1647 Dudley Nautical Map of Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, West Indies

This is a first edition example of Robert Dudley's rare 1647 chart of the northeastern Caribbean, embracing from the eastern tip of Cuba to Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos, St. Croix, and the southern Bahamas. It is the first printed sea chart to focus specifically on this crucial region.

A Closer Look

It appeared in Dudley's Dell'Arcano del Mare, first nautical atlas to cover the whole world, and the first to be produced by an Englishman. It was also the first sea atlas to consistently employ the Mercator projection, and to indicate prevailing winds, currents, and magnetic declination. Thus, Dudley's nautical atlas was the first such printed work to be useful in actual navigation. The whole is rendered in the inimitable style of Antonio Francesco Lucini, who engraved all the charts appearing in Arcano del Mare. (A monumental effort - the plates required five thousand pounds of copper to complete the work.) Lucini's superb calligraphy and balanced composition - including attractively-engraved ships and compass roses - contribute to making Dudley's charts some of the most elegant, distinct, and desirable printed cartographic works of the 17th century.

The Earliest Printed Nautical Chart of Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands

With respect to charts of these waters, there are no printed precursors. We are aware of a surviving Dutch manuscript chart, a 1639 Vingboons, but it does not resemble the present work and it is probable that these charts derive from separate sources. For many of his charts, Dudley drew heavily on the best Dutch sources available, often the work of Hessel Gerritsz. But this chart is more focused and detailed than the Dutch chartmaker's 1625 map appearing in Johannes de Laet's Nieuwe wereldt, ofte, Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien; neither does it resemble the detail in the other general Caribbean maps appearing in Dutch atlases prior to Dudley's work.

There are enough accurate placenames of Spanish derivation, and enough accurate details to suggest that Dudley's source may have been a Spanish manuscript chart - perhaps one that passed to him through his connections in the Florentine court. The chart extends from eastern Cuba to Virgin Gorda and Anegada Island, and from Guanahani, the indigenous Lucayan name for the Bahaman island of San Salvador, to St. Croix. A host of early settlements are noted, particularly on Hispaniola, with depth soundings and safe anchorages: eleven anchorages are marked on Hispaniola alone, with three for Puerto Rico and one in the Virgin Islands archipelago. Vieques is shown and named (Biegua o Bauquen). The anchorage in the Virgin Islands is replete with depth soundings, but its islands are speculative and not well recognizable. It appears well to the west of Virgin Gorda and may correspond to the island of Culebra. The only 'placenames' in the vicinity are 'Cagada' and 'Passagio.' If the source of this chart was Spanish it is not beyond possibility that this is actually a notation - 'Pasagio cagada' denigrating the quality of that specific channel.

Publication History and Census

This map was completed by Sir Robert Dudley in manuscript form c. 1636. It was then engraved in 1646-47 by Antonio Francesco Lucini for publication in 1647 in volume II of the first edition of Robert Dudley's seminal sea atlas, the Arcano del Mare. This is the first edition of the map, issued for the 1647 atlas. A second edition of the atlas, also with this map, was issued in 1661. The later edition is easily distinguishable by the presence of the notation 'L.°6°' in the cartouche. We see a few examples in the OCLC, most associated with the more common 1661 edition, almost all associated with institutional holdings of the full atlas. We note few examples of this map, in any edition, on the market in recent times.