1646 Robert Dudley Chart of the English Channel, Southern England and Normandy

The first Printed Chart of the English Channel.

This is a beautiful example of Robert Dudley's 1646 chart of the English Channel. It is the first printed chart specifically of this body of water and its coasts.

A Closer Look

The chart reaches from the southern coast of Wales in the north (Cardiff and Bristol appear) to the bay and channel of the Loire River, and the island of Noirmontier. The chart includes London, the River Thames, and all of Southern England. In France, it includes all of Brittany, and the coast of Normandy and Flanders as far as Dunkirk. The Scilly Isles appear to the west. The coastlines are rich with navigational details: a multiplicity of depth soundings, shoals, and islands appear. The Cotentin Peninsula and the Channel Islands are clearly presented. General charts such as this were among the first charts actually executed for the 1646 first volume of Dell' Arcano Del Mare. The Carti Partocolari for this region mostly appeared in volume 3 of the work, published the following year.

Dudley's Sources

Dudley was a well-informed mapmaker. He was keen to draw on new sources wherever he could glean them. He was an accomplished navigator in his own right, and a chart of home waters such as this would certainly have benefited from his own observation. Many features of the French coast visible here appear to be drawn from Blaeu's 1608 sea atlas, Het Licht der Zee-vaert,; the depiction of the coast from Noirmontier Island to Belle-Île is particularly close. Many of Dudley's sources were English: the manuscript works of the Thames School of chart makers, whose masters are today known only by their names and their works. None of the few surviving works of the Thames chart makers is a convincing source for the present work, however. While Dudley's manuscript charts for this region have survived in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, they contain no specific clues to his method or sources.

Publication History and Census

This map was completed by Sir Robert Dudley in manuscript form in 1636. It was subsequently engraved in an Italian baroque style by Antonio Francesco Lucini and printed in Florence in 1646 for inclusion in the first edition of Dudley's Dell'Arcano Del Mare. The present first-state example is easily distinguished from the 1661 state, which exhibits the notation 'Lº.2º.' in the cartouche.

Rare. We see the separate chart in this state in only three institutional collections: the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Biblioteca Nacional de España, and the National Maritime Museum.  Complete or partial examples of the Dell'Arcano Del Mare are more widely distributed among institutional libraries, though they are still quite rare.

Cartographer

Sir Robert Dudley (August 7, 1573 - September 6, 1649) was an English explorer and cartographer, the publisher of the Dell’Arcano de Mare, one of the greatest nautical atlases of all time. He was the illegitimate son of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I) and Douglas Sheffield, the widow of John Sheffield, 2nd Baron Sheffield. In 1594, Dudley led an expedition across the Atlantic, with the intent of harassing Spanish merchantmen. His expedition met with a series of misfortunes, but successfully returned to England the following year. In 1596, Dudley joined an expedition led by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, against Cadiz. He served as the commander of the Nonpareil, and was knighted for his conduct in the capture of Cadiz. In 1603, Dudley made an attempt to establish his legitimacy at court and gain several inheritances, after being (possibly erroneously) informed that his parents had been secretly married. No concrete proof of the marriage could be furnished, thus the judgement was handed down against him in May 1605. Dudley left England in July of the same year, with his lover and cousin Elizabeth Southwell, who was disguised as his page. They married in Lyon in 1606 having received a papal dispensation. The couple settled in Florence, where Dudley began using his father’s title, Earl of Leicester, and his uncle’s, Earl of Warwick. In Florence, Dudley designed and built warships for the arsenal at Livorno and became a naval advisor to Ferdinand I, Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1607, James I revoked Dudley’s travel license once ordered that he return to provide for his deserted wife and family. Dudley refused, was subsequently labeled an outlaw, and his estate was confiscated. By far Dudley’s most important work was the Dell’Arcano del Mare (Secrets of the Sea). His most celebrated achievement, is the atlas of sea charts of the world which accompanied the work. This maritime atlas was the first nautical atlas of the entire world in print, the first made by an Englishman, the first to show prevailing winds and currents, and the first to use the Mercator projection throughout.   Further Details...

Source

Dudley, R., Dell'Arcano del Mare, (Florence: Francesco Onofri) 1646.    

Condition

Excellent. Margin reinstated at insertion point.

References

OCLC 777240933. Tyacke, S., 'Chartmaking in England and Its Context, 1500–1660', in The History of Cartography, Volume 3: Cartography in the European Renaissance, Part 2, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 2007.