Antique Print with Views of Cape Blanco on the Patagonia / Argentina Coast, 1749

Cape Blanco on the coast of Patagonia, in two views with ships of George Anson's squadron, an original copper engraving from the Dutch edition of his voyage, Reize rondsom de Werreld, published in 1749. Each panel is lettered in French and Dutch: the upper "Cap Blanc sur la Cote des Patagons, restant au S.O. a cinq Lieues de distance" with "Kaap Blanco aan de kust van Patagonia", and the lower a second "Cap Blanc" view in which the headland bears south west by south.

The upper panel is almost empty: a low flat headland lies along the horizon, beneath a sky of heavy cloud. In the lower panel the same shore stretches across the sheet as a thin ridge beyond several ships under sail, with a small boat nearby in the right foreground. The plate shows how little there was to see of this coast from the sea, and the engraver used the sky as the main source of interest.

Such profiles were drawn so that later navigators could recognize their landfall. Cape Blanco, on the Argentine coast, was one of the marks on the way south toward the Strait of Le Maire and Cape Horn.