Joel Gascoyne (bap. 1650—c. 1704) was an English nautical chartmaker, land cartographer and surveyor who set new standards of accuracy and pioneered large scale county maps. After achieving repute in the Thames school of chartmakers, he switched careers and became one of the leading surveyors of his day and a maker of land maps. He is best known for his maps of the colonial Province of Carolina, of the county of Cornwall, and the early 18th-century Parish of Stepney, precursor of today's East End of London. Gascoyne's distinctive style of chart and map-drawing was characterised by the use of bold and imaginative cartouches.
Origins Born into a seafaring family prominent in the port of Hull, Yorkshire, Joel Gascoyne was baptised at Holy Trinity Church on 31 October 1650. His father Thomas was a sea captain. At 18 Gascoyne was apprenticed for seven years to John Thornton, citizen and draper of London, a leading member of the Thames chartmakers.
The Thames school of chartmakers The Thames school of chartmakers was a small group who plied their trade in streets and alleys leading down to the waterfront on the north Bank of the Thames, east of the Tower of London. Active between 1590 and 1740, they were critically involved in England's maritime affairs, yet the school was not identified by modern scholars until 1959.
Joel Gascoyne, master chartmaker In 1675 Gascoyne set up in business for himself at "Ye Signe of ye Platt neare Wapping Old Stayres three doares below ye Chapell" (map), taking apprentices of his own and producing manuscript and engraved charts.
Nautical charts in Gascoyne's era - when accurate maritime clocks did not exist and mariners could not determine geographical longitude - were conceptually different from modern charts. It is explained in the article Windrose network.
Gascoyne acquired such fame that his counsel was twice sought by administrator of the Navy Samuel Pepys and his services were commissioned by the proprietors of the colony of Carolina.
Amongst Gascoyne's early works were four engraved Mediterranean charts published in John Seller's English Pilot (1677).
In 1678 Gascoyne drew on vellum for Captain John Smith a coloured portolan chart pasted on four hinged oak boards; the western half survives at the National Maritime Museum Greenwich. Coming to the attention of the Lords Proprietors of the province of Carolina, he was commissioned to engrave a map of their province (1682) from the latest surveys; their intention was to attract immigrants to the new colony.
The Mediterranean From Seller's The English Pilot (David Rumsey Map Collection).
"A chart of the Straits of Gibralter", complete with tide-tables "A chart of Corfu, Pachsu and Antipachsu with the Channel & roads between the Island of Corfu & Graetian coast" "A chart of the south part of Cephalonia, with the Islands of Zante, and the coast of Morea from C. Chiarese, to C. Sapienza" "A chart of the south coast of Morea from Venetica to C.S. Angelo with ye islands of Serigo, Serigoto and part of Candia"
America
Western Atlantic. "Made By Joel Gascoyne at ye Signe of the Platt at Waping old Stayres Ano Dom: 1678 For Capt. John Smith", showing the Eastern Coast of North America from Newfoundland to Mexico, with Central America, the West Indies and the Northern Part of South America. (National Maritime Museum.) Notice the plattboard hinge-line. "A new map of the country of Carolina with its rivers, harbors, plantations and other accomodations don from the latest surveighs and best information by order of the Lords Proprietors". (John Carter Brown Library.) North is to the right. The inset shows Charleston Harbor. "No more careful or accurate printed map of the province of Carolina as a whole was to appear until well into the eighteenth century", though Gascoyne did not survey the territory in person.
The East
Indian Ocean off Mozambique and Madagascar, from the second part of the Oriental Navigation (Bodleian Libraries) Indian Ocean, south of India, Siam and Sumatra , from the second part of the Oriental Navigation (Bodleian Libraries) "A plat of the Indian sea from Cabo Bonea Esperanca (Cape of Good Hope) to Iapan" (Gallica: Bibliothèque nationale de France: monochrome reproduction). "This rare and splendid undated chart" was made in collaboration with his old master John Thornton.
The English revolution; career change
Increasing competition from printed charts squeezed profits in the chart industry.
In October 1688 died Gascoyne's influential patron the Duke of Albemarle, governor of Jamaica, leaving Gascoyne at a disadvantage.
On 11 December, King James II fled London when popular support for his government collapsed, ushering in the Glorious Revolution.
The next day, just a few yardsHis premises at Wapping Old Stairs, three doors down from St John's Church, were adjacent to a public house (today called the Town of Ramsgate), which still exists, and where Jeffreys was lurking. from Gascoyne's shop at Wapping Old Stairs, a vengeful crowd seized Judge Jeffreys, who was trying to flee the country in disguise; Jeffreys was taken into protective custody.
In 1689 Gascoyne ceased to be an active member of the Drapers Company and took up land surveying. The pursuit of this new career sometimes gave him the collateral opportunity to make large scale maps.
Estate surveyor
In 1692 Gascoyne was engaged to map Sayes Court, Deptford, the property of diarist John Evelyn. It was a prestigious commission, for in matters of gardening Evelyn was a trendsetter for country gentlemen, and at Sayes Court he created a beautiful home and garden.
The next year the revolutionary government of King William and Queen Mary directed Gascoyne to survey the manor of Greenwich preparatory to instituting a home for retired sailors: Greenwich Hospital. Thus Gascoyne had established himself as one of the leading land-surveyors of the day.
For the next six years he was away in Cornwall (see below), but on his return he was commissioned to survey several estates, including Enfield Chase and the manor of Great Hasely.
Land surveying in Gascoyne's day The instruments and techniques available to Gascoyne were rudimentary by today's standards. Theodolite-type instruments of his time used pointers, somewhat like the sights used on firearms; sighting telescopes with crosshairs, though invented, were not in use. Hence, angle measurements were not very accurate. A standard textbook of Gascoyne's day asserted that which to a modern surveyor seemed incredibly bad. Measuring chains were not corrected for temperature. For longer distances a measuring wheel called a perambulator (see illustration) was used.
Estate surveyors were disliked by farmers and tenants, who might refuse them access, wrote Eva Taylor:
The Cornish maps Though there is no direct historical record of it, map historian William Ravenhill showed that in 1693 Gascoyne was lured to Cornwall to survey the landholdings of two powerful families: those of John Grenville, first Earl of Bath, and Charles Robartes, second Earl of Radnor. Grenville had fought for the Royalists in the English Civil War, accompanying the future Charles II into exile; the Robartes family had fought for the Parliamentarians.
The Grenvilles had been Lords of the Manors of Kilkhampton and Bideford since the 11th century. Their seat was at Stowe House, which Grenville had rebuilt on a magnificent scale. He now wanted a surveyor to measure and plot his whole estate. Grenville had political connections with the colonial proprietors of Carolina and must have been familiar with Gascoyne's map of that country.
In contrast, the Robartes had made their fortune in trade, originally by selling furze to tin miners — for fuel. They got their first peerage by paying a £10,000 bribe to the Duke of Buckingham (though they protested it was extortion). They invested their trading profits in moneylending at high rates of interest, taking mortgages as security. When the borrowers defaulted, the Robartes foreclosed and took possession. Thus their landholdings, though amounting to 40,000 acres, were scattered all over Cornwall. The Robartes' seat was Lanhydrock House. Charles Robartes had boundary disputes with other Cornish landowners, who accused him of landgrabbing. He needed to survey his many and scattered estates.
It gave Gascoyne the collateral opportunity to survey all over the county, hence to make his great one-inch map on his own account.
The one-inch map of the county of Cornwall
On March 27, 1699, Gascoyne issued a broadsheet addressed to the nobility and gentry of the county of Cornwall inviting them to subscribe to his map, which was nearly finished.
His map is on a scale of very nearly one inch to the mile, unprecedented for the era, and not equalled by the Ordnance Survey until their Kent map of 1801. Gascoyne's map measures about when mounted. Into this space he mapped a mass of detail:
In "Joel Gascoyne, a Pioneer of Large-Scale County Mapping", William Ravenhill said that Cornwall was the firstApart from the minuscule county of Rutland: . county to be mapped on a large scale. Even 50 years later, only a handful had been.
Accuracy When tested with a modern Ordnance Survey map, the accuracy of Gascoyne's interpoint distances is so consistently goodProfessor Ravenhill calculated a Pearson product moment correlation coefficient = +0.99777; perfect correlation would be = 1. as to be surprising. How he managed to achieve such field measurements with the instruments of his day has not been explained. He must, at least, have used a system of carefully surveyed triangles, a procedure that was not standard until the late 18th century.
His map includes lines of latitude and their graduations (longitude he prudentlyIn Gascoyne's day there was no way of determining latitude at sea reliably, so misplaced confidence was dangerous to mariners: . omitted ). These, however, contain a curious systematic error. While fairly accurate near the Lizard,By modern standards, the tip of the peninsula was indicated 1.5' too far south. the values tend to be overstated the further one goes north — so consistently as to suggest the map-maker was erroneously taking the length of a minute of arc to be a statute mile, instead of a geographical mile as it really is. Ravenhill suspected the fault lay with John Harris the engraver, who would have added the latitude and grid lines afterwards.
Format An innovation was the mapping of parish boundaries. Parishes were local government units, hence it was important to know the limits of their jurisdiction. Gascoyne mapped 201 parishes. Observed Professor Ravenhill: The printed gazetteer lists 2,475 placenames, mostly classified by parish, and with grid references.
Gentlemen who subscribed could have their names engraved under their family seats; 98 did so.
Production Gascoyne's map was printed from seven engraved copper plates, plus six pages of letterpress for the gazetteer of placenames. A finished map would consist of six rectangular sheets mounted on cloth.
The copper plate process was laborious. Large copper sheets were difficult to obtain.The need to fit the map into pre-existing sheets may explain why a scale of slightly less than one-inch to the mile was chosen: . After engraving a sheet, which was done in 'mirror' writing with a sharp steel rod called a burin, it was heated and very carefullyWith a leather dabber, to ensure the ink was forced into each and every engraving line. The process had to be repeated after every impression. inked, then put through a rolling press — which worked on the mangle principle — together with a damp sheet of paper at great pressure. Optionally, patrons could have the map coloured by hand, for which an additional charge was customary.
Modern re-publication