Carte Reduite de l' OCEAN OCCIDENTAL Contenant Partie des Costes d' Europe et d' Afrique... M DCCLXVI.

An exceptional rare and fabulous maritime atlas, a masterpiece by the greatest French hydrographer of the 18th century, with maps of all the coastlines known at the time.
Bound with the coat of arms of the King of France, the atlas was taken by the English aboard the frigate 'La Nymphe', off the coasts of Ushant August 10, 1780, during one of the naval battles of the 'American War of Independence', which took place on European waters.
In the context of the war at the end of the 18th century, and of the rivalry between the French and British Navy, maritime atlases, were strategic tools, and this “Hydrographie Françoise” more so than any other, because its purpose was to provide the best maritime charts for the French ships that were fighting on the American side against the British. (The handwritten captions throughout most of the atlas are prices for individual maps and all include the same mention: “for sailors”).

These atlases were not the kind to be kept in a library, but precious tools, based on the observations of the travellers and continuously improved upon, as reflect in the present copy. It was bound with the engraved title page of the edition of 1737-1765, but the index includes maps printed after 1765 (until 1772), and the copy was augmented by six maps that do not appear in the index (until 1776), as well as 14 pages of text from the Versailles edition of 1773. The later maps are signed by Verdun de la Crenne and were done during the campaigns of the Flore (1771-1772) and of the Isis led by Fleurieu in 1768-1769.
The captions explain that the maps were created using the latest technology of the day that could measure longitude (maritime clocks).