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Description:
Extremely rare to find this valuable map in an early edition (for edition watch the small letters at e.g. the bottom of the map)! The main interest of European nations in Oman was as a place to take water and fresh fruit into there sailing vessels and to prevent pirates taking their ships on the important route to and from India.
During the first quarter of the 19th century a lot of British ships were taken by Omani pirates (form Bani bu Ali) The English send a naval fleet and army to attack the pirate village/town. However on land the army got beaten by the pirates with their swords and ancient muskets. This was very embarrassing. and subsequently the British send a new expedition with the help of the sultan of Oman and this time the pirates were beaten. From then on the British took more interest in the Omani coast and by the 1830´s they started making detailed maps of the coast of Oman and the interior of Oman see e.g. the works by Wellsted and his ship the Palinurus. By the middle of the 19th century Oman became less important as steamships started to replace sailing vessels and gradually steamships could sail longer without taking in coal or fresh water. By the third quarter of the 19th century the British had dug the Suez canal. The route from India to Suez along the Omani coast became then crucial to the British and they wanted no disruptions e.g from pirates. The British subsequently pushed the split of the Omani empire into Zanzibar and the Oman mainland: Two Omani princes disputed the right to become the sultan after the death of their father, so the British encouraged a split of Oman and Zanzibar (divide and rule!)
The immediate stimulus for the survey of the Persian Gulf coasts begun by Captain Philip Maughan and Lieutenant John Guy of the Bombay Marine in 1820. It was the desire of the Bombay Government to combat the maritime warfare on the Arabian coast, where local sailors could outwit the East India Company´s ships with a detailed knowledge of the shallows and channels. Maughan and Guy retired in turn through ill-health in 1821 and 1825, after surveying part of the Arabian coast south-westward from the Strait of Hormuz. The direction of the survey, on board the East India Company ships Discovery and Psyche, was taken over by Lieutenant George Brucks assisted by Lieutenant Stafford Haines.
Brucks and Haines are the names to appear on the majority of the charts completed in the period 1823 to 1827. The whole of the Arabian coast had been completed by April 1825, and the survey of the Persian coast continued until April 1828. Engraved chart, including tidal information, compass roses, soundings, seabed notations, currents, sandbanks, shoals, lighthouses and beacons, inland elevations, detailing and buildings, inset charts of Bandarjissa, Sur Anchorage, Bandar Khairan, Madraka Anchorage, Khor Jarama and Dar Sait Anchorage.The survey was carried out by Commander Sanders and Lieutenant Grieve who were in the employ of the Indian Navy. In 1840 the British had taken control of the port of Aden; a strategically important port along the trade route from England to India. From their base at Aden the British began to steadily grapple with the problem of piracy that had been plaguing much of British shipping. In order to achieve this they required the most up-to-date hydrographic information, hence the significant increase in the charting of the region by the likes of Sanders, Grieve, Carless, and Moresby. In fact by the middle of the nineteenth century the whole of the Arabian Peninsula had been surveyed.
The Indian Navy was the naval arm of the East India Company. It had been established by the Company as early as 1612 when it protected the their nascent commercial interests. In 1686 with most of the English commerce moving to Bombay the navy was renamed 'The Bombay Marine'. A name that it would keep for the next 144 years, until in 1830, it was renamed the 'Her Majesty's Indian Navy'. This title would, however, not be so long lived and in 1858, when the EIC was re-leaved of its administration of India the navy was brought under the control of the British State |