Important French Mediterranean sea-atlas, published by Bremond in Marseilles; the majority of the charts are devoted to the western Mediterranean, giving tremendous detail for the coasts, seemingly connected to the ongoing hazard of Barbary pirate attacks from North Africa, but with charts of the Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean Island.
On the charts Michelot describes himself as “Hydrographe et Pilote Real des Galères du Roy” (Hydrographer and Pilot of the King’s Galley’s). He was born in St. Malo and had some forty years of naval service to his name when this atlas was published. Little is known about Laurens Bremond, the co-publisher, who is described as “Hydrographe du Roy et de la Ville” (Hydrographer to the King and to the Town [of Marseilles]). It is likely that Michelot was the chartmaker, and Bremond the publisher, working from a ship’s chandlers shop in the port district of Marseilles, with ready access to willing buyers.
The charts are dated between 1715 and 1723, the majority engraved by Pierre Starckmann, a talented engraver active in Paris, although the Greek Islands is by a little known regional engraver, Coelemans, from Aix; the ship plates are engraved by Randon, Arnaues and Barthelemy Chasse.
The atlas seems to have been both successful and long-lived, but is now scarce. This seems to be an early version, with no chart dated after 1723, although copies are known with charts dated to 1728. The chart of the Gulf of Marseilles is interesting as having a poor printing of the chart on the verso and the accepted version on the recto - clearly there being no intention of wasting the paper.
Shirley, Maps in the Atlases in the British Library, M.MICH-1c.
