About this Item
Later cloth. 8vo. 386pp, 6pp ads. Fourth edition. Illustrated with 11 charts (2 folding). Collated and complete with "Directions to the Binder" leaf. A rare edition of Blunt's "American Coast Pilot", the first book of American sailing directions published in the United States. The author was nominally Captain Lawrence Furlong, a prominent Massachusetts ship captain, but Blunt was the primary author, using Furlong's name to gain credibility for his work. The first edition was issued in 1796 and covered the entire east coast of the United States, including the Gulf Coastal waters, Caribbean, and eastern coast of South American. It relied on verbal descriptions of sailing directions, tidetables, tables of latitudes and longitudes of principal harbors and navigational landmarks. This Fourth edition was the first to include charts. There are charts of: Portland harbor, Portsmouth harbor, Newburyport harbor, Annis Squam harbor, the Isle of Sable, Boston harbor, Newport harbor, New York harbor, the Bay and River Delaware (folding), the Bay of Chesapeake (folding), and Charleston harbor. In terms of condition this is a good to very good copy with some heavy browning to portions of the text, particularly the first 130 pages preceding the first chart. The charts are in very good condition with some spotting and browning to the surface and margins. They are printed on heavy paper stock. The Boston harbor chart is a bit loose with some light chipping to the right edge and a small fold to the bottom corner. The other charts are free of any chips or tears. The page of text between the Isle of Sable and Boston charts is torn at the right side but complete. HOWES F-421; SABIN 26219. Seller Inventory # 6148
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