Phillip Parker King's maps: the culmination of years of patient survey work on the Mermaid and Bathurst between 1817 and 1823 by the man "justly called the greatest of the early Australian marine surveyors" (Ingleton, Charting a Continent, p. 39). This album includes a superb suite of charts of the Australian coast, notably the entire group of eight major charts (the "sheets," as they are called), all in first issue, the backbone of his work in Australia, as well as a selection of King's smaller-scale maps of specific harbours on the north-west coast of Australia. It is impossible to understand the danger nor the complexity of the task he undertook without these intricate maps to hand.

Phillip Parker King's maps: the culmination of years of patient survey work on the Mermaid and Bathurst between 1817 and 1823 by the man "justly called the greatest of the early Australian marine surveyors" (Ingleton, Charting a Continent, p. 39). This album includes a superb suite of charts of the Australian coast, notably the entire group of eight major charts (the "sheets," as they are called), all in first issue, the backbone of his work in Australia, as well as a selection of King's smaller-scale maps of specific harbours on the north-west coast of Australia. It is impossible to understand the danger nor the complexity of the task he undertook without these intricate maps to hand.

The eight main charts take in the Australian coast from the Percy Isles in the Coral Sea (off modern Mackay), up through the Great Barrier Reef and then sweeping across the top of the continent right around to King George's Sound (Albany) in the south-west, an L-shaped section taking in the entire north-west, which is also why the map in King's 1826-published Narrative has the same rather curious shape: indeed, King described his book as essentially an annotated guide to these "Charts of the Coast recently published by the Board of Admiralty."

The present album also includes an important group of smaller harbour charts, none perhaps more important than the two taking in the Buccaneer's Archipelago (around Derby) and the maze-like waters from Camden Bay to Vansittart Bay, which includes some of the expedition's most important landfalls: Roe River, Careening Bay, the Prince Regent's River and Hanover Bay.

King (1791-1856) was not only the worthy successor to Cook and Flinders, but he did more than any other voyager to complete the charting of the coast, working patiently on some of the most perilous stretches of Australia for years: he has rightly been called "a giant figure in Australian maritime history" (Marsden Hordern). Most of all, he was a supreme surveyor and chart-maker, and his maps are not only beautiful examples of the art but are of tremendous significance for Australian history. These are the charts which paved the way for much of the rush to settle far away from the main settlement at Sydney in the decade after Waterloo.

Given his relatively modest outfitting, what King achieved is nothing short of remarkable. Unlike his great rival Freycinet, whose Uranie had a team of specialist artists and scientists on board, King relied on a tiny complement to support him, notably the young hydrographer John Septimus Roe. Together they undertook more than five years of dangerous and arduous work, only returning to England in April 1823. King spent the ensuing three years at the Admiralty overseeing the complicated production of these maps and writing his wonderful book, work which led directly to his appointment as commander of the Adventure and Beagle voyage to South America in 1826.

The comparison is often made between the relevant publications of Freycinet and King. Over the course of two decades (1824-1844) Freycinet oversaw publication of the first truly extravagant French grand voyage works, running to nine thick quarto volumes of text and four large folio atlases, one each for the departments of cartography, botany, zoology, and the series of "historique" views accompanying his account. In contrast, while King did not have the means to match the scientific output of the French, he not only published his Narrative but, as is sometimes forgotten, a great run of maps.

Although King sometimes referred to his maps as an "atlas" – they were certainly substantial enough to deserve the term – no such actual book was ever published. Rather, each was only available individually from the Admiralty Hydrographic Office in what seems to have been quite modest print-runs, given the nature of the work (for one, King's private request to be personally given more than 30 copies of each was met with frank incredulity by his superiors). To compound matters, the Admiralty also developed strict rules about destroying out-of-date copies, further reducing the number of possible survivors. Hence it is difficult to find even single examples of King's first-issue maps, let alone large collections. In almost forty years we have handled only a single example of one first-issue map from the Mermaid and Bathurst voyages, let alone a substantial group.

A full listing of the charts is available on request but in short it includes: the entire run of eight main large-format charts (Sheets "1" through "VIII" – the numbering system changed mid-series), all as originally issued between November 1824 and August 1825; a second example of Sheet VI from this series in the updated Lort Stokes issue (1838), of particular importance for the major additions made during the Beagle voyage to King Sound and Buccaneer Archipelago; and five (of seven) of the individual harbour charts specifically relating to the north-west (not present are King's chart of Dampier's Archipelago and a seventh related map often included in the group, Roe's chart of St. Asaph Bay and Port Cockburn on Melville Island (a chart which was actually made by him during his time serving on the Tamar voyage of 1824 but notes from which he sent to his former commander). The only other Hydrographic office charts relating to King's voyage were harbour plans from the east coast, not present in the current album: King's chart of Macquarie Harbour (Tasmania) and Roe's maps of Port Jackson, Port Stephens, and the Endeavour River.

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The group has an intriguing provenance, beginning with their sale by the famous London mapmaker James Wyld in the early nineteenth-century, through to their ownership by Commander Andrew David in the later twentieth-century (perhaps the greatest modern historian of English cartography, most famous for his magisterial work on Cook's voyages). As Commander David surely recognised when he had the collection personally bound for his library, these were an enduring monument to King's commitment to the mapping of the Australian continent.

Individual map listing with condition notes

The numbers at end give the reference numbers for entries in Tooley's The Mapping of Australia:

1. Chart of part of the N.E. Coast of Australia …Sheet 1. 10 Nov. 1824 Percy Islands to Halifax Bay 664 x 935 mm very clean, with minimal dust-soiling and marking at extremities of margins. T 801

2. Chart of part of the N.E. Coast of Australia …Sheet 2. 17 Nov. 1824 Halifax Bay to Claremont Isles 935 x 664 mm very clean, with minimal dust-soiling and marking at extremities of margins. T 802

3. Chart of part of the N.E. Coast of Australia …Sheet 3. 17 Nov. 1824 Cape Sidmouth to Torres Strait 935 x 664 mm very clean, with minimal dust-soiling and marking at extremities of margins. T 803

4. Chart of the North Coast of Australia …Sheet IV. 16 May 1825 Gulf of Carpentaria to Cape Bay 664 x 935 mm printed image very clean, lower left-hand margin lightly creased, extremities with dust-soiling. T 804

5. Chart of part of the N.W. Coast of Australia …Sheet V. 4 June 1825 Cape Ford to Lacepede Isles 664 x 935 mm very clean, with minimal dust-soiling and marking at extremities of margins. T 805

6. Chart of part of the N.W. Coast of Australia …Sheet VI. 10 June 1825 Buccaniers Archipelago to Cape Lambert 664 x 935 mm very clean, with minimal dust-soiling and marking at extremities of margins. T 806

(6a. Chart of part of the N.W. Coast of Australia …Sheet VI. With additions by M. de Freycinet 1810 and Comrs. Wickham and Stokes 1838. 10 June 1825 Corrected to 1838. Buccaniers Archipelago to Cape Lambert 602 x 915 mm loosely inserted, very good condition, with some very light even toning. T 806)

7. Chart of part of the N.W. and West Coasts of Australia …Sheet VII. 8 July 1825 Forestiers Islands to C. Cavier 664 x 935 mm printed image very clean, top margin lightly cockled with dust-soiling. T 807

8. Chart of West Coast of Australia …Sheet VIII. 1 August 1825 Nuyts Land to De Witts Land 935 x 664 mm printed image very clean, lower margins with dust-soiling. T 808

9. A plan of Admiralty Gulf and Vansittart Bay with North West Coast of Australia …30 Sept. 1826 305 x 375 mm, mounted printed image very clean, mounting sheet slightly cockled. T 810

10. The North West Coast of Australia from Camden Bay to Vansittart Bay …24 Nov. 1826 662 x 467 mm printed image very clean, top margin lightly cockled with dust-soiling. T 816

11. A plan of the Buccaniers Archipelago and part of the North West Coast of Australia …18 Oct 1826 662 x 467 mm printed image very clean, lower margin little soiled. T 811

12. A Plan of Cambridge Gulf on the North West Coast of Australia …12 Oct. 1826 (The date given by Tooley is 10th Oct 1826) 317 x 222 mm, mounted printed image very clean, mounting sheet cockled and with stamp of Devon and Exeter Institution on verso. T 812

13. A plan of Exmouth Gulf on the North West Coast of Australia …6 Oct. 1826 303 x 420 mm, mounted printed image very clean, mounting sheet cockled. T 814

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