• Hemisphere bands: WESTERN HEMISPHERE OF THE WORLD and THE NEW WORLD, OR NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA; EASTERN HEMISPHERE OF THE WORLD and THE OLD WORLD, OR EUROPE, ASIA AND AFRICA.
• Side panels: GEOGRAPHICAL DEFINITIONS (left and right, beginning The Poles of the Earth are two Points in the Surface of the Earth or Sea); The ART of DIALING by a common GLOBE (left and right); THE CAUSE OF THE TIDES, beginning The Cause of the Tides or Ebbing and Flowing of the Sea was first Discovered by Sr Isaac Newton, with A Diagram explaining the single and double Tides.
• Lower left and centre: An UNIVERSAL SCALE of Equal Parts, Chords, Sines, Tangents, Secants, &c. &c.; A CHART OF THE WORLD, according to MERCATOR’s PROJECTION, with the Rhumb Lines., with a note that this chart is called Mercator’s Chart although it was the invention of Edward Wright an English Man; SELENOGRAPHY, a map of the Moon, with MARE IMBRIUM, MARE SERENITATIS, Mare Nubium, Mare Humorum, Mare Crisium, TERRA STERILITATIS and named craters such as Plato, Archimedes, Tycha and GRIMALDUS.
• Lower right: The VICISSITUDE of SEASONS Explained., opening In this Diagram S represent the Sun; THE ANALEMMA with THE USE OF THE ANALEMMA; a note beginning N.B. For an accurate Reduction of the Difference of Latitude and Longitude of Places, with figures for Greenwich Observatory, St Pauls London and Paris Observatory.
• Along the bottom, a two-line text beginning As the Space to which we are here confined for illustrating the Use of this UNIVERSAL SCALE is very small, with a DESCRIPTION of the diagram letters; in both lower corners: Printed for the Proprietor Carington Bowles, London.
• Western hemisphere, north: SEA OF ANADIR; NORTHERN ARCHIPELAGO; Fox Islands; the note The Russian Discoveries to the North ward of the 70th Parallal have been communicated to the Editors by Monsr Jaques de Stehlin Counsellor of State of the Empress of Russia, and late Secretary to the Academy of Sciences of Petersburg; ARCTIC LANDS; Arctic Circle; Alderman Jones’s Sound; St James Lancaster’s Sound; BAFFINS BAY; HUDSONS BAY; NEW NORTH WALES; NEW SOUTH WALES.
• Western hemisphere, northwest coast: Highest Latitude of the Spanish Discoveries in 1775.; Tchirikows Land; Land of Volcanos; Fousang of the Chinese; George’s Sound where Capt. Cook repair’d in 1778; River of the West; New Albion; NORTH AMERICA; NEW MEXICO; LOUISIANA; CALIFORNIA as a peninsula.
• Western hemisphere, Pacific: PACIFIC OCEAN OR GREAT SOUTH SEA; Capt. Cook going to America in 1778; Going North in 1779; Sandwich I.; O-why-hee where Capt. Cook was killed in February 1779.; Land seen by Mendana in 1568; Anson’s Track in 1742; Chippertons I. by conjecture; EQUINOCTIAL LINE; Marquesas of Mendoca; Bougainvilles Track 1768; Resolution’s Track in 1774.; Capt. Cook going to Otaheite in 1777.; NEW CALEDONIA; NEW ZEALAND; Cook’s Straits; Track of the Resolution Capt. Cook and the Adventure Capt. Furneaux in 1773; Antipodes of London; Field Ice 1773; SOUTHERN ICY OCEAN.
• Eastern hemisphere, around New Holland: NEW HOLLAND; NEW SOUTH WALES Discovered in 1770.; Endeavours Straits 1770; Carpentaria discovd 1628.; Wits Land 1628.; Concords Land 1616; Edels Land 1619; Lyons Land 1622; Nuyts Land discovd 1627; PAPUA or NEW GUINEA; LOUISIADE; Cape Deliverance by Mr de Bougainville 1768.; Tropic of Capricorn.

The sheet does not always agree with itself. The title spells BOUGANVILLE, the track on the map Bougainvilles Track 1768. The note on the Russian discoveries writes Parallal and gives the name as Jaques de Stehlin. The name NEW SOUTH WALES is used twice, by Hudson’s Bay and on the east coast of New Holland. The table of the Sun’s place runs to 1808, years after the date of the map; it is a reckoning table, not a date of printing.

Editions and other known copies

• Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, G3200 1780 .B6: London, printed for the proprietor Carington Bowles, no. 69 in St. Paul’s Church Yard, [1780?]; 1 map, hand colored; 2 hemispheres each 59 cm in diameter, on sheet 106 × 130 cm. The record notes “Shows various expedition routes.”, “Relief shown pictorially.”, lists the ancillary maps (solar system, northern and southern hemispheres, analemma, universal scale, Mercator chart, selenography, seasons), and adds “Sectioned into 4 pieces, mounted on cloth.” and “LC copy imperfect: Margin trimmed, minor losses along top.”
• Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa (Spain), record 392186: Bowles’s New Four Sheet Map of the World or Terrestrial Globe, printed for the proprietor Bowles and Carver, Nº 69 in St. Pauls Church Yard, [1794–1832]; 1 map on 4 sheets, each 57 × 65 cm or less, engraved and colored. Its notes name the routes of Anson, Byron, Cook and Bougainville, star charts of both hemispheres, an analemma, a Mercator chart, a selenography and the seasons. The copy is in the Biblioteca del Museo Naval, Madrid (MN-1-A-3).
• Biblioteca Virtual del Patrimonio Bibliográfico (Spain), signature [1-A-3]: the same “new four sheet map of the world or terrestrial globe” title, the same signature as the Museo Naval copy in the Defensa record, and evidently the same item.
• None of these records names states of the plate. No other copy of the Carington Bowles issue was found in an openable record in this search.

Catalog entries and sources

Library of Congress LCCN 2006627255; call number G3200 1780 .B6; digital id g3200.ct001476. Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa, record 392186 (Museo Naval, Madrid, MN-1-A-3). Biblioteca Virtual del Patrimonio Bibliográfico, signature [1-A-3].

Sources for the story and this record: the Library of Congress catalog record; the Science Museum Group collection entry for Carington Bowles; the Royal Academy collection entry for Carington Bowles; the British Museum collection entry for Bowles & Carver; the Royal Collection Trust entry for Jacob von Staehlin, An Account of the New Northern Archipelago (London, 1774); the Biblioteca Virtual de Defensa and Biblioteca Virtual del Patrimonio Bibliográfico records.

This copy

The scan shows the Library of Congress copy colored by hand: country borders and land areas in pink, green and yellow, the constellation figures washed in color, the Moon in grey and brown. As the record says, the sheet was sectioned and mounted on cloth: a vertical join runs down the middle between the hemispheres and through the Moon, a horizontal join crosses both hemispheres near the equator, and the cloth shows at the left edge. The margins are trimmed close to the frame. In the lower right margin there is a round stamp reading Library of Congress with Maps & Charts and a handwritten number, and a pencilled note 41¼ x 49 below the frame at lower right.