Lot 41: NORMAN, JOHN. 1748-1817. A Chart of South Carolina and Georgia. [Boston: W. Norman, 1801.]

NORMAN, JOHN. 1748-1817.
A Chart of South Carolina and Georgia. [Boston: W. Norman, 1801.]
Engraved sea chart, 522 x 420 mm. With an inset map of Charleston Harbour. Marginal lacunae skillfully filled in, some general fingersoiling.
Provenance: early ink annotation in the center coastline marking "Black Beard Point."

This is the second state of three, from Norman's American Pilot of 1801. Wheat and Brun locate just 10 complete copies of the first five editions of the American Pilot, making it one of the rarest of all American atlases. Demand for American maritime atlases emerged following the Treaty of Paris in 1783, and Norman's was only the second to be published in this country, following Matthew Clark's A Complete Set of Charts of the Coast of America (1790). An early hand has here recorded the fact that "Sappola Inlet," Georgia, was one of the favorite hideouts of the pirate Blackbeard (d.1718).