INDEX

WHO DID DISCOVER AUSTRALIA?

COLONIAL EXPLORATION


The Discovery of Australia: Ancient and historic maps relating to Australia


18th Century

By the turn of the 18th century, the Dutch ships of the VOC had made so many encounters with Tasmania, the west and northern coasts of Australia, its descreption and shape was well known and was being accurately portrayed on maps. Officially, the eastern seaboard had yet to be navigated and charted, but Pierre Mortier's the world map of 1700 portrays the east coast so accurately, it is no wonder that Cook whas been accused of "re-discovering" it in 1770.

PIERRE MORTIER 1661-1711
Pieter and David Mortier were brothers of French extraction whose publishing interests covered a wide field embracing French and English works as well as Dutch. Pieter was probably trained in the bookselling business in Paris and David spent many years in England; in fact, he acquired British nationality and died there in about 1728. After Pieter's death, his widow continued the business until their son, Cornelis, was able to take over; then, in 1721, Cornelis entered into partnership with his brother-in-law, Johannes Covens, to form the famous name Covens and Mortier, a firm which continued in being with slight change of name until the middle of the nineteenth century. For details of their publications see under Covens and Mortier.

HEINRICH SCHERER

  • Beatam Medicient Omens Generatione [Map of the World, centered on the Pacific Ocean]
    Map Maker: Heinrich Scherer, Munich,1703
    Richly engraved decorative map of the world, centered on the Pacific and showing an incomplete Australia and New Guinea, leaving open the prospect that the two are connected. California is showns as an Island with a very distinctive Northwest Passage. Japan is shown in the projection unique to Scherer. The treatment of SE Asia and the Indian subcontinent is based upon contemporary Jesuit reports. The reports of the early jesuits and French is in evidence in the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley regions. Two large sailing ships, four representations of the Continents as women and two large decorative cartouches.

PIETER VAN DER AA 1659-1733
Records show that van der Aa, born in Leyden in 1659, made an early start in life by being apprenticed to a bookseller at the age of nine and starting on his own in business as a book publisher by the time he was twenty-three. During the following fifty years he published an enormous amount of material including atlases and illustrated works in every shape and size, two of them consisting of no less than 27 and 28 volumes containing over 3,000 maps and plates. Most of his maps were not of the first quality and were certainly not original but they are often very decorative and are collected on that account.

 

JOHANN BAPTIST HOMANN (1663-1724)
Johann Baptist Homann was born in Nuremberg in Southern Germany where he spent his whole life. In 1702 Johann Baptist Homann founded a map publishing company, which is aknowledged to be one of the most important German map publishing firm of the eighteenth century. Homann's company successfully competed with leading European mapmakers.
At the end of 2000 during inventory work at the Austrian State Archives in Vienna, a document concerning the appointment of Johann Baptist Homann (1663&endash;1724) as the imperial geographer was found. Included in the document was the corresponding petition by Homann to Emperor Charles VI.
After Johann Baptist Homann's death company was continued by his son, Christoph (1703-30) and other heirs under the name Homann's Erben (Homann's Heirs).

EMANUEL BOWEN

JAMES BURNEY
The brother of diarist and novelist Fanny Burney, James Burney was a captain in the Royal Navy and his various written work displays "a rare union of nautical science and literary research". Burney, who had sailed with James Cook as lieutenant during the last two voyages. He received encouragement from Sir Joseph Banks and enjoyed free access both to Banks's magnificent library of books and manuscripts, and to Dalrymple's collection of scarcer Spanish books. Whenever possible, he relied on manuscript accounts, generally comparing them with printed narratives for purposes of style.
In 1803 he published "A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean",

  • Old Map of Adventure Bay: "Plan De la Baye De L'Aventure sur la Terre Van-Diemen." by James Burney. Published in Paris, 1784. Chart of Adventure Bay on Bruny Island. While anchoring in the Bay to restock supplies of food, water & wood over a 2 day sojourn. James Burney, 1st Lieutenant on the Discovery sketched the Bay, noting depth soundings, a lake, & elevations plus the contours of the beach as seen from the ship. The map was engraved by Robert Benard from Burney's sketches for the French edition of Cook's Voyages, this depiction was taken from a MSS in the Public Records Office.

THOMAS JEFFREYS 1710-1771
Thomas Jefferys was one of the more prominent commercial cartographers in London during the middle of the eighteenth century. Although he was responsible for a wide variety of prints and for maps of much of the world, he is particularly remembered for his publication of many maps of North America. Jefferys did not himself compile this map. Indeed, he was not a geographer per se. He was an engraver and publisher of maps which other people had compiled and drawn. In the ethically flexible map trade of the eighteenth century, he made a significant name for himself. He was appointed Geographer to Frederick Prince of Wales in 1748 & then to King George III. The dramatic rise in map production and demand occasioned by the Seven Years War (1756-63) - the Anglo-French struggle fought in Europe, North America (as the French and Indian War), South Asia, and across the oceans in between - gave Jefferys's business a massive boost.

  • A New Map of the World. From The Latest Discoveries, Lumsden. 1785
    World in hemispheres from Thomas Salmon's "Antiquarian Atlas: Geographical and Historical Grammar". The Maps in this Atlas are by Thomas Jefferys (aka Gefferys). Rococco flowers & branches title cartouche, also scene of books, compass, charts and globe. Australia is New Holland with Van Diemen's land attached. Strange 'V' shaped Terra Australis" below Africa. "N. Zeland" in "South Sea" has only one coast - not even an island yet! East Coast of N. Amer. is "British Empire" while Miss. valley is "Florida".

FRANZ JOHANN JOSEPH VON REILLY 1766-1820
Reilly was a Viennese art dealer, map maker and publisher and is noted for several published atlases.

  • Oceania (Karte von der Inselwekt, Polynesien oder dem Funfetn Welttheile), 1795
    Noteworthy for its incorrect naming of Australia by a name believed at the time to be its Aboriginal name. The chart carefully plots the routes of numerous Pacific explorers from Magellan in 1520 through Capt. William Bligh in 1789. Tasmania is still shown as be part of Australia, though a note qualifies that the southern coast of Australia is not yet known. Just to the left of the title cartouche is an early appearance of the Hawaiian Islands.

PIGOBERT BONNE
Bonne was the Royal Hydrographer to the King in Paris and after Lieut. James Cook returned from his 1st voyage to the Pacific bringing back surveys of Australia's eastern coast, Bonne reproduced some of his surveys to include them in his Atlas de L'Encyclopédie Méthodique in 1787.

1787 map of the South Pacific and eastern section of Australia
The published irst map of the area to show their coastlines after having been mapped and named by Cook.

"A Chart Showing the Tract of Capt. Cook's Last Voyage." New York. 1799
Lieut. James Cook's last voyage to the Pacific took place between 1776-1780, although Cook was killed by the natives in Hawaii in 1779 before the end of the voyage. This attractive map published in New York in 1799, depicts the tracks of Cook's ships sailing past South Australia to New Zealand from whence they sailed to Tonga and Tahiti and then to Hawaii before continuing to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. They stopped at Nootka Sound (Vancouver Island) , and followed the Alaskan coast to Prince William Sound, passing through the Behring Strait to the Arctic Circle . After Cook's death, his Captains took the ships back to Alaska, before returning to England via China, the East Indies and the Cape of Good Hope in 1780. This colorful chart was engraved for Payne's "A New Complete System of Universal Geography" published by J (I) Low in New York in 1799.