1749 Tiddeman / Grierson Map of New York City and Vicinity

A scarce and impressive colonial period 1749 George Grierson / Mark Tiddeman nautical chart of New York City and harbor. Oriented to the west and centered on Coney Island (Cunny I.), Grierson's chart covers from Staten Island to Jamaica Bay and from Sandy Hook to Harlem (northern Manhattan). There is a compass rose in the lower left quadrant. Relief, towns, and mills are represented pictorially. Numerous depth soundings fill the harbor and sand banks are rendered with stippling. Some twenty-seven cities and villages are identified, often with quaint spellings of still common place names: Brockland (Brooklyn), Hobuck (Hoboken), Blomindoll (Bloomingdale), West Chester (Westchester), and Bushwyk (Bushwick), to name few. The map also identifies various mines and mills, including Schyler's Copper Mine in modern day North Arlington New Jersey, and an Iron Mill south of Sandy Hook.

Grierson's was well-known for issuing piracies of English maps, most particularly those of his contemporary Herman Moll. He also issued a pirated edition of Mount and Page's English Pilot, from which this was extracted. The cartography for this map is actually the work of Mark Tiddeman, who first issued it in the 1732 first edition of the English Pilot. The map's parent publication, book four of the English Pilot, was one of the most influential collections of nautical charts ever published. Form the first printing in 1732, the English Pilot appeared in some 37 editions over the next century, remaining popular even after much of its contents became outdated and better charts, such as those contained within Sayer and Bennett's North American Pilot and Des Barres' Atlantic Neptune became available.

This chart is impressive for its inaccuracy and rather vague rendering of the region, which its itself indicative of the relatively limited hydrographic knowledge of the region in the early and middle parts of the 18th century. Augustyn and Cohen, in Manhattan in Maps, note that Tiddeman's map was better than most of its contemporaries, however, ' makes the entrance to the Lower Bay of New York Harbor appear to be less of a challenge than it really is.' The entrance to New York Harbor was, in fact, quite challenging due to the narrow entrance between Sandy Hook and East Bank and required critical sharp turn to starboard in order to alight in New York Harbor. Until truly accurate nautical charts appeared in the early days of the U.S. Coast Survey and the entrance was widened in the 1890s, shipwrecks in this area were common - it is not inconceivable that this popular chart may have been partially responsible for at least some of them.

This Grierson pirate of Tiddeman's map is based exclusively on the 1732 first state of Tiddeman's map which, despite being a new engraving plate, is very similar with the exception being Grierson Dublin imprint in the upper right quadrant just under the title. The 1732 edition of Tiddeman's map does not specifically identify the author. Curiously, the second edition of Tiddeman's map, published in 1753 following the 1749 release of Grierson's pirate (as offered here), does credit Tiddeman just under the title. Presumably Tiddeman, aware of the Grierson piracy, was attempting to identify and claim his map. Grierson's son, Boulter Grierson, also published a reissue of the 1749 piracy of the English Pilot in 1767. Due to a significantly smaller print run and only two editions being issued, Grierson's piracies are far less common than Tiddeman's originals and are consequently highly sought after by collectors.