This unrecorded issue of Laurie and Whittle’s magnificent chart of the waters around the Florida peninsula, was first published by Sayer and Bennett in 1779 under a slightly different title: ‘A New Chart of the Gulf Passage’, and has been significantly updated to include the results of a very recent Spanish survey of the Antilles (1799) recently acquired by Laurie and Whittle (see items 29, and 31).



The areas most altered involve the complex network of Keys and Reefs, now collectively known as the Florida Keys. Also the treatment of Grand Cayman, within the inset Cayman Islands at the bottom of the chart, is more elaborate. The bottom right-hand sheet has been completely reworked, particularly the islands and shoals of Nicholas Channel, and the island of Punta de Ycacos. “Old Channel of Bahama” has been changed to “Old Bahama Channel”. The waterway between the “old” channel and the eastern end of the Great Bank of Bahamas is now full of soundings, and the visible stretch of the northern coastline of Cuba is presented in much more detail. “The West End of Cuba” is reshaped, and a new coastal profile of the “High Land over Cape Buenavista” added.



Only two other examples of ‘A Mercator’s chart of the Gulf passage’ [as here] are known. One is housed at the Royal Museums Greenwich (Robert Sayer, 1786), the other is found in the only known copy of ‘Romans’ Gulf and Windward Pilot’ (Laurie and Whittle, 1794) at the University of Florida.



The original manuscript of Romans’s chart (before 1774), some 21 feet in length, is held at the National Archives in Kew, London. For Sayer and Bennett’s original working manuscript (1778) for the first 1779 issue of this chart, see item 24. The first (1779) issue is known in only one printed example, as part of large and sumptuous composite atlas, Daniel Crouch Rare Books in 2011.