1777 · Sea Charts
American Privateer Captures an English Packet Boat, 1777 Maritime Engraving
$370
€330 · dollar price at today's exchange rate
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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.
- Date
- 1777
- Kind
- Sea Charts
- Size
- 15.5 × 18.3 cm (6.1 × 7.2 in)
- Condition
- Good. Strong engraved impression with wide margins. Light age toning and scattered spotting. Original plate mark visible. Minor marginal wear and handling marks consistent with age. Overall well preserved.
- Period
- The Early Republic
- Reference
- BG-14302-3
What the condition grades mean
- Excellent
- Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
- Very good
- Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
- Good
- Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
- Fair
- Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.
Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.
Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.
Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured.
Delivery and import charges.
About this piece
An English packet boat taken by an American privateer on 2 May 1777, an original engraving designed by Hendrik Kobell and engraved by Simon Fokke, published in Amsterdam. The sheet is printed in black. The Dutch caption beneath the image reads "Een Engelsche Paket-boot door een Americaansche Kaaper genomen, den 2 May A° 1777", and the publisher's line, "A. Fokke Simonsz. excudit", appears below it.
The picture shows the captured vessel and its captor under sail in a rough sea. Wind fills the canvas, the hulls pitch among white-topped waves, and a heavy, broken sky of cloud fills the upper half of the sheet. Another sail is visible on the horizon at the left. Both the rigging and the swell of the sea are drawn in fine detail.
Dutch print publishers followed the American Revolution closely, and privateers sailing under American commissions were already taking British shipping in European waters in 1777. The sheet is a Dutch marine print of an event in that war.