A new and accurate map of Bermudas or Sommer’s Islands

Emanuel Bowen was a prominent British engraver and mapmaker of the mid-eighteenth century, recognised for his atlases, county maps, and geographic publications. He was appointed Geographer to both King George II of England and King Louis XV of France, Bowen enjoyed wide professional acclaim during his lifetime. Although professionally successful, Bowen later died in poverty, a reminder of the uncertain economics of commercial mapmaking in eighteenth-century London. His cartographic business was continued by his son, Thomas Bowen.

This engraved map presents Bermuda as a long chain of islands, reefs, sounds, harbours, and navigational hazards in the western Atlantic. The map is oriented with northeast at the top, allowing the archipelago to extend vertically across the sheet. Bowen records the island’s internal divisions using the period term “Tribe, ” including St. George’s, Hamilton, Smith’s, Devonshire, Pembroke, Paget’s, Warwick, Southampton, and Sandys. Towns, forts, bays, roads, churches, anchorages, shoals, breakers, and channels are carefully marked.

The map is particularly rich in engraved notes. These describe Bermuda’s latitude and longitude, the narrow and difficult channels into its harbours, the dangers posed by surrounding rocks and reefs, and the role of the islands in Atlantic navigation. Several annotations refer to wrecks, whaling grounds, and maritime routes, including the channel toward Castle Harbour and the hazards near the northeast and southwest approaches. Such details emphasise Bermuda’s importance as both a British colonial settlement and a strategic maritime station.

The decorative title cartouche at lower left identifies the map as based on an “Actual Survey” and claims to correct the errors of earlier charts. This phrasing reflects Bowen’s concern with the practical authority of the map as well as its role within a printed geography. The map was issued in Emanuel Bowen’s A Complete System of Geography, vol. 1, London, probably first published in 1744, with later issues appearing in the 1740s. As an engraved atlas map, it combines administrative geography, colonial description, and navigational intelligence in a compact mid-eighteenth-century representation of Bermuda.