1795 Laurie and Whittle Edition of Robert Sayer's West India Pilot

This is Robert Sayer's nautical atlas of the West Indies, A Complete Pilot for the West Indies, in its 1795 Laurie and Whittle edition. The Pilot showcases Thomas Jefferys' state-of-the-art British chartmaking during the American Revolutionary War (1775 - 1783). The present edition reflects Sayer's revisions following the Revolution, presenting the West Indies and the surrounding region as the changing political climate impacted the British sugar trade and its part in the infamous Triangle Trade, the systematic shipment of enslaved Africans to the West Indies and North America to facilitate the cultivation and processing of sugar.

An Overview

The Pilot's charts focus on the Caribbean Islands and their neighboring coasts, but as a British work, it also contains charts for the home ports of the British navigator and the nearby coastlines of the Continent. The earliest editions of the Pilot contained only single-sheet charts for the British Channel and the Bay of Biscay, but Sayers' final versions of the work, as here, contained an expansive three-sheet chart of the Channel and a two-sheet chart of the Bay of Biscay. The former, in particular, benefited from significant revisions as late as 1788.

A third chart, of the Atlantic Ocean, appeared in earlier editions of the Pilot, but the example present here is a new plate, revised with information credited to the cartographer and colonial governor Thomas Pownall. This chart contains an array of sailing routes between Britain and the Americas, and includes a dramatic illustration of the Gulf Stream Current (Pownall's research on this phenomenon, and its impacts on navigation, incorporated and acknowledged the work of Benjamin Franklin). With its presentation not only of the American and European coast, but also that of West Africa and the Guinea Coast, this chart is evocative of the infamous Triangle Trade. The sailing routes presented focus on the Americas, but the coastal profiles all pertain to the African coast.

An Important Bermuda

The journey across the Atlantic was seldom achieved nonstop; with this in mind, the Pilot included several charts of the islands to be found en route: the Canary Islands, the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, and Bermuda. This last is particularly significant, being an iteration of the first commercial sea chart of Bermuda to incorporate data from Clement Lemprière's important 1738 map, A Complete Pilot for the West Indies - the first significant improvement on Bermudan geography since the 17th century. Sayer's version of the map was first engraved in 1775 for the West India Atlas, but it remained the premier Bermuda chart well into the 19th century.

Heart of the 'Pilot'

In compiling the Pilot, Sayer adapted the 17 charts at the heart of the earlier West India Atlas. These now formed the core of the Complete Pilot for the West Indies: 16 particular charts of the Gulf Coast, the West Indies, Central America, and Terra Firma, and a contextualizing key-map. All of the particular charts show evidence of at least minor changes over those from 1775 Atlas, and many are completely re-engraved with significant alterations to the coastlines and typographical corrections. Areas most updated include the Gulf Coast from the Mississippi to the Bay of Apalache; the Florida coastline, Cuba, and South America.

Of the maps pertinent to specific Caribbean islands that appeared in the Atlas, the only survivor is the chart of the Turks Islands. This important chart is the earliest obtainable large-scale chart of the Turks. It shows not only Grand Turk, Salt Key, and Sand Key, but also the shallows linking these islands. With copious depth soundings, anchorages, and emphasis on navigational hazards, its 'chartness' may be the reason to its retention in the Pilot. The Turks were an important source of salt from sea brine, essential to the trans-Atlantic voyage. Accordingly, the only settlements noted on the map are 'Salt rakers' huts.' During the American Revolution, the Continental Army depended on the Turks for salt for food preservation, and American fishing vessels used Turks salt to preserve their catches. Jefferys credited the cartographer to a 1753 survey attributed to the French schooners l'Aigle and l'Emeraude, further amended in 1770 by the British sloop Sir Edward Hawke.

British Incursions against the Dutch in South America - and a hint of El Dorado?

The last chart appearing in the Pilot, A New Chart of the Coast of Guyana from Rio Orinoco to River Berbice, made its first appearance in 1787. The present example is dated November 19, 1795. Both this and its precursors were among the newest charts in the Pilot. Even so, the 1795 version is significantly updated over the 1787. The whole coastline is completely revised, and there are corrections to river systems and settlements. In addition to its soundings, course headings, anchorages, and other purely nautical features, this chart details land features to an extent seen nowhere else in the Pilot. Buildings, forts, Indian villages, and plantations for sugar and cocoa are marked. A note tallies the rich production of sugar, rum, coffee, and cotton, while hinting at further wealth of cocoa and indigo. The region depicted here had thus become a prize, wrestled over by the Dutch and the English. During the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780 - 1784), British privateers briefly captured settlements on the shores of the Rivers Essequibo and Demerara. Afterward, an increasing number of British colonists settled the region. By 1796, there was a permanent British presence, and by 1800, there were between 350 and 400 sugar plantations. Neither Sayer nor Laurie and Whittle provided a source for this chart, but it is an important addition to the Pilot as work of immediate colonial interest, produced in the wake of the painful British losses in the Americas following the Revolution.

Another note invokes an old, tantalizing goal:

It is conjectured that the rivers Cajona and Mazaroni communicate with Lake Parima, which lies about 80 Leag. S.W. by W. from the Dutch Fort. On the Banks of Lake Parima the antient Discoverers placed the imaginary City of Manoa Capital of el Dorado, or the Golden Land, and famous by the Expeditions of Sr. Walter Raleigh.

Production of the West India Pilot

The present work appears to have been conceived as a digest, with a specifically nautical focus, of Robert Sayer's 1775 West India Atlas. This comprehensive volume was the work of Thomas Jefferys, who spent the last decade of his life assembling it. Following Jefferys' 1771 death, Sayer and his partner, John Bennett, completed the book. With its 39 plates of maps and charts, the West India Atlas was the first comprehensive English atlas of the Florida, the Gulf Coast, and the Caribbean. By 1794, it had been expanded to 61 plates, but throughout its run, at the heart were 16 charts of the West Indies and an accompanying key-map.

Shortly after the publication of the Atlas, Sayer began to experiment with a more chart-focused work accompanied by a set of sailing instructions for navigating the West Indies. In 1778, he published several iterations of a variously-titled Neptune Occidental. This work first appeared with a scant 13 charts, most drawn from the 1775 West India Atlas, but surprisingly only one was derived from the excellent large-scale charts of that work - that of the Windward Islands. This version of the Neptune may have been a composite intended to test public interest, apparently with some success. Sayer and Bennett immediately revised and expanded it. As early as 1778, they published the Neptune Occidental. A Compleat Pilot for the West-Indies, including the British Channel, Bay of Biscay, and all the Atlantic islands, containing 25 charts. This work improved on the early versions in almost every aspect, including the incorporation of the 16 Jeffreys charts at the core of the West India Atlas. Most surviving examples of the Neptune Occidental were printed in 1782.

Following the American Revolution, Sayer began to update the Pilot, with some plates receiving minor updates but many being replaced, publishing it in 1792 under his own imprint. After his 1794 death, the Pilot was reprinted by Laurie and Whittle, who continued to update and add to the work as late as 1801.

Publication History and Census

A Complete Pilot for the West Indies was published by Robert Sayer in 1792, and taken over by Laurie and Whittle in 1794, after his death. Their edition of 1795, with which this corresponds, appears in about 30 institutional collections, but it is extremely scarce on the market. We see no catalog listings or auction records for this edition. Of the 1792 Sayer edition, we are aware of only one example that has come to market.