26th March, 2026 in Biography & Memoir, History, Maritime

Ask the author: Alan Harper on Greenvile Collins, cartographer to the King

By Alan Harper

Despite his immense legacy, Greenvile Collins (1643-94), might be the most important naval officer you’ve never heard of. In Master and Cartographer, yachting journalist Alan Harper tells his incredible story in full for the first time. Here, Alan answers questions about this fascinating figure.

How would you describe Greenvile Collins in three words?

Smart, tenacious, innovative.

Greenvile Collins boasts a fascinating career and many pioneering feats. Why do you think he is so little known today?

He wasn’t a lord or an admiral or a knight of the realm – just a naval warrant officer from a middling background. So until now his journals and letters have been all but ignored by historians of the ‘great men’ persuasion.

Despite his humbler background compared to his peers, what do you think propelled Greenvile into the courts of three monarchs and up the career ladder to become hydrographer to the king?

In some ways Britain in the 1670s seems to have been more meritocratic than it is today. So when the captain of the failed Arctic expedition was found to have lost his notes and journal, Samuel Pepys called for Collins’ journal, and was so impressed with it he showed it to King Charles II – who was, in turn, so impressed that he interviewed Collins and hand-picked him for an important job. When he did that well, the King chose him to instruct his son, the Duke of Grafton, on a year-long cruise to the Mediterranean. Having the trust of the King meant Collins was then able to persuade Charles to back him in his great survey of British waters, which led to the work for which he is known, the Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot atlas of sea charts.

What put Collins ahead of the competition in map-making and chart design in 1693?

His seagoing experience. Map-makers at that time, whether Dutch or English, were experts in printing and engraving, but didn’t necessarily know anything about navigation or surveying. Collins was one of the foremost navigators of his age, who did his own surveys and then supervised their drafting, engraving and printing. So as practical aids to navigation his charts were vastly superior to anything previously available covering British coastal waters.

Collins served through an incredibly turbulent period, including the Glorious Revolution. How did political instability affect him and his fellow officers?

He grew up during the English Civil Wars, and came of age during the Anglo-Dutch Wars, when he gained his first experiences of fighting at sea. The peace signed in 1674 allowed England not only to broaden her horizons with voyages of exploration, but also to improve her trading fortunes in the Mediterranean, all of which gave Collins the opportunity to carve out a career as a renowned navigator (while still taking part in the occasional battle against Barbary corsairs).

But politics and religion underpinned everything, and when the openly Catholic James II suddenly had a surviving heir, the British Protestant establishment took matters into their own hands. In Holland, meanwhile, William of Orange was planning to invade England, to prevent the French getting their hands on the English navy. The rest, as they say, is history. All eyes were on the navy as the Dutch fleet was somehow allowed to sail unmolested down the Channel and land in Devon. As navigator of the King’s flagship, Collins was at the epicentre of events. His journal not only lends significant credence to the oft-suspected idea of a Protestant conspiracy within the fleet, but also suggests how it was done, under the nose of the admiral.

Despite his incredible achievements and patronage, Greenvile faced chronic financial difficulties throughout his career. Why was this?

His earliest and most important patron was Charles II, who was pretty lackadaisical about paying his bills. Collins had to front up significant amounts of money to undertake the great survey, and fell into serious debt before it was repaid. James II was no better, and William III had plenty of other fish to fry. Collins was reduced to writing begging letters to the Admiralty.

What was your most surprising discovery about Greenvile during your research?

His role in the Glorious Revolution. No-one seems to have bothered to plot Collins’ estimated positions on a map before, but once you see the track of the English fleet in its pursuit of William, it becomes clear that something very fishy was going on.

Do you see parallels between the making of maps in Collins’ era and how we use data or technology today?

In Collins’ time, and up until quite recently, navigation was as much an art as a science. Experience counted enormously. Judgements were subjective. Crucial decisions had to be made on the basis of an educated guess. Today’s electronics and satellite-derived positions make navigation much safer and more certain, but if the equipment fails, the navigator has to fall back on experience and traditional skills.

Is there anything you’d be burning to ask Greenvile if he were alive today?

I would love to know what happened to his other voyage journals – Patagonia, the Far East, the Indian Ocean.

In your opinion, what should Greenvile’s lasting legacy be and where might we find his surviving works?

The UK Hydrographic Office, publisher of Admiralty charts – the finest and most widely used navaids in the world – regards Collins as the founding father of British hydrography. His great sea atlas remained in print for 99 years, so there are a lot of his charts out there. Most antiquarian map dealers probably have one or two squirreled away.

Collins really is one of the most significant figures in British naval history. There should be a statue to him somewhere, but unfortunately we don’t know what he looked like. So perhaps we’ll just have to settle for putting a plaque on the wall of St Margaret’s church in Westminster, where he is buried.