Collins, Captain Greenville (fl. 1669-1694).

Shirley, British Library M.COLL-1a-1c; Coolie Verner, Captain Collins’s Coasting Pilot, Map Collectors Series no.58 (1969)

the beaufort subscriber's copy of “the first systematic survey of british coastal waters and the first marine atlas of british waters engraved and printed in london from original surveys” (Verner).

The reign of Charles II was interspersed with wars against the Dutch, principally fought on the high seas. It was soon realised that the Dutch navy had access to better sea charts of English waters than the English themselves. Accordingly, in 1681 Charles II commissioned Captain Greenville Collins to make a survey of the coasts of Great Britain, a task accomplished between 1681 and 1687. During this survey Collins completed 120 manuscript draughts, of which forty-seven were engraved for the Coasting Pilot. The engraving was carried out by some of the leading practitioners of the art, principally John Harris Sr and Herman Moll, with James Collins (who went on to engrave an important series of plates of English cathedrals) and Nicholas Yeates engraving most of the cartouches that are attributed.

Establishing a collation of the Coasting Pilot is complicated by the piecemeal way the charts and atlas were compiled, with many of the charts recorded in several early states, inserted at random into examples of the atlas. However some sequence of issue can be hazarded at by the presence of early states of individual charts. This example has three charts in their first state (2, Rye; 41, Approaches to Leith; and 45, Orkney), and three proof states (13, St. George’s Channel; 25, Carlingford Lough; and 27, Kinsale, proof before title, not recorded thus), and would seem to be an early assemblage within the first edition.

Although there are faults with the accuracy of the survey work, which was carried out very rapidly, and which was compounded by Collins’s perennial problem with collecting his promised salary and expenses, the Coasting Pilot is a remarkable surveying achievement, and a landmark in the charting of British coastal waters.

The Coasting Pilot remained in print for a hundred years, long after it had been superseded, with most of the charts reprinted without geographical revision, and minimal work done to refresh the plates, which are often found in pale impressions, a shadow of the dark impressions found in the first edition.

Indeed, this is a very good example of the Coasting Pilot, with the charts in strong impressions and is most unusual, among surviving examples of the first edition, for having been coloured at the time.

"A splendidly coloured copy, the cartouches fully coloured, for an original subscriber, the 1st Duke of Beaufort who died in 1699. The colouring is a good piece of English work, strangely reminiscent of the best John Seller colouring" (Wardington Catalogue).