1680 / 1693 Hendrick Doncker Chart of the North Atlantic

This is Hendrick Doncker's 1680 chart of the North Atlantic, in its second, 1693 state, containing the coasts of Greenland, Iceland, the British Isles, and Maritime Canada; the chart includes the Straits of Hudson, Davis, and Frobisher, reflecting the efforts over the prior century to reveal a Northwest Passage and probe the Arctic.

A Closer Look

The chart, set around an elegant central compass rose amongst a network of rhumb lines, is focused on the span of the Atlantic between the British Isles and Canada, bounded by Greenland and the Arctic to the north. In the lower left is the mouth of the St. Lawrence River (Le Grand Riviere de Canada) and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This includes the coasts of Labrador (Nova Francia) and Newfoundland (Terra Nova). Resolution Island (Island of Good Fortune) appears to the north. The upper left incorporates part of the coast of Baffin Island, here simply termed 'America'. The Cumberland Sound is named. A note in Dutch indicates that here can be found 'various fresh fish, dead whales, white foxes, and fresh salmon'. Dominating the chart at top center is Greenland, whose bays and fjords remained poorly understood. The single bay misidentified as a strait in the 16th century by Martin Frobisher has here become two separate passages. A long stretch of Greenland's east coast is sketched in with the note that 'this is all ice and great icebergs.' Preserved exclusively in charts of this era, a further passage at Greenland's extreme northeast describes 'the land through which Gaal Hamkes went in the year 1654'.

In a new addition appearing in this state of the chart, Iceland features depth soundings along its northern coast. Jan Mayen Island appears to the upper right. Meanwhile, in the lower right the British Isles and the northern coast of Brittany connect America with Europe.

An Uncatchable Bus

The chart - and its forbears, going back to 1649 illustrate the phantom island of Bus. This island was first recorded during the 1578 third Frobisher expedition by sailors aboard the ship Emanuel of Bridgwater. The Emanuel was a class of vessel known as a Busse, and its crew named the island for the type of vessel that its discoverers used. Today, it is generally believed that the sighting resulted from misinterpreted optical effects. This did not prevent 'Thomas Shepard' from claiming in 1671 to have explored the island. Navigators failed to discover Bus in the subsequent centuries despite the increase of Atlantic traffic in the 18th century: this resulted in later maps adjusting the supposed size of the island down until its location was labeled 'site of the sunken island' on some 19th-century charts. In 1818, during his first Arctic expedition, John Ross sought the sunken island; finding no depth at 180 fathoms at the appropriate location, he concluded that it never existed.

Decorative Engraving

At top center is an elegant shell-work cartouche, flanked by figures in the garb of Arctic whale fishers; the one to the left brandishes a harpoon; two to the right appear to be discussing the merits of a very small kayak. In the background, workers labor at various stages of whaling and processing blubber: the primary focus of most Dutch activity in these northern seas.

The State of the Art

The charting of the north parts of the world had been a major focus of explorers and mapmakers from the end of the 16th century through the 19th, and this area showed marked cartographic development during the period leading up to Doncker's chart. The formulation of Baffin Island, Greenland, Iceland, and Jan Mayen Island first appeared in 1649 on Theunis Jacobsz' similarly-titled Pascaarte van Groenland, Yslandt, Hitlandt, Straet-Davids als mede Ian Mayen Eylandt; Pieter Goos produced an expanded version including the British Isles in 1650, which served Doncker as the basis for an early 1659 plate of this map. (The 1659 plate, among other features, lacked Buss Island.)

Publication History and Census

This chart was engraved for inclusion in Hendrick Doncker's 1680 De Nieuwe Groote Vermeerdede Zee-Atlas ofte Water-Werelt. The present example, produced for the 1693 edition of the Zee-Atlas was revised with a new delineation for the Grand Bank near Newfoundland and depth soundings along the northern Iceland. The chart is rare: only three examples of the separate chart are cataloged in OCLC: at the Biblioteca Nacional de Espana (1680, 1693) and Universiteit Van Amsterdam (1693).