Pensacola Bay Map, 1860s

The story of this map

Pensacola Bay is one of the great natural harbours of the Gulf, and in 1861 it was the one the Union kept. Fort Pickens on the tip of Santa Rosa Island held out through the whole war while the Navy Yard across the water changed hands, and the northern public followed the standoff on maps like this one — a coloured sheet by Jacob Weiss drawn “from the latest government surveys”, meaning the Coast Survey’s soundings of the bay and its entrance.

The bay opens across the top of the sheet with the town of Pensacola on the mainland; the long barrier of Santa Rosa Island runs along the bottom with the fort at its western end; Fort McRee and Fort Barrancas guard the channel; and the Navy Yard at Warrington sits between them. The soundings mark the bar and the deep-water channel that made the harbour worth fighting over.

The Leventhal Map Center’s copy is small — 22 by 31 centimetres — but their scan is 9,000 pixels wide, so the print holds every sounding and the hand-coloured shoreline at 18×24 in. Restoration cleaned the scan’s edges and rebalanced the paper tone; the colours are the original’s.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Restoration: trimmed the scanner margins, balanced levels while keeping the paper tone (65% of the original colour retained), removed dust and specks, applied gentle sharpening. Stamps, tipped-on notices and the wear of a used chart are kept where they belong to the object; nothing is redrawn.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.