To the Merchants of London Trading to Virginia and Maryland, This Mapp of the Bay of Chesepeack, with
the Rivers Potowmack, Potaspsco, North East and part of Chester, is Humbly Dedicated and Presented
London: W. Betts and E. Baldwin, c. 1750
4 sheets. 36 1/2 x 55 in. (assembled)
Call number: Manuscripts o.s. Map F232 C43 1750:1 (restricted access)
Walter Hoxton captained a tobacco ship in the 1720s and 1730s for the London mercantile firm of John
and Samuel Hyde. During the course of some two dozen voyages to the Chesapeake Bay, he charted numerous
channels and shoals and identified navigational landmarks. Combining his own observations with information
from older, less reliable maps, Hoxton produced in 1735 his detailed Mapp of the Bay of Chesepeack, a work clearly
created by a mariner for other seafarers who traversed the waters off the coast of the Maryland and Virginia
colonies.
Hoxton's map offered its users a great variety of useful information, but the prescient mariner also recognized
the realities of a constantly changing coastline resulting from the continual ebb and flow of coastal waters.
Thus, he left space for other seamen to enter their own observations for future use. Anticipating the work of
Benjamin Franklin and others, he also included his own "Attempt towards Ascertaining the Limits Course &
Strength of the North East Current on the Coast of Virginia," so that mariners might take advantage of the Gulf
Stream on voyages northward or avoid it as they traveled southward along the coast.
The value of Hoxton's map may be discerned from the fact that so few of his original edition survive,
suggesting that copies were worn out in use (although relatively few may have actually been produced). A second,
and equally rare, edition was issued around 1750 (the version shown here), and the contents of the map were
frequently plagiarized over the ensuing quarter-century.
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