1851 U.S. Coast Survey Map of Galveston Bay, Texas, Separate Issue

Gateway to Texas

This is a rare, separately issued example of the U.S. Coast Survey's 1851 maritime map, or nautical chart, of Galveston Bay, Texas. It depicts the city and its surrounding waters as Galveston emerged as Texas's primary port, commercial hub, and maritime gateway.

A Closer Look

The map covers from Turtle Bay to the entrance to Galveston Bay, including the City of Galveston, Galveston Island, and Bolivar Peninsula. Supplementary inset maps at left detail Cloppers Bar and Red Fish Bar. Soundings, shoals, buoys, lights, and other navigational details are included, along with notes and sailing directions at top-right. Some inland detail is recorded, including elevation, terrain, and Galveston's street layout. As mentioned in the title, the locations of potential lighthouses, particularly on the Bolivar Peninsula, are indicated.

Historical Context

Following the Texas Revolution, Galveston emerged as the primary seaport and financial epicenter of Antebellum Texas. Formally incorporated in 1839 by Michel B. Menard and the Galveston City Company, the city capitalized on its natural deepwater harbor (the finest along the Texas coast) to dominate the region's maritime trade. Steamboats traversed Galveston Bay and routed down rivers like the Trinity and Brazos, hauling large quantities of cotton to the island's bustling wharves for export to European and Northern markets. Beyond cotton, Galveston Bay served as the principal port of entry for incoming goods and thousands of immigrants, making the city Texas's economic gateway. The city's commercial success made it a hub of modernization, with many firsts in Texas, including the republic/state's first post office, naval base, insurance company, and gas lighting.

This rapid commercial rise relied fundamentally on the institution of human slavery, which powered both the inland plantation system and the port's logistical network. Galveston operated as a primary hub for the domestic slave trade (as well as the illicit international slave trade) in Texas, and a significant portion of the city's population (16 percent in the 1860 Census) was enslaved, doing much of the hard labor of the city's commercial enterprises. Some measure of justice came when Galveston played a key role in emancipation, serving as the site where 'General Order No. 3' was promulgated on June 19, 1865, outlawing slavery in Texas. In the following years, Galveston became a pilgrimage site for recently emancipated slaves and remains important today in Juneteenth celebrations.

Publication History and Census

The topography for this chart was completed by John Morris Wampler, while a team accomplished the hydrography under the command of Tunis Augustus Craven. Notably, both Craven and Wampler were killed in action during the U.S. Civil War, on opposing sides: Craven at Mobile Bay and Wampler at Charleston Harbor. The whole map was compiled under the supervision of A. D. Bache, one of the most influential Superintendents in the history of the Coast Survey.

This is a separately issued example of this map, printed on thicker, stronger paper (and therefore in better condition today) than the more common examples found in the annual Report of the Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey. OCLC independently catalogs this first edition of the map at seven institutions, but catalog records suggest that most, if not all, are examples drawn from the Annual Report rather than the separately issued format seen here.

Cartographers

Tunis Augustus Macdonough Craven (January 11, 1813 - August 5, 1864) was a U.S. Navy officer and surveyor with the U.S. Coast Survey. He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in a profoundly maritime environment, with his father having a naval background and operating a naval supply store and his mother being the daughter of Thomas Tingey, a U.S. Navy commodore who was a longtime commandant of the Washington Navy Yard. During his youth, Tunis Craven moved to Brooklyn when his father went to work at the New York Navy Yard. After attending Columbia College Grammar School, Craven joined the navy and was appointed an acting midshipman in 1829. From 1835 to 1843, he was assigned to the U.S. Coast Survey as a surveyor and promoted to lieutenant in 1841. He married Mary Carter, from a prominent Long Island family, in 1838 and had three children with her but Mary died in 1843, leaving Craven a widower. Afterwards, he married Marie L. Stevenson and had three additional children. Craven remained on active duty in the U.S. Navy and commanded the sloop-of-war Dale during the Mexican-American War. After the war, he spent a year at the U.S. Naval Observatory but spent most of the 1850s on a second stint with the Coast Survey, including a surveying expedition to scout a potential canal route through the Isthmus of Panama. At the start of the U.S. Civil War, Craven commanded the Tuscarora, shadowing and harassing Confederate ships in European waters. In 1863, Craven returned to the U.S. to command the Tecumseh, which was ultimately assigned to Admiral Farragut's fleet in Mobile Bay, where Craven was killed in battle on August 5 when the Tecumseh was struck by a torpedo and sank almost instantly with most of her crew. Tunis Craven's brother, Thomas Tingey Craven (1808 - 1887), also was a naval officer who served in the U.S. Civil War and managed the Mare Island Navy Yard near San Francisco after the war.   Further Details...

John Morris Wampler (May 3, 1830 - August 17, 1863) was an American surveyor and military engineer in the Antebellum period and the U.S. Civil War. Born in Maryland, Wampler came from humble origins, with his mother being widowed at a young age. Wampler's education and training were minimal, mostly coming by way of a girls' school in rural Virginia run by one Margaret Mercer, a family friend. However, Mercer was a native of Philadelphia and had connections with another Philadelphia native, Alexandar Dallas Brache, the head of the fledgling U.S. Coast Survey. Bache may have also been well-disposed towards Wampler due to his own difficult childhood, supporting eight siblings after his father abandoned the family. In any event, Bache provided an opportunity for Wampler, hiring him as a draftsman at the Coast Survey in 1847 when he was just 17 years old. Once at the Coast Survey, Wampler flourished and received training as a topographical engineer. Once in the field, like most of his fellow surveyors, Wampler travelled great distances, conducting surveys in northern states in the summer and southern states in the winter. By 1850, Wampler was given charge of his own team, to conduct a survey of Galveston Bay, in the newly-admitted state of Texas. Wampler continued to work for the Survey until the mid-1850s, undertaking work throughout the growing United States, but after being married and having a child desired to travel less and therefore left the Survey. Wampler tried his hand as an engineer in the private sector, with mixed success, working on railways and Baltimore's municipal water supply system, as well as trying to patent his own invention for a surveying instrument. As the U.S. drifted towards Civil War, Wampler became an ardent supporter of the Confederacy despite having lived much of his life in the border states or the North and having seemingly never owned slaves. He quickly distinguished himself as a capable engineer in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States and came to work for General P.G.T. Beauregard, under whom Wampler surveyed landscapes and designed field fortifications across Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina. He subsequently served under General Braxton Bragg, executing critical wartime duties that included route reconnaissance, bridge building, and fort construction. In the summer of 1863, Wampler was appointed chief engineer at Battery Wagner on Morris Island to fortify the defenses of Charleston Harbor. On August 17, 1863, while taking shelter inside a bombproof structure at the battery, Wampler was killed instantly by fragments from an exploding Union artillery shell, bringing a sudden end to the life of one of the era's prominent field engineers. Wampler is the subject of a 2000 academic biography by George G. Kundahl, titled Confederate Engineer: Training and Campaigning with John Morris Wampler (University of Tennessee Press).   Further Details...

The Office of the Coast Survey (1807 - present) founded in 1807 by President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of Commerce Albert Gallatin, is the oldest scientific organization in the U.S. Federal Government. Jefferson created the "Survey of the Coast," as it was then called, in response to a need for accurate navigational charts of the new nation's coasts and harbors. The spirit of the Coast Survey was defined by its first two superintendents. The first superintendent of the Coast Survey was Swiss immigrant and West Point mathematics professor Ferdinand Hassler. Under the direction of Hassler, from 1816 to 1843, the ideological and scientific foundations for the Coast Survey were established. These included using the most advanced techniques and most sophisticated equipment, as well as an unstinting attention to detail. Hassler devised a labor-intensive triangulation system whereby the entire coast was divided into a series of enormous triangles. These were, in turn, subdivided into smaller triangulation units, which were then individually surveyed. Employing this exacting technique on such a massive scale had never been attempted before. Consequently, Hassler and the Coast Survey under his leadership developed a reputation for uncompromising dedication to accuracy and excellence. Unfortunately, despite being a masterful surveyor, Hassler was abrasive and politically unpopular, losing congressional funding for the Coast Survey twice. Nonetheless, Hassler led the Coast Survey until his death in 1843, when Alexander Dallas Bache, a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, took the helm. Bache was fully dedicated to the principles established by Hassler, but proved more politically astute and successfully lobbied Congress to fund the endeavor generously. Under the leadership of A. D. Bache, the Coast Survey completed its most important work. Moreover, during his long tenure with the Coast Survey, from 1843 to 1865, Bache was a steadfast advocate of American science and navigation and, in fact, founded the American Academy of Sciences. Bache was succeeded by Benjamin Pierce, who ran the Survey from 1867 to 1874. Pierce was, in turn, succeeded by Carlile Pollock Patterson, who was Superintendent from 1874 to 1881. In 1878, under Patterson's superintendence, the U.S. Coast Survey was reorganized as the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (USCGS) to accommodate both topographic and nautical surveys. Today, the Coast Survey is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as the National Geodetic Survey.   Further Details...

Alexander Dallas Bache (July 19, 1806 - February 17, 1867) was an American physicist, scientist, and surveyor. Bache is best known in cartographic circles as the Superintendent of the U.S. Coast Survey from 1843 to 1865. Born in Philadelphia, Bache, a great-grandson of the statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin, had a varied career primarily focused on education. He toured Europe on behalf of Girard College and composed an important treatise on European Education. Later he served as president of Philadelphia's Central High School and was a professor of natural history and chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. On the death of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler (1770 - 1843), Bache was appointed Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey. Picking up where Hassler left off, Bache presided over the Survey during its most prolific period and oversaw the mapping of most of the United States coastline. To this day his name appears on countless marine pilot books and U.S. Coast Survey nautical charts. For his work, he was elected Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. Following the Civil War, Bache was elected a 3rd Class Companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. He died in Newport, Rhode Island, and was buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC, where he is commemorated by a monument designed by American architect Henry Hobson Richardson.   Further Details...

Condition

Excellent.

References

OCLC 46940059 (alternate printing).