AVACHA BAY KAMCHATKA PENINSULA RUSSIA 1803 COOK ANTIQUE COPPER ENGRAVED SEACHART

Description

AVACHA BAY KAMCHATKA PENINSULA RUSSIA 1803 COOK ANTIQUE COPPER ENGRAVED SEACHART
AVACHA BAY KAMCHATKA PENINSULA RUSSIA 1803 COOK ANTIQUE COPPER ENGRAVED SEACHART
Description
Kaart van de Awatska-Baai Op de Oost Kust van Kamtschatka.
Description:
Striking and highly detailed
fine unusual 18o3 James Cook's copper engraved sea chart or nautical map of
Avacha Bay (here called Awaska Bay) on the east coast of the Russian Peninsula of Kamchatka. Inset plan of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy ( “Kaart van de St. Peter’s en St. Paul’s Haven Opgenoomen door Will. Bligh”).
The map has been published in: Reizen Rondom de Waereld door James Cook vertaald door J. D. Pasteur. Leyden: Honkoop, Allart en van Cleef, 1797-1809.
Avacha Bay (Russian: Авачинская губа, Авачинская бухта) is a Pacific Ocean bay on the southeastern coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. It is 24 km (15 mi) long and 3 km (2 mi) wide (at the mouth), with a maximum depth of 26 m (85 ft).
The Avacha River flows into the bay. The port city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and the closed town of Vilyuchinsk lie on the coast of the bay. It is the main transport gateway to the Kamchatka region. The bay freezes in the winter.
It was first discovered by Vitus Bering in 1729. It was surveyed and mapped by Captain Mikhail Tebenkov of the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1830s.
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy (Russian: Петропа́вловск-Камча́тский, tr. Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy) is a city and the administrative, industrial, scientific, and cultural center of Kamchatka Krai, Russia. Its population is 179,780.
The city is widely known simply as Petropavlovsk (literally "city of Peter and Paul"). The adjective Kamchatsky ("Kamchatkan") was added to the official name in 1924.
When the Russian explorer Ivan Moskvitin reached the Sea of Okhotsk in 1639, further exploration was impeded by the lack of skills and equipment to build seagoing ships and by the harsh land to the northeast inhabited by the warlike Koryak people. Consequently, Russians entered Kamchatka from the north. In 1651, after having assisted in the foundation of the Anadyrsk ostrog, the explorer Mikhail Stadukhin went south and followed the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk from Penzhina Bay to Okhotsk. From about 1667 there were reports of a Kamchatka River to the south. Some time before 1700 a group of Russians were stranded and died on Kamchatka.
In 1695 explorer Vladimir Atlasov became commander of Anadyrsk. In 1696 he sent the Cossack Luka Morozko south. Morozko got as far as the Tigil River and returned with reports and some mysterious writings, probably Japanese. In 1697–1699 Atlasov explored nearly the whole of the peninsula. He built an ostrog at Verkhny-Kamchatsk, rescued or captured a Japanese castaway, and went to Moscow to report. In 1699 the Russians at Verkhny-Kamchatsk were killed on their way back to Anadyrsk by the Koryaks. In 1700 a punitive expedition destroyed a Koryak village and founded Nizhne-Kamchatsk on the lower river. Bolskeretsk was founded in 1703. From about 1705 there was a breakdown of order. There were numerous mutinies and native wars all over the peninsula and north to the Koryak country of the Penzhina River and Olyutorsky Gulf. Several people were sent out to restore order, including Atlasov, who was murdered in 1711. Vasily Merlin restored some degree of order between 1733 and 1739. There was no significant resistance after 1756. A major smallpox epidemic that hit in 1768–1769 quickly decimated the native population; the roughly 2,500 Itelmens present in 1773 were reduced to 1,900 in 1820, from an original population of 12,000–25,000. Those who survived adopted Russian customs, and there was a great deal of intermarriage, such that "Kamchadal" (the original Russian name for the Itelmens) came to mean any Russian or part-Russian born on the peninsula.
In 1713 Peter the Great sent shipbuilders to Okhotsk. A fifty-four-foot boat was built and sailed to the Tegil River in June 1716. This one-week journey, later redirected to Okhotsk-Bolseretsk, became the standard route to Kamchatka. In 1720 Ivan Yevreinov mapped Kamchatka and the Kurils. The Danish-born explorer Vitus Bering left Nezhe-Kamchatsk for his first voyage in 1728 and, as part of his second voyage, founded Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in 1740.
Vitus Bering's Second Kamchatka Expedition (ca 1733–1743), in the service of the Russian Navy, began the final "opening" of Kamchatka, helped by the fact that the government began to use the area to exile people, famously the Hungarian nobleman and explorer the Count de Benyovszky in 1770. In 1755 Stepan Krasheninnikov published the first detailed description of the peninsula, "An Account of the Land of Kamchatka". The Russian government encouraged the commercial activities of the Russian-American Company by granting land to newcomers on the peninsula. By 1812 the indigenous population had fallen to less than 3,200 while the Russian population had risen to 2,500.
In 1854 the French and British, who were battling Russian forces in the course of the Crimean War, attacked Petropavlovsk. During the Siege of Petropavlovsk, 988 men with a mere 68 guns managed to defend the outpost against 6 ships with 206 guns and 2,540 French and British soldiers. Despite the successful defense, the Russians abandoned Petropavlovsk as a strategic liability after the French and British forces withdrew. The next year, when a second enemy force came to attack the port, they found it deserted. Frustrated, the ships bombarded the city and withdrew.
On 24 May 1861, the ship Polar Star (475 tons), of New Bedford, wrecked on the west coast of Kamchatka during a dense fog and gale. The chief officer and a boat's crew perished while attempting to reach the shore. The rest of the crew were saved by the barque Alice, of Cold Spring, and the ship Oliver Crocker, also from New Bedford.
On 21 May 1865, the American Civil War came to the area: the Confederate States Navy steamer Shenandoah sailed past the southern end of the Kamchatka Peninsula on its way to hunt United States whaling ships in the Sea of Okhotsk. As a commerce raider, the CSS Shenandoah aimed to destroy Union merchant shipping and thus draw off United States Navy ships in pursuit, thereby loosening the US Navy blockade of Confederate coasts. The ship spent almost three weeks in the Sea, destroying only one ship due to the dangerous ice, before moving on to the North Pacific, where it virtually captured or bonded 24 whalers, sinking most of them.
The next fifty years were lean for Kamchatka. The naval port moved to Ust-Amur, and in 1867 Russia sold Alaska to the United States, making Petropavlovsk obsolete as a transit point for tra
ders and explorers on their way to the American territories. In 1860, a Primorsky (Maritime) Region was established and Kamchatka was placed under its jurisdiction. In 1875 Russia ceded the Kuril Islands to Japan in return for Russian sovereignty over Sakhalin island. The Russian population of Kamchatka stayed at around 2,500 until the turn of the century, while the native population increased to 5,000. During the 19th century, scientific exploration of the peninsula continued. Karl von Ditmar made an important journey to the peninsula in 1851–1854.
World War II (1939–1945) hardly affected Kamchatka except for its role as a launch site for the invasion of the Kurils in August 1945. After the war, the Soviet authorities declared Kamchatka a military zone: it remained closed to Soviet citizens until 1989 and to foreigners until 1990
.
Date:
1803 ( undated )
Dimension:
Paper size approx.:
cm
22,9 x 27,3
Condition:
Very strong and dark impression on good paper. Paper with chains. Map uncolored. Margin to the top missing. Good lower margin Good lateral margins. Corners partially missing. Small foxing and browning. Conditions are as you can see in the images
.
Mapmaker:
Captain James Cook (1728-1779) is best known for his three voyages to the Pacific (1768-71; 1772-75; and 1776-79). His discoveries radically changed the western understanding of the world in the late 18th century. He was the first to circumnavigate and chart New Zealand and provided the earliest European accounts of exploration along the eastern coast of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. On February 14th, 1779, he was killed on Hawaii after attempting to kidnap the chief of the island
.
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