Carte de l'Océan Pacifique au Nord de l'Equateur...

Striking map of the North Pacific Ocean area marking the routes taken by Captain James Cook (1728-1779), and of Captain Charles Clerke (1741-1779) during their third expedition (1776-1780).

Lotter’s notable map of the North Pacific is famous for several reasons. It is one of the earliest cartographic records of Cook’s ill-fated third voyage on which he lost his life. Corresponding with this, it is one of the earliest maps to show the Sandwich Islands or the modern Hawaiian Islands.

The map as a whole is titled as a document which reveals the latest discoveries in the North Pacific made by the English, the Spanish and the Russians to the year 1780. The panels on the lower part of the map refer to Spanish voyages under the supervision of Don Antonio Maria de Bucareli Y Ursua, Viceroy of Mexico, which originated in 1774 and reached the Pacific Northwest in 1775. They were a combination of exploratory voyages as well as a method for the Spanish to lay further claims to the Pacific coastline of North America and counter Russian claims further north. The panel also references Russian discoveries although these are more vague. These are references to the voyages made by Vitus Bering and Aleksey Chirikov. Although the Russian government was extremely secretive about both the Second Kamchatka Expedition and the Great Northern Expedition, Cook deemed Bering so important that he named the Straits between Asia and America after him.

However, the map is mainly associated with Cook as the ocean bears the route of Cook’s third voyage in orange along the Pacific Northwest coast and into the Behring Straits, records his death on the Sandwich Islands and then continues the voyage in red, this time under Cook’s successor, Captain Clarke, who sailed along the north eastern coast of Asia, before returning along roughly the same route and then back to Europe through Canton and the Indian Ocean.

This map was issued a full three years before the official publication of Cook’s last voyage in 1784. The panel on the lower part of the map states that its main source was a map published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1780. The date of this map is recorded, along with the engraver T. Mann, as 1781 at the end of the French section of the panel.