DESCRIPTION: Scarce engraving of the port of Rode (Rhodes), Greece decorated with a bat-form title cartouche, a square-rigged warship, and three galleys. References on the plan to the 'Grand Master' and 'Sultan Suleiman' suggest that the map was intended to illustrate the Siege of Rhodes in 1522 when the Knights of Rhodes were defeated and driven out by the Ottomans. That order later became known as the 'Knights of Malta' after they established residence on the island of Malta in 1530.
We cannot locate an identical copy of this anonymous work anywhere on-line but the topographic details are nearly identical to those in a map by Dapper from 1687. This example probably dates from a period between 1650 - 1675 because this map contains more explanatory detail (in French) than Dapper's map and the strapwork cartouche points to an earlier style.
Numerous geographic descriptions include: the palace of the Grand Master; port des galeres; Tour de St. Jean; port des vaisseaux; the old walled village of Rhodes, and two long breakwaters, each protected by a tower at the end. Strapwork mileage scale.The appeal also reveals how intertwined speculation and infrastructure were along the Georgia coast. The same investors held stock in the City of Brunswick Land Company, the Canal Company, and related ventures such as the Brunswick Land Company trust deed later cited in congressional records. The letter’s rhetoric promised that, once the canal opened, emigrants from Maine would build sawmills, lots near the wharves would sell instantly, and the city would finally justify earlier hopes of becoming a major southern port. It was both a financial circular and a piece of booster propaganda.
In the broader context, the letter marks one of the last organized attempts to complete the antebellum Brunswick Canal before the project faded into insolvency. It ties together every thread found in later documentation—the Ocean Bank trusteeship, D. Randolph Martin’s role as fiduciary, and the continuing pattern of Georgia infrastructure financed through northern capital. The document stands as a vivid example of how local ambition, speculative land companies, and Wall Street banking combined in the mid-nineteenth century to promote internal improvements along the southern seaboard.
PUBLICATION DATE: 1675
GEOGRAPHIC AREA: Greece
BODY OF WATER: Aegean
CONDITION: Good
On medium-weight chain-laid paper. Two vertical folds and one horizontal fold. Margins short at bottom and right. Small repaired tear at bottom.
COLORING: None
ENGRAVER: Unknown
SIZE: 11
" x
8 "
ITEM PHYSICAL LOCATION: 2
PRICE: $950
ADD TO CART
|