Elephant Folio (628 by 385mm). Twelve double-page engraved charts, pasted back to back. Contemporary vellum-backed blue paper wrappers pasted to the reverse of the outer charts. The cover and first map with substantial loss; the rear cover and map of the Indian Ocean with a hole. Some light staining, more so for the chart of the West Indies, pencil annotations, but a reasonable example of the type. Housed in a quarter morocco, clamshell box. [Amsterdam, Gerard van Keulen, 1734.
This series of rare sea-charts, engraved on a larger-than-atlas format, was clearly assembled to order for shipboard use, evidence of which is found in dated tracks on three of the maps.
The charts cover the waters from the southern North Sea, through the Channel, the Western approaches to Europe with the Azores and Canary Islands, the Bay of Biscay, the coast of Portugal, the North Atlantic, West Indies, the Caribe Islands with the South American mainland, Hispaniola, the Bahamas with southern Florida and Cuba, the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean (this latter trimmed at the top, as often, to fit the format, removing the elaborate vignette).
Such compilations are rare.
