John Luffman (1751–1821)
A complete representation of the coast of England, together with the interior, divided into counties and military districts… to which is annexed eighteen plans of the ports of the enemy, the principal depots of the flotilla intended for the invasion of England
London: John Luffman, 19 January 1804
Maps.bb.18.G.142
This broadsheet map was published when British fears of French invasion were at their height. It includes insets of eighteen continental ports from which invasion forces could set sail, together with sailing distances from those ports to potential landing sites in England and Ireland. A large French army was known to be assembling in the Pas de Calais, where the English Channel is at its narrowest. All it would take would be a naval defeat, or for the Royal Navy’s vigilance to slip…. The invasion threat was eased the following year, when Nelson’s decisive victory over the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar reaffirmed the Royal Navy’s dominance at sea.
John Luffman (1751–1821)
A complete representation of the coast of England, together with the interior, divided into counties and military districts… to which is annexed eighteen plans of the ports of the enemy, the principal depots of the flotilla intended for the invasion of England
London: John Luffman, 19 January 1804
Maps.bb.18.G.142
This map was printed from a copper plate engraved (according to the imprint) and published by John Luffman, an accomplished engraver, cartographer, printer and publisher. Born in London in 1751 Luffman ran his business from a series of addresses in the city between 1773 and his death at the age of 70 in 1821, though he was declared bankrupt on 9 March 1793. He also travelled beyond British shores visiting Antigua from 1786 to 1788, where his daughter Anne Armstrong Luffman was born.
War between Britain and France had only just resumed when Luffman’s map was published, as there had been a brief period of peace lasting from March 1802 to May 1803.
The map capitalizes on public interest in and fear of invasion. In fact there is an earlier state of this map—published on 17 November 1803, just two months earlier—which includes some text (replaced by the ‘Reference to the Military Districts’ in the 1804 state) in which Luffman stresses the danger presented by France’s occupation of the Netherlands and in which he proposes that Britain should take control of islands in the estuaries of major rivers in the area—such as Walcheren at the mouth of the Scheldt estuary—so as to prevent invasion.
Luffman was no stranger to grand plans and proposals. In The National Archives at Kew there is an undated letter from Luffman to William Pitt in which he proposes a plan to raise money through a probate tax on property ‘without affecting the lower or middling orders or oppressing the affluent’.
