The Old Print Shop

Jean-Baptiste D' Après de Mannevillette

1707-1780

Born in Le Havre of a seafaring family. d'Apres de Mannevillette had a long and distinguished career as a navigator and one of the first French hydrographers. After studying mathematics in Paris, he gained early experience of the sea in a voyage at the age of nineteen to the Caribbean. During many subsequent voyages he assembled a collection of material for a projected hydrographic atlas which, with the support of the Academie des Sciences, was published in Paris in 1745 under the title Le Neptune Oriental. In spite of the popularity of the first issue, it failed to satisfy the author and he spent nearly thirty years, often with the assistance of his friend, Alexander Dalrymple, the English hydrographer, in the preparation of a revised and enlarged edition which eventually was issued in 1775.

SHARE