Map/Chart > The Caribbean

A View of Port au Prince in Hispaniola (Haiti)

A previously unpublished manuscript plan of the historic town of Port-au-Prince in Haiti

Further Information

This charming little plan of the town of Port-au-Prince, capital of modern day Haiti, then Hispaniola is a very rare example of British mapping in the region.  The city was founded in 1749 by French sugar planters. It was given its present name at the turn of the 19th century by the Jean-Jacques Dessalines; self proclaimed emperor of Haiti who, with British help, had expelled the French.  With Dessalines, as governor-general, the entire island of Hispaniola was proclaimed an independent country under its Arawak name, Haiti. The following September he adopted the title of emperor as Jacques I.

The chart clearly depicts the military disposition of the town and port’s defences, marking barracks, the bomb battery, island battery as well as anchorages and channels.  The imposing Governors House shown on the map still exists and is now the National Palace.  Whether this plan had been drawn by Lieutenant Patrick Leslye of the Royal Navy with the intention of the British either attacking or defending the town is unclear.  Leslye is listed in British Admiralty records as being active in British waters in between 1763-1776.  For him to have been part of the British support for Dessalines in the 1800s would suggest him to be either a very old and un-ambitious naval lieutenant 25 years after the records place him in British waters at the same rank.  Either that or this survey dates to an earlier time, perhaps the 1790s when the British had trading interests with the region. In all of its history Hispaniola or Haiti has had to endure not just constant invasion and political upheaval but also some of the most devastating natural disasters ever recorded.