Old Map of the English Channel in 1729 by Price - London, Bristol, Cherbourg

Charles Price, a London bookseller and publisher who belonged to both the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin, produced this chart of the English Channel in 1729. It was engraved for an ambitious venture titled Atlas Maritimus, or, A New Sea Atlas, conceived to address what Price himself called the great want of a good sett of sea charts available to English mariners of the day. The project stalled abruptly when Price was committed to debtor's prison in 1731, and the finished atlas survives today only in a small number of copies, with no known example held in any British institution, which makes a complete sheet such as this a genuine survivor of an unfinished undertaking. The chart itself carries the full title A Chart of the British Channel, from the Land's End to the North Foreland: With the Soundings, Sands, Rocks, &c. Exactly laid down, and the Courses and Distances from Place to Place, According to the Observations of the Most Experienced Pilots, and it is bordered by a dedication to Samuel Masham, 1st Baron Masham, flanked by two carved cherubs, a decorative flourish typical of naval charts made as much for a patron's wall as for a working chart room.

The chart's coverage runs the length of England's south coast, from Land's End in the west to the North Foreland and Harwich in the east, with Pembrokeshire marking its furthest reach to the northwest. Only coastal towns and notable landmarks are named, among them London, Southwark and Woolwich along the tidal Thames, and further along the coastline Bristol, Southampton, Portsmouth, Brighton, Plymouth, Exeter, Weymouth, Dorchester, Bridport and Lyme Regis. Soundings, sandbanks and rocks are marked in close detail for the pilots who relied on the chart, with particular attention paid to hazards such as the Goodwin Sands and the waters around the Isle of Wight and the Scilly Isles. The Eddystone Lighthouse, standing guard over the approach to Plymouth, appears as one of the chart's notable maritime markers. Across the water, the chart extends to the northern coast of France, taking in Normandy, Brittany and parts of Picardy, with the ports of Cherbourg and Saint-Malo both named along that shore, though the coverage stops just short of Calais.

A chart like this suits anyone drawn to Britain's seafaring past - a retired merchant navy officer, a Trinity House pilot, or a collector already building a run of early eighteenth-century sea charts who wants a genuine 1729 example to anchor the set. It would make a fitting leaving gift for someone posted to a Channel port, a considered present for a family with generations of connection to Plymouth, Portsmouth or the Dorset coast, or simply a thoughtful gift for the sailing enthusiast in your life who already owns a shelf of pilot books and maritime histories. Because the chart was drawn up for pilots working these very waters, it carries a nice double meaning as a gift for anyone who has crossed the Channel by boat, whether on a cross-Channel ferry or their own yacht. It is available unframed and in a full range of sizes, so it can be sized to suit a study, a hallway, a boardroom or a boat-shed wall.