Dec 08, 2016 - Sale 2434

Sale 2434 - Lot 47

Price Realized: $ 1,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(BANGKA ISLAND.) [Ross, Daniel.] Chart of the passage to the East of Banka laid down from Observations in the Ship Vansittart, by Capt. Lestock Wilson. Manuscript chart of the Gaspar Strait on paper mounted to linen, edged with silk. 27x23 1/4 inches overall, some soiling and small losses to selvage, later navigational annotations in pencil. Np, circa 1817
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Additional Details

Rare chart of the Gaspar Strait on the east side of Bangka, a perilous passage to the China Sea in the early nineteenth century. The map is centered on Po. Liat or Middle Island (Pulau Liat), directing the safest route to Gaspar Island to the north. Several contemporary ship wrecks are noted, including the Fingal (an American ship owned by the Astor Family, which sunk on February 7, 1816), the Portuguese ship Amelia (January 1816) and the Vansittart (sunk October 9, 1789). The specific identification of the sunken ships suggests that the chart was in use in the area sometime between February 1816 and February 1817, due to the fact that it does not include mention of the wreck of the Alceste (Feburary 1817) which would have been impossible to miss, as noted in the description of the recently surveyed wreckage of the Alceste in the August 1, 1819 New Monthly Magazine (Volume 12, page 94). "The Alceste's keel is lying about ten yards from that of the Portugueze ship Amelia, which was wrecked here in 1816."