This item has been sold, but you can get on the Waitlist to be notified if another example becomes available, or purchase a digital scan.

1866 U.S. Coast Survey Chart or Map of the Mississippi Sound - Western Part

MississippiSoundWest-uscs-1866-2
$200.00
Coast Chart No. 92 Mississippi Sound Western Part From Round I. to St. Joseph's I. - Main View
Processing...

1866 U.S. Coast Survey Chart or Map of the Mississippi Sound - Western Part

MississippiSoundWest-uscs-1866-2

The Best Saltwater Fishing in Mississippi.

Title


Coast Chart No. 92 Mississippi Sound Western Part From Round I. to St. Joseph's I.
  1866 (dated)     32 x 42 in (81.28 x 106.68 cm)     1 : 80000

Description


This is a scarce 1860 U.S. Coast Survey chart of the western part of the Mississippi Sound. While charts of the Gulf Coast generally are not uncommon, very few address this part of the Mississippi sound with such detail, giving this chart a unique focus on a favored fishing haunt.
A Closer Look
The chart covers the coast of Mississippi, roughly from St. Joseph Island (today's Grand Island) and St. Louis Bay, eastward as far as Round Island and the mouth of the Pascagoula River. It provides extraordinary detail throughout, including sailing instructions, notes on tides, notes on winds, identification of various light houses and buoys, and thousands of depth soundings. Includes St. Louis Bay, Biloxi Bay, and the Pascagoula River.

While the chart shows the fishing areas of the barrier islands and the Louisiana Biloxi marsh, it shows these over a century prior to the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources' artificial reef program, which would have its start in the 1960s and 70s.
Publication History and Census
The triangulation for this chart was completed by F.H. Gerdes, S. A. Gilbert, and J. E. Hilgard. The Hydrography was completed by a party under the command of C. P. Patterson and B.F Sands, and the chart was compiled under the supervision of A. D. Bache, one of the most influential Superintendents in the history of the Coast Survey. While the chart was surveyed and drawn in 1860, it was not published until after the Civil War (1861 - 1865), in the 1867 supplement to the 1866 edition of the Superintendent's Report. We see no separate examples of this chart in OCLC. The chart appears to have been reprinted as Coastal Chart No. 90, unchanged but with different pagination. We see two separate examples of that variation, listed in institutional collections, in the University of Wisconsin and Boston Library.

CartographerS


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 that were then individually surveyed. Employing this exacting technique on such a massive scale had never before been attempted. Consequently, Hassler and the Coast Survey under him developed a reputation for uncompromising dedication to the principles of accuracy and excellence. Unfortunately, despite being a masterful surveyor, Hassler was abrasive and politically unpopular, twice losing congressional funding for the Coast Survey. Nonetheless, Hassler led the Coast Survey until his death in 1843, at which time 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 liberally fund the endeavor. 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 (C & GS) to accommodate topographic as well as nautical surveys. Today the Coast Survey is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA as the National Geodetic Survey. More by this mapmaker...


Ferdinand H. Gerdes (September 15, 1809 - June 27, 1884) was one of the most active members of the U.S. Coast Survey team. His most important work includes several surveys of New York Harbor as well as detailed surveys of Florida, the Gulf Coast, and up the Mississippi River. Gerdes was born in Hanover, Germany (Prussia) and relocated to the United States sometime before 1836, when he joined he fledgling U.S. Coast Survey as an Sub-assistant under Hassler. From 1841 - 1844 he surveyed the New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware Bay Region. In 1844 he was assigned to the Gulf Coast, where he produced his most important and pioneering work. During the American Civil War, like most of the members of the Coast Survey, Gerdes was strongly pro-Union and worked diligently during the Civil War to provide Union commanders accurate surveying and cartographic materials. Gerdes is known to have commanded the ‘Sachem' and, during the Civil War, was heavily engaged with Union efforts to map and ultimately control, the Mississippi River. Following the war he produced detailed surveys of the Passes of the Mississippi. His health and age catching up on him, Gerdes retired to New York, where he completed additional surveys of long island as late as 1883, a year before his death. Learn More...


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, 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 at Newport, Rhode Island and was buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC, where he is commemorated with a monument built by American architect Henry Hobson Richardson. Learn More...

Source


Report of the Superintendant of the United States Coast Survey, 1867 Supplement to the 1865 edition (Washington) 1867.    

Condition


Good. Usual discoloration at folds; some mended splits along original fold lines with some areas of wear. Else very good.