British Coastal Surveys PORTFOLIO Gallery

Early Coastal Survey Map of the Isle of Portsea and Portsmouth Harbour 1716

This is a reproduction in colour of the early chart of the Island of Portsea and Portsmouth Harbour. In January 1715/6, in the last stages of the Jacobite emergency, Talbot Edwards, Second Engineer of England and Wales, was appointed to carry out a complete survey and report of the fortifications, barracks and storehouses in the Portsmouth divi-sion and during the year he produced maps of the old town, the Dockyard and the harbour as well as the present map of Portsea Island as a whole. Although unsigned the map was probably surveyed under the personal direction of Edwards and was drawn by Clement Lempriere. Lempriere's foreOEname was not known for certain when Maps of PortsOEmouth went to press, but it has now been conclusively established from an advertisement for a map of Jersey in The Public Advertiser, 5 May 1755. This map may be regarded on the whole as a very accurate delineation of the Island in 1716, although it is necessary to be a little cautious about the reliaOEbility of the field pattern which seems rather too regular, suggesting that a conventionalised element has been introduced. Certainly the map was regarded as accurate by the Drawing Room of the Board of Ordnance at the Tower of London, who used it as the base-map of the Island for about 50 years; even when widespread new surveys were carOEried out from 1743 these were merely incorporated into Edwards's old design