A Large Chart Defcribeing ye Streights of Malacca and Singapore.

Rare navigational chart by John Thornton of the sea route through the Malacca and Singapore Straits, issued in the Third Book of The English Pilot, which was conceived by John Seller as a sea atlas of the world divided into four volumes and sold separately. In 1672, Seller was granted a remarkable royal privilege which gave him copyright protection for 30 years and restricted the importation of any books that might compete with the Pilot. Seller intended the Third Book to be the first complete seaman&#8217s guide of Indian and far eastern waters to be published in England. With its detailed sea charts, extensive sailing directions and coastal profiles, it became the principal aid to English navigation in Asia. The Third Book was to have an extraordinarily complicated publishing history with ten editions issued between 1703 and 1761. The map was based on Dutch portolan charts which John Thornton had acquired sometime in the late sixteenth century. In 1703, the Canterbury, an English East Indiaman, was captured by two French ships off Malacca and they found sixteen navigational charts signed by Thornton and dated 1699-1701. The charts contained detailed information that was previously thought only to have been known to the Dutch. Thornton was likely able to acquire these Dutch charts for two reasons. Firstly, his position as Hydrographer of the English East India Company gave him access to the navigational information acquired by that company and secondly, because at the time, William III was not only King of England but Stadtholder of the United Provinces which led to closer cooperation between the two countries. After John Thornton&#8217s death in early 1708, his son Samuel issued an edition of the Third Book in 1711 and following his death in 1715, the Third Book became the property of Mount and Page who issued eight editions between 1716 and 1761. Of the thirty-five charts in the 1703 edition, twenty-seven were reprinted from the original plates, with occasional minor alterations in all editions. All of Thornton&#8217s charts are rare due to their use on board ships. Interestingly, the last edition of the Third Book was carried by James Cook on his first voyage of discovery and after using the chart of Java, he wrote &#8216a very good Chart in which everything seems to be very accurately delineated&#8217. The states of this map published subsequent to the 1703 edition of the Third Book by Mount and Page are: State 3 in 1734 and State 4 in 1755 of which the last edition was published in 1761. From Thornton&#8217s The English Pilot. The Third Book Defcribing the Sea-Coafts, Capes, Headlands, Streights, Soundings, Sands, Shoals, Rocks, and Dangers, published by Mount and Page. References: Burden p.361, Moreland p.190, Thornton, p.xv 31, ill.pp.72-73.