Jacques Nicolas Bellin; 1703-1772.

A first rank cartographer, Bellin worked for some fifty years at the French hydrographic service (Dépôt de la Marine); which he ran till his death. In this position he had unequal access to prime cartographic data, which he used to further his own private business interests. He was succeeded at the head of the service by the very talented, and no less prolific, Rigobert Bonne.
His career was mainly devoted to charting and mapping coast lines, harbors, sea lanes,. Most of his publications were related to nautical matters: maps for "Histoire générale des Voyages"* between 1747 and his death, "Atlas Maritime" in 1751, "Neptune François" in 1753, "Petit Atlas Maritime" in 1764,. for the benefit of the French Navy, merchantmen, and the public at large.
He is known to have used informations from the best fellow cartographers of his time, to complement the in-land parts of his maps, notably: Guillaume de L'Isle and Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville, often giving them credit. Fame, enormous output and fastidious quality of work, earned him the appointment of "hydrographer to the king" by Louis XV of France. He was also a member of the Royal Society in London.

* A major work published by Antoine François Prévost d'Exile. The first edition in 1747 was already of an encyclopedic size. A major remodeling was done in the mid fifties, incorporating some two hundred new maps (quite a few drawn by Bellin). Later editions, till 1789, incorporated verbatim other authors travel writings (e.g.: Gmelin's "Voyage au Kamchatka par la Sibérie" was incorporated in volume 25 in 1779).

Carte des havres de Kingstown et de Port royal.

This relatively large map (11 ¾" X 7 11/16") was produced for the 1764 "Petit Atlas Maritime".
Very minimalist, it shows the Kingston bay area with Port Royal as it stood before 1692, and Kingstown as it became after 1722.
The Jamaica capital of Port Royal established in 1655, had suffered a major quake in 1692 (reducing the long peninsula to a small islet at its very tip), then a destructive fire in 1703 and was finally abandoned after the coup de grace hurricane of 1722. Its residents, fleeing the increasingly inhabitable town thru the whole period, moved mostly across the bay to Kingstown.
Kingstown became the key harbor for the british in the Caribbean, and its anchorage was heavily defended (notice forts and gun emplacements on the shoreline; and the old Port Royal's Fort Charles which remained operational well into the eighteen hundreds).
No text on verso.