Seller’s Draught of Cape Esperanca: Deliberate, Dutch Disinformation?
15 January 2016By Roger Stewart
Publication History
In 1675, John Seller published A Draught of Bona Esperanca in Atlas Maritimus and in the third book of The English Pilot; the map probably was engraved by John Oliver. Seller got into financial difficulties and the various publishers who took over his business or plates continued to publish the Pilot until 1794. They used either a similar map drawn by John Thornton (Figure 2) or the second state of Seller’s map. [1] This series of maps is a landmark in the history of the mapping of the Cape of Good Hope and the maps are very scarce.
In 1703, John Thornton, a member of the “Thames School” of cartographers, redrew Seller’s map and cartouche on a new plate for his edition of Book III of the English Pilot (Figure 2). He omitted the misshapen Saldanha Bay; changed the name of Saldinia Bay to Table Bay; he inserted the toponym Coney Island (now Dassen Island - the coney, i.e ‘rabbit’, found on the island being the Cape Hyrax, Procavia capensis, known in Dutch and Afrikaans as the Dassie); he also added letters next to selected features of the (see below) and added a key (A-P) – the table is a feature of the Thornton map, not the Seller map;
In 1711 John’s son, Samuel, published his own edition of the English Pilot; he inserted his name and deleted John’s (third state of the Thornton map) - John died in 1708;
In 1734, ‘Bay of Falzo’ (False Bay) was added, but the Thornton imprint was deleted by Mount and Page (third state of the Thornton map, Lot #285);
Later, possibly 1761, William Mount and Thomas Page returned to the original (1675) plate; they deleted Seller’s imprint (second state of the Seller plate, now almost a century old).
Figure 2 Thornton map (1st state) and key (Lot #285, which features a high resolution image)
This very inaccurate map, with its grossly distorted coastline, was based on one of two Dutch manuscript maps: Kaart van Saldanhabaai tot de Falsbaai by Caspar van Weede in ca.1664 (4.VEL 168 at the Dutch National Archives), and a similar manuscript map with the same title by Johannes Vingboons (4.VELH 168 at the Dutch National Archives); Vingboons’ map was also engraved and printed.
Figure 3 Vingboon’s map (69cm x 47.5cm)
The Vingboons map corresponds to the map that appeared in François Valentijn’s Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien ( V, part 2, p.4) – Valentijn had close ties with the VOC. Vingboons also worked for Joan Blaeu, from whom Johan Seller acquired numerous plates. In 1654 Blaeu drew a map very similar to the Vingboon’s map
http://www.atlasofmutualheritage.nl/detail.aspx?page=dafb&lang=en&id=2679
http://www.atlasofmutualheritage.nl/en/Chart-Saldanha-Bay-Table-Bay-Hout-Bay-False-Bay.5086
Historical significance and paradox
This inaccurate shape of the Cape coastline dominated published maps until d’Après de Mannevillette, published Plan du Cap de Bonne Esperance et de ses Environs in 1775 in the 2nd edition of Neptune Oriental. Did the VOC (Dutch East India Company) allow Seller to copy their map or acquire the plates in order to deceive the English? Probably not: the plates used by Seller were prepared by Johannes Janssonius in 1620 for a counterfeit edition of Blaeu’s Het Licht der Zeevaert; they were then acquired ca. 1650 by Jan van Loon for his sea atlas Le Nouveau Flambeau de la Mer.[2] Seller acquired the plates in the 1660s – it is likely this was a straight commercial transaction and there was no nefarious intent of the VOC. Nevertheless, the map is historically very interesting.
The map is the first to name Green Point, which is now the site of the controversial Football World Cup stadium.
King James I of England had decided not to take possession of the Cape, when Andrew Shillinge and Humphrey Fitzhenry, ships’ Captains in the English East India Company, offered it to him after they had laid claim to the land in 1620. Consequently, on the sixth of April 1652 the Dutch peacefully settled on the shore of Saldinia (i.e. Table) Bay, where they soon erected a fort depicted in the vignette above the map.
The engraving of the old fort (top right, above James Mount / Lyon’s Rump, and labelled B on the prospect) was copied by cartographers such as Mallet, Ogilby and Dapper. The prospect also has a chronological impossibility. In 1679, the fort was demolished and replaced by The Castle, which is a short distance east of the old fort and misidentified by Thornton as A, a fortification much further east on the slightly modified prospect – the structure labelled A (also on Seller’s prospect but not labelled), also with a Dutch flag; it probably was the small fortification and portal known as Keert de Koe (demolished in the 1670s); the nearby Fort de Knokke, a star-shaped fort was erected in only 1744 (after Thornton engraved it) and demolished in 1926 to make way for the Woodstock railway station.
[2] Rodney W Shirley at http://www.artwis.com/articles/the-maritime-maps-and-atlases-of-seller-thornton-and-mount-page/
