1851 U.S. Coast Survey Map or Chart of Mobile Bay, Alabama, Separate Issue

The South's Second Great Port on the Gulf.

This rare, separately issued example of the U.S. Coast Survey's 1851 nautical chart of Mobile Bay, Alabama, captures one of the antebellum South's most important commercial gateways at the height of the cotton boom. By 1851, these waters carried an immense flow of cotton from Alabama's Black Belt to markets in the North and Europe, transforming Mobile into one of the Gulf Coast’s great ports.

A Closer Look

Published after several years of exacting coastal surveys, the chart maps the intricate approaches to Mobile with extraordinary navigational precision, from the labyrinthine Mobile-Tensaw River Delta and the bustling port of Mobile south to Dauphin Island, Mobile Point, and the open Gulf of Mexico. The city of Mobile, Alabama, is illustrated, along with excellent detail of the nearby river delta. Countless depth soundings, hazards, bottoms, lights, shoals, magnetic variations of the compass, and other navigational details are included throughout. Notes on tides, currents, and sailing instructions are situated in the upper-left corner.

Historical Context

Following Alabama's statehood in 1819, Mobile quickly transformed from a quiet colonial outpost into the second-largest cotton port on the Gulf Coast, trailing only New Orleans. Strategically situated where the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers empty into Mobile Bay, the city served as the primary economic funnel for the region's expanding plantation system. Steamboats constantly navigated these river networks, hauling millions of pounds of cotton harvested across the fertile Black Belt down to Mobile's bustling wharves, where merchant ships loaded the cargo for export to Northern and European textile mills.

Of course, underlying this immense commercial boom was total reliance on the forced labor of enslaved African Americans, who cleared the land, harvested the crops, constructed the city's infrastructure, and loaded the bay's vessels. Mobile also developed into a major node of the domestic slave trade (the international trade having been nominally outlawed in 1808), harboring active slave markets alongside its grand Greek Revival architecture. The dark legacy of this period was underscored in 1860 when the Clotilda illegally smuggled 110 captive West Africans through Mobile Bay, the last documented slave ship to reach the United States, just months before Alabama seceded from the Union.

Publication History and Census

This chart was published in 1851, the result of several years of work by the Coast Survey between 1846 and 1851 under the supervision of A. D. Bache. It was engraved by H. Evens, H. M. Knight, and Samuel E. Stull, with additional reduction for engraving-lithography by J. Lambert, J. J. Rickets, and M. C. Gritzner. 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. The OCLC independently catalogs this first edition of the map at five institutions (Princeton University, the University of Alabama, the Milwaukee Public Library, Western Michigan University and the University of Florida), but from catalog records it is impossible to tell if these examples are the separate issue seen here or, more likely, from the Annual Report.

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, 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

Rumsey 2470.040. OCLC 12968406, 1370990659 (likely alternate printings).