We have commented in these pages on the great privilege it was to exhibit some of the Library’s beautiful charts of the Chesapeake Bay at the Library of Virginia for the Vorhees Lecture of theFry-Jefferson Map Society. The lecture took place last Saturday Mar. 31, and we worked diligently last week to select examples of the best of our maps and charts. It was hugely fun and a welcome break from the routine.
Thanks to the generosity of the Virginia Cartographic Society, we were able to take reproductions of 3 of the very rare maps collected by Bill Wooldridge, a great friend of the Library and a dedicated student and collector of maps. We selectedColom’s New Netherlands map of 1658,达德利老式和新弗吉尼亚地图from book 6 of theDell’ Arcano del Mare（1646年）和威廉·希瑟（William Heather）1812年切萨皮克湾（Chesapeake Bay）的图表。
From our collection, we chose the Des Barres 1778 map from our very rare copy of theAtlantic Neptune, and our equally impressive copy ofDell’ Arcano del Marebooks 1-4, containing a1647年弗吉尼亚和佛罗里达地图（当时，弗吉尼亚州和佛罗里达州是新泽西州以南唯一的殖民地）。我们还拉了一个1778 French mapderived from Anthony Smith’s 1776 map, which indicates the ruins of Norfolk, burned by the British in January 1776. Ours is strikingly hand-colored and the engraving is considerably enhanced over the Anthony Smith map which, just the next table over, the Library of Virginia’s Map section was also displaying! We pulled a 10-foot long 1808 Laurie and Whittle entitled “A New and Accurate Chart (from Captain Holland’s Surveys) of the North American Coast for Navigation between Cape Cod in New England and the Havanna in the Gulf of Florida,” with their 1816 sailing directions in a separate volume. Finally, we picked a whole series of maps done by the U.S. Coast Survey and its successor organization, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.
The stars of our show were clearly the books. The map experts, of which there was an abundance, were in awe of ourAtlantic Neptune, often peaking under the map to make sure that it was indeed affixed to the binding of the book! A few expressed so much interest in our fragileDell’ Arcano del Mare我们为他们打开了这本书，并向他们展示了弗吉尼亚州和佛罗里达地图的底部，太微妙了，无法完全打开。1808年的劳里（Laurie）和惠特尔（Whittle）是书籍的亲密亚军。看来大小对于映射收集器确实很重要，而且一个10英尺的例子足以将几个人在我们的桌子上呆30分钟或更长时间！
The talks on the Bay were of course excellent. No one who sails the Bay needs to be reminded of the struggle to preserve it as a habitat for underwater vegetation, for aquatic and avian life, and even for human populations on the islands which are breaking up and disappearing with rising sea levels. To see that sea level has been rising on the order of 3 mm a year every year since the industrial age began was sobering. 3 mm may be a slow rise, but it is inexorable and accelerating. Thanks to the Fry-Jefferson Society for providing us at The Mariners’ Museum with the opportunity to participate in the important discussion that continues to bring new scientific findings to light.
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