An extremely detailed chart of the best routes from Calcutta down the coast of the Malay Peninsula, through the Malacca Strait to the "Sincapour" Strait and beyond. The map extends are far northeast as Hainan, and includes western Borneo and Java. Horsburgh was very familiar with the waters shown in the chart, having spent more than twenty years sailing them.
James Horsburgh's (1762-1836) first voyages were from Newcastle and the Firth of Forth to Hamburg, Middelburg, and Ostend. After a relatively tame beginning, his life at sea became seriously adventurous when he was captured off Walcheren by a French privateer in May of 1780, and imprisoned for a short time in Dunkirk. Shortly afterwards, he sailed to the West Indies with the crew of an Austrian vessel. Back in London in 1782, he narrowly avoided being press-ganged by pretending to be Danish. In 1783, he was booked passage to India, but was nearly swept out to sea, when he decided to swim to back to shore as the ship was leaving the Hooghly River.
From then, until his retirement in 1805, Horsburgh sailed with various crews plying a trade between India and China. During this time, he was briefly shipwrecked on the island of Diego Garcia, and was given command of the Anna, in April 1798, in which he made several voyages to Canton, gaining valuable firsthand experience of the treacherous shoals, winds, and currents in the China Sea.
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