National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 76 | August 2005


Map Acquisition
British Pre-Cook World Map
with an East Coast of Australia, 1740

John Bowles (1701–1779)
A Map of the World or Terrestrial Globe in Two Planispheres: Laid Down from the Observations of the Royal Academy of Sciences... 1740
col., ill. map, mounted on linen; 97.9 x 118.8 cm
Maps Collections,nla.map-rm3874

[CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

A previously unknown and unrecorded world wall map, published in 1740 and showing an east coast of Australia, has recently been acquired by the Library’s Map Collection. The map is viewable online through the Library’s catalogue, at <www.nla.gov.au/nla.map-rm3874>

Titled A Map of the World or Terrestrial Globe in Two Planispheres, Laid Down from the Observations of the Royal Academy of Sciences… the map, published by John Bowles, features twin hemispheres of the world which are also surrounded by spheres and  illustrations. Australia is depicted as New Holland and some thirty 30 years before Cook’s survey is joined on the eastern side to both Tasmania and New Guinea, taking in the New Hebrides. Lavishly decorated vignettes of text explaining the principles of geography and cartography embrace the hemispheres at top and bottom, while short bursts of text within the map provide intriguing commentary on various lands around the globe.

John Bowles was a member of a London-based based family of map publishers and sellers  who were active for 170 years.  Established in his own right in 1723 he had previously been apprenticed to his elder brother Thomas II and traded from a variety of addresses in and around Cheapside and Cornhill in London. His son, Carrington  Bowles, later joined him in the trade.  Bowles was active in producing maps not only under his own name but also for other well established map publishers such as Emanuel Bowen, Thomas Kitchin and Herman Moll.

The depiction of an east coast of Australia, 30 years before James Cook’s survey, is the earliest known recording of the coast on a map sheet by a British cartographer, eclipsed only by a similar depiction by the British globemaker, Richard Cushee, nine years earlier.  Unlike Cushee, Bowles’ depiction of the east coast closely resembles that appearing on the French cartographer Jean Baptiste Nolin’s great world map, published in 1700, which is also in the Library’s collection. Twelve years after Bowles a French cartographer, Gilles Robert de Vaugondy, issued a map of Australia with an east coast which was included in Cook’s reference library on board the Endeavour. The interchange of cartographic knowledge between the French and British, both real and imagined, no doubt contributed to the urgency and secrecy behind Cook’s real mission in the South Pacific.

—MAURA O’CONNOR, Map Curator, maps@nla.gov.au

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