[APRES DE MANNEVILLETTE (Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas-Denis)].
Instructions sur la Navigation des Indes Orientales et de la China, pour servir au Neptune Oriental, dedie au Roi.
This is the text volume of sailing instructions compiled by Après de Mannevillette (1707-1780) for the French East India Company. Born in Le Havre to a seafaring family Apres de Mannevillette had a long and distinguished career as a navigator and was one of the first French hydrographers. After studying mathematics in Paris, he gained early experience of the sea in a voyage to the Caribbean at the age of nineteen. During many subsequent voyages he assembled a collection of material for his East Indian hydrographic atlas called ‘Neptune Oriental’ which was published in 1745 with the support of the Academie des Sciences. In 1762 he was promoted to director of the depository of all the reports, charts and plans relating to the navigation of the vessels of the Company in the Orient, and over the succeeding years several expanded editions of this atlas were issued. A second edition of the ‘Instructions’ was posthumously published in 1811.
The second part is the Supplément, issued in 1781, which includes a biography of the author.
