Item #JLR0735 A series of charts, with sailing directions, embracing surveys of the Farallones, entrance to the Bay of San Francisco, Bays of San Francisco and San Pablo, Straits of Carquines and Suisun Bay, confluence and deltic branches of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, and the Sacramento River (with the Middle Fork) to the American River, including the cities of Sacramento and Boston, State of California. Cadwalader Ringgold.
A series of charts, with sailing directions, embracing surveys of the Farallones, entrance to the Bay of San Francisco, Bays of San Francisco and San Pablo, Straits of Carquines and Suisun Bay, confluence and deltic branches of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, and the Sacramento River (with the Middle Fork) to the American River, including the cities of Sacramento and Boston, State of California
A series of charts, with sailing directions, embracing surveys of the Farallones, entrance to the Bay of San Francisco, Bays of San Francisco and San Pablo, Straits of Carquines and Suisun Bay, confluence and deltic branches of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, and the Sacramento River (with the Middle Fork) to the American River, including the cities of Sacramento and Boston, State of California
A series of charts, with sailing directions, embracing surveys of the Farallones, entrance to the Bay of San Francisco, Bays of San Francisco and San Pablo, Straits of Carquines and Suisun Bay, confluence and deltic branches of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, and the Sacramento River (with the Middle Fork) to the American River, including the cities of Sacramento and Boston, State of California
A series of charts, with sailing directions, embracing surveys of the Farallones, entrance to the Bay of San Francisco, Bays of San Francisco and San Pablo, Straits of Carquines and Suisun Bay, confluence and deltic branches of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, and the Sacramento River (with the Middle Fork) to the American River, including the cities of Sacramento and Boston, State of California
A series of charts, with sailing directions, embracing surveys of the Farallones, entrance to the Bay of San Francisco, Bays of San Francisco and San Pablo, Straits of Carquines and Suisun Bay, confluence and deltic branches of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, and the Sacramento River (with the Middle Fork) to the American River, including the cities of Sacramento and Boston, State of California
A series of charts, with sailing directions, embracing surveys of the Farallones, entrance to the Bay of San Francisco, Bays of San Francisco and San Pablo, Straits of Carquines and Suisun Bay, confluence and deltic branches of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, and the Sacramento River (with the Middle Fork) to the American River, including the cities of Sacramento and Boston, State of California
A series of charts, with sailing directions, embracing surveys of the Farallones, entrance to the Bay of San Francisco, Bays of San Francisco and San Pablo, Straits of Carquines and Suisun Bay, confluence and deltic branches of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, and the Sacramento River (with the Middle Fork) to the American River, including the cities of Sacramento and Boston, State of California

A series of charts, with sailing directions, embracing surveys of the Farallones, entrance to the Bay of San Francisco, Bays of San Francisco and San Pablo, Straits of Carquines and Suisun Bay, confluence and deltic branches of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, and the Sacramento River (with the Middle Fork) to the American River, including the cities of Sacramento and Boston, State of California

THE PHILLIPPS–HECKROTTE COPY 

 

Washington: printed by Jno. T. Towers, 1852. Fourth edition, with additions.

Quarto (11” x 7 3/8”, 279mm x 189mm): binder’s blank, 14 2-64 [$1 signed]. 24 leaves, pp. 1-5 (title, copyright, dedication, blank, introduction) 6-48. With 8 tinted lithographed plates and 6 folding lithographed charts.

Bound in the publisher’s green blocked cloth, the central vignette gilt (“MEMOIR AND MAPS OF CALIFORNIA”).

Sunned at the edges, with some splits at the head and tail and bumps to the corners. A little soiling to the lower edge of the front board. Foxed throughout, largely mildly. Stub tears, splits and irregular folding to the maps, as usual. Presented in a modern slip-case with chemise.


Cadwalader Ringgold (1802–1867) was a naval officer, attaining in 1849 the rank of Commander, from a distinguished Maryland family. It was as a lowly lieutenant in Wilkes’s Exploring Expedition (1838–1842), however, that Ringgold had the opportunity to survey the West Coast. He returned in 1849 — “when the tide of emigration was beyond all example, and when the magnificent expanse of waters groaned under the weight of commerce” (p. 5) — and through 1850 continued to survey California, which following the gold rush had become a lodestone of Manifest Destiny. The Series of charts is a rutter — a handbook for sailors, with visual cues (marks) for navigating difficult passages — which will have been particularly attractive to those intending to ply the Pacific waters. The first edition of the work, published 1851, was unillustrated, and was followed in the same year by an illustrated issue (and a second unillustrated edition). Demand continued strongly enough to merit four further editions in 1852, of which this is the third (i.e., the fourth illustrated edition).

Much ink has been spilled on the number of plates present (Howes, Kurutz and Sabin calling for 8 plates). In the first (illustrated) edition, there are 11 plates. Streeter calls the plates of the first edition the best, but Heckrotte (regarding the present example) notes that “based on a comparison, there is no basis for that statement.” It should be made explicit that despite the 8 plates in the present example — the number in both fourth editions Arader has handled — nothing from the first edition is missing, but they have instead simply been doubled up (viz. 12 views on 8 plates rather than 12 (the two views beginning “Mark for Invincible Buoy…” are also on one plate in the first edition) on 11). The order is somewhat variable; in the present example the plates are as follows:

  1. “View of San Francisco from Yerba Buena Island” (as frontispiece)
  2. “Entrance to San Francisco”
  3. “View of Sacramento City from the west bank”
  4. “View of Benicia from the Anchorage East of Seal Island.”
  5. “View of Monte Diablo from Garnet Island.” and “View from the Forks of the Sacramento.”
  6. “Mark for Invincible Buoy Point Smith, east end of Angel I. on with Signal Hill” and “Mark for Invincible Buoy North extreme of Marin I.s on with Clump of trees north of San Rafael”
  7. “Mark for Tongue Shoal” and “Entrance to the Sacramento River”
  8. “Marks for entering the Sacramento and its Forks at their confluence” and “Mark for entering the second section of the Middle Fork of the Sacramento River”

A small graphite note to the recto of the front paste-down notes that the book was lot 961 at the Parke-Bernet sale of 28 October 1969: the “Biblioteca Phillippica.” This was the fifth part (new series) of the sale of the library of no less than Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872), the greatest collector of manuscripts of the XIXc, and one of the great bibliophiles of all time. Although his collection is best known for its documents on vellum, he amassed over 40,000 printed volumes, such that it took more than a century to disburse his collection (which he initially offered to the United Kingdom; Disraeli declined). The present work is perhaps a surprise member of his library, but it demonstrates both the breadth of his curiosity as well as the distinction of our example.

Perhaps it was Warren Heckrotte (1922–2019) who purchased the volume at the Phillipps sale (likelier John Howell bought it for him). Heckrotte was a nuclear physicist, based at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California, who advised five administrations, from Kennedy to Clinton, on disarmament. All the while he scoured the bookshops of Britain, Europe and America to amass a substantial library of cartography in particular. The Phillipps provenance of the volume, and Heckrotte’s own focus on Californiana, make the present example a nonpareil specimen. It was lot 57 in the second part of his PBA sale (3 December 2015), the catalogue of which, remarkably, omits the Phillipps provenance.

Howes R 303; Kurutz 536e; Peters II pp. 112-113; Sabin 71425; Streeter Sale 2679 (first edn.)

Item #JLR0735

Price: $4,750

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