The Map Thief (20 page)

Another seminal map de Bry included was a map of Virginia by English settler
John White, governor of the ill-fated Roanoke colony. The colony was founded by Sir Walter Raleigh before the settlement of Jamestown; during White’s time there, he produced an accurate map of the area, bringing it back to London in 1587 just as de Bry was looking for material. No sooner did he arrive, however, than the Spanish Armada blockaded the English coast. England’s eventual defeat of the Spanish fleet helped ensure English dominance of the oceans for centuries. But for White it was little consolation. By the time he returned to his colony in 1590, all traces of it had disappeared, an enduring mystery to this day. Only the map, now included in de Bry’s book, survived.

De Bry worked in London during a feverish time for English exploration. Interest in the New World had been sparked by the writings of
Richard Hakluyt, a geographer whose two books,
Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America and the Islands Adjacent
(1582) and
The Principall Navigations: Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation
(1589), recounted the travels of early explorers such as John Cabot. Hakluyt’s books, in turn, inspired and supported a generation of Elizabethan sea dogs including Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh to set sail in search of adventure and fame.

Hakluyt’s papers were inherited by
Samuel Purchas, a minister from a seaside vicarage with an insatiable appetite for collecting stories of captains and explorers. In 1625, he combined them with his own research into a book entitled
Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes.
Smiley requested the BPL’s copy of the work three times: on July 27, 2003; January 14, 2004; and September 14, 2004. Inside, Purchas included a number of important maps, including a reprint of John Smith’s map of Virginia; a map of New Scotland by Sir William Alexander, an English lord granted the rights to colonize the region north of New England; and a map of North America by Henry Briggs (
Figure N
).

Briggs’s map was the first to accurately illustrate the discoveries of
explorer Henry Hudson, including Hudson’s Bay. But it is better known for its role in propagating one of the most notorious myths in cartography:
the island of California. For a century after its discovery in the early 1500s, the West Coast of North America appeared on maps by Mercator, Ortelius, and others much as it does now. Almost out of nowhere, Henry Briggs’s map shows a dramatically different image—a triangular wedge broken off from the edge of the continent, in almost the same size and shape as the modern-day state. To modern eyes, it’s as if the Big One has finally arrived—breaking the land along the San Andreas Fault to be cast adrift in the Pacific.

The error most likely has its origins in a Spanish expedition in the 1590s in which a friar boldly combined the Gulf of California with a purported inland sea to the north. Soon after, a Dutch ship supposedly captured the map, bringing it to Amsterdam. It’s unclear how Briggs, a prominent English astronomer, acquired it, but he apparently used it to create his own manuscript map in 1622, which became the basis for the map in Purchas’s book.

After that, the misrepresentation spread like a virus. Prominent English cartographer John Speed picked up the change in 1626, and from there it crossed the channel to all the Dutch giants, including Hondius, Jansson, and Blaeu. English and French mapmakers followed suit; John Seller reproduced the mistake in at least a half dozen of his sea charts. The difficulty of exploring the area perpetuated the myth. Spanish galleons bypassed the fog-shrouded cliffs on their way from the Philippines to South America, uninterested in risking their cargoes in pointless cartographic surveys.

Finally, in 1698, the inaccuracy was corrected when Jesuit friar Eusebio Kino traveled overland from California to Mexico, charting the terrain. But mapmakers persisted in creating an islanded California for another half century. Finally, Spanish king Ferdinand VI had to outlaw the practice with a royal decree in 1747 that stated simply, “California is not an island.”

Of course, the persistence of the mistake has made maps showing the island of California a favorite among state residents. Depending on whether you are a California sympathizer or a California detractor, it can be seen as either a cheeky celebration of the state’s proud otherness, or a punishment for its profligate ways. The sheer number of
maps that feature the error—more than 150 different maps with thousands of individual copies—ensure plenty of examples to satisfy even casual Californian map lovers. But for the serious collector, the original Briggs map is most coveted, commanding
prices of up to $25,000—a fact Smiley well knew when he ripped the BPL’s copy out of Purchas’s book.

—

SMILEY SOLD HIS MAPS
to his network of dealers, including Newman, Arkway, and London map dealer Philip Burden. Burden literally wrote the book on North American exploration,
The Mapping of North America,
in the mid-1990s, and he had consulted with Smiley during his research. Burden started buying from him after Smiley bounced a check for something he purchased. “
Let me make it up to you,” Smiley told him. “Let me sell you a few things.” In February 2003,
Smiley sold Burden a copy of the Le Moyne map of Florida from the de Bry book. The following year, he
sold Arkway a copy of the White map of Virginia from the same volume, along with a copy of the John Smith map of Virginia from
Purchas His Pilgrimes.
Smiley sold other maps directly to collectors, including a sea chart of Chesepeake Bay by English mapmaker
Sir
Robert Dudley, which he sold to New York bond trader Bob Gordon for $19,000 (
Figure 13
).

Dudley is one of the most colorful characters in all of cartography. Born in 1574, he was the son of Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, and Douglas, Lady Sheffield. His father was the favorite courtier of Queen Elizabeth and the subject of endless “did they or didn’t they” rumors from Elizabethan times to the present. Perhaps out of fear of the queen’s jealousy, he hid his relationship with Douglas, revealing it only when she gave birth to their child. Elizabeth forgave his dalliance, but he knew naming Robert his heir would be too much.

Instead, Dudley was sent to live with his cousin. He grew up with all the trappings of a young English lord but, as an illegitimate child, had none of the prestige. Dudley sought to prove himself, studying at Oxford and excelling in geography and nautical science. The sea was to young men in sixteenth-century England what space was for boys and girls in twentieth-century America—the new frontier, full of possibility and the promise of adventure. In 1594, Dudley set out to win glory for himself,
planning a joint expedition with Walter Raleigh in search of El Dorado, the mythical city of gold.

When Raleigh couldn’t get his ships together in time, Dudley went alone, earning a lifelong enemy in the process. On the voyage, Dudley explored the mouth of the Orinoco River and claimed Trinidad for the queen. Two years later, when England attacked Spain, he commanded a ship in the successful sacking of Cádiz, for which he received a knighthood.

His promising career came to an abrupt halt, however, after Elizabeth died in 1603. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Dudley sued to have his father’s titles reinstated by proving his father and mother had been legally married when he was born. The trial went badly, however, when his mother and other witnesses gave conflicting testimony. Dudley’s rivals, including Raleigh, pressed their advantage, accusing Dudley of bribery. The new king, James I, meanwhile, came out publicly favoring Dudley’s cousin, Sir Philip Sidney, for his father’s titles. It was no surprise to anyone when the verdict came out against Dudley.

Dejected and outraged, Dudley left England on July 2, 1605, ostensibly for a three-month trip to the continent. Soon after he’d gone, however, news broke that he had left his wife and four daughters to run away with a nineteen-year-old handmaiden to the queen who had been disguised as a pageboy. Once in France, they scandalized English society by declaring themselves Catholics to avoid extradition. Finally, the celebrity couple arrived at their real destination: Florence.

The city had declined since its days as the center of the humanist revolution. But the Medici grand duke Ferdinando I still presided over a city famed for art and culture and had bigger plans to consolidate his control over the Tuscan coast. Dudley went to work in his service, applying his knowledge of shipbuilding and navigation to build a new navy to defeat the pirates of the Barbary Coast, and developing the coastal city of Livorno (Leghorn) into a modern port.

But he never gave up his fight to see his titles restored. As his fame grew, so did the calls back home to restore his earldom. Finally, in 1644, James’s son Charles I wrote a proclamation declaring that the truth of Dudley’s birth had been hidden from his father, and restoring Dudley’s titles. The gesture was enough for Dudley, who never returned to claim them, dying in his adopted city of Florence in 1649.

Before his death, however, he bestowed one last honor on his native country: a sea atlas called the
Dell’Arcano del Mare.
Dudley’s ambitions exceeded his experiences; he had taken only one voyage of exploration himself. The book, whose title means “Secrets of the sea,” was nothing short of a comprehensive atlas of every known coastline on the planet, a feat not even the Dutch had attempted. At the time, the English hadn’t even produced a sea atlas of England.

As Dudley collected charts from explorers and navigators, he applied another revolutionary twist: He rendered each of them on a Mercator projection—something that wasn’t consistently applied by cartographers for another fifty years. Though the English didn’t realize it for years, the book is a valuable missing link between the early maps in books by the likes of Hakluyt, Purchas, and Smith, and the later sea charts of Seller, Thornton, and other cartographers of the Thames School.

Despite some inaccuracies in Dudley’s maps due to faulty source material, the atlas is a stunning work of art. Dudley gave his manuscripts to a young Florentine engraver who spent twelve years and used five thousand pounds of copper to reproduce them. He copied them in a delicate, spidery hand, transcribing the Italian words with a fine calligraphy adorned with loops and pirouettes. The overall effect is breathtaking, making Dudley’s charts highly desired collector’s items today.

Smiley checked out the BPL’s copy, a two-foot-high tome with a brown leather cover, on January 14, 2003, May 12, 2003, and again on July 19, 2004. On one of those dates, he flipped through the feather-light pages until he came to the maps of the Americas. In addition to several general charts of the East Coast, Dudley had produced several larger-scale charts: one chart of New England and the New Netherlands based largely on Dutch maps of Blaeu; one of Chesapeake Bay; and one of southern Virginia, both drawn from the maps of John White and John Smith. Smiley slipped a razor down the length of the binding, the blade curving slightly along the grain of the paper as it sliced through all three sheets at
once.

CAUGHT!

FIGURE 14
JOHN MELISH. “MAP OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.” PHILADELPHIA, 1816.

2004–2005

EVENTUALLY FOR SMILEY
the stealing just became habitual. “I know this stuff really, really well,” he told me. “I know it without having to think about it which maps would be easy to sell. I didn’t go looking for these things, but I saw the opportunities, and I couldn’t walk away from it.” Strangely, he never felt much anxiety about walking out with maps in his pockets. If anyone asked, it was perfectly reasonable for him to be carrying old maps. How could anyone know that he didn’t walk in with them?

When he wasn’t in the libraries, he rarely thought about what he was doing. Somehow, he could compartmentalize and rationalize the thefts. “The libraries weren’t using these things, and I’m building collections
where they are going to be used,” he told me. People were going to look at them every day on their walls; they were going to compare maps and make new connections about the world. Besides, hadn’t he been invaluable in helping libraries build their collections?

That conviction became stronger in 2003, when
Norman Leventhal announced that he was donating money to create a new center at the BPL to house the library’s map collection—and was looking for a new home for his own collection too, with the library as the presumed beneficiary. A
celebration that November drew six hundred of the city’s businessmen and socialites, who ate at private dinner parties around Back Bay and Beacon Hill and then walked to the library for a reception of drinks, dessert, and dancing. Leventhal insisted Smiley be invited to the most important dinner, held at the library for a select group of map scholars and donors. Smiley sat at a table in the back, looking miserable. “He did not exhibit
the old kind of arrogance,” remembered Alex Krieger.

His
friends noticed the changes too. Whereas before Smiley would always be gracious and generous, he now seemed secretive and controlling. During the annual Columbus Day Boys’ Weekends in Sebec, he arranged every meal and activity, getting upset when anyone deviated from the schedule. The “Squire” nickname Slater had given him now seemed to apply in earnest. By the fall of 2002, the weekends didn’t seem the same anymore. The men divided into factions, with Slater, Fischer, and von Elgg hanging out together and only Paul Statt sticking by his oldest friend.

But even Statt noticed a change, especially since Smiley’s heart surgery in 1998. Smiley had become difficult, more guarded in conversations and less forthcoming with details about his life. The one thing Statt had always loved about Smiley was his ability to turn his life into a fascinating story—even if that meant straining a bit at the truth. Now he just seemed like he had something to hide. Sometimes he would hint darkly that if he told Statt the whole truth about his business, he’d never believe it—but Statt took that to refer to the crooked dealings of the trade, not anything criminal on Smiley’s part.

He became increasingly stubborn in his dealings in Sebec as well, putting more pressure on himself to “win.” Despite letter after letter from the town’s board of selectmen,
Smiley refused to respond to requests to deal with the parking issue at his shops. The October deadline
set by the town came and went, and another site visit by Murphy found that Smiley still hadn’t gotten rid of the extra parking spaces. In February 2004, he was issued an official violation. By March, selectman Buzz Small was visibly frustrated, sputtering at a meeting, “What can we do?
Do we put them in jail for noncompliance? Can we shut them down?”

Even as the town waited for Smiley to act, he and his supporters were waiting to be vindicated by the ruling of the county court. Finally, on March 25, 2004, Superior Court Justice Nancy Mills
handed down her decision. The Moriartys’ permit, she wrote, was “legal, supported by substantial evidence on the record and does not indicate any abuse of discretion.” Furthermore, she said, “there is no evidence of bad faith on the part of the Moriartys.” It was a complete victory for the town—and the Moriartys. “I would just like to express how pleased I am with the outcome,” Charlene Moriarty said publicly at the next selectmen’s meeting. “I hope that we can now try to work toward a positive goal in the village.”

The situation now was worse than ever for Smiley and his supporters. Not only would the Moriartys be able to operate their business, but the Sebec Village Shops were in danger of being shut down. Several of Smiley’s employees wrote an open letter to the local paper in his defense. “Through the vision of our employer and his countless dollars of investment, a
little oasis has been created,” they wrote. “We are lucky to have one of the few folks in our midst that wants to do something right ‘just because.’ He thought that central Maine would be a good place for this venture because we are in need of jobs, and a sense of community spirit.”

Whatever his intentions in establishing that spirit, he’d done the opposite, turning the community into a morass of feuding neighbors and legal complaints. Smiley returned to Sebec for the summer of 2004 dejected, knowing he’d ruined the very paradise he’d hoped to protect. He spent the season struggling to find a way to win in what was clearly a hopeless cause, continuing to ignore the calls from selectmen to bring his property in line. They began issuing fines but allowed the stores to stay open out of respect for the jobs they created.

As for the Moriartys, despite their victory, they continued to look for ways to punish Smiley. They put plans in place to build a
new garage on their property by the lake. When finished, it would perfectly block the view of the lake from the Sebec Village Café. Later, Charlene
Moriarty joined the garden club, and one day in the middle of summer
Smiley woke to the sounds of a bulldozer in front of his house. By rights, the town owned the boat landing in front of his property, which for years had been overgrown with smoke bush that screened Smiley’s house from the lake.

Now the town had voted to “beautify” the area, allowing the Sebec Garden Club to remove the shrubbery, plant new grass, and erect an American flag at the landing. Smiley stood at his kitchen window helplessly watching the bulldozers tear through the vegetation, knowing there was nothing he could do to stop it. He grabbed a digital camera and took pictures through the window, one after another, all capturing the same image: the bulldozer by the lake, tearing up his land.

As soon as it was gone, Smiley packed his family into their car and drove away, leaving Sebec behind.

—

THOUGH HIS FIGHT
in Maine was over, he only increased his pace of stealing in order to pay for his continuing debts. Among his targets now was the building where he’d first become a map lover, the New York Public Library. If he had any qualms about ransacking his onetime temple, he suppressed them.
Access couldn’t have been easier. Readers in the map room were required to fill out a separate call slip for each item they wanted to view. But after all the hours Smiley had spent organizing the Slaughter Collection, Hudson and the other staff gave him the leeway they’d give a colleague.

As at Yale, Smiley requested an entire folder on one call slip, saying he had to compare several maps at once. Invariably, he took them to the same table he used to work on the Slaughter maps—the one farthest from the circulation desk. It was easy enough to find a moment when a staff member was answering the phone or helping another patron to fold up a sheet. No one asked him to present his belongings for inspection on the way out. Here he could easily fold up a map and put it in his briefcase with others he’d brought with him, and then walk out without suspicion.

He became increasingly brazen in the maps he stole, including some of enormous size. One, John
Melish’s 1816 map of the United States, was nearly three feet high and five feet wide. The map shows the
outline of a country recognizable as the United States, but with the West left practically blank, waiting for manifest destiny to fill in the details (
Figure 14
). It’s the kind of map that even a non–map lover might covet for his living room. The map is backed on linen squares, each one measuring about half the size of an eight-and-a-half by eleven-inch piece of paper, with small folds between them. Smiley could fold the map into a tight packet and conceal it in a stack of papers or his briefcase.

Another map—of North Carolina by John
Collet—was nearly as large, but it was printed on two sheets without folds. Smiley must have had to create folds for himself, then iron them out later for mounting and sale. The library’s staff never suspected such large materials were missing. Smiley sold the Collet map to a dealer, who
resold it to San Diego map dealer Barry Ruderman. At the Miami map fair that year, Ruderman displayed it framed in his booth, and Smiley and Alice Hudson stood admiring it together. Ruderman listened in as the two discussed how it was one of the rarest and most important maps of the region, done just before the Revolutionary War. “We have an excellent copy of that in our collection,” Hudson said, as Smiley nodded.

Unbeknownst to Hudson at the time, Smiley had also taken another map she treasured—the John
Thornton map of “East and West New Jarsey” she had chosen for her contribution to the Mercator Society’s first book nearly two decades earlier. At the same time, he defaced some of the atlases he had used to learn about antiquarian mapmaking, tearing pages from
Des Barres’s maritime atlas and
William Faden’s Revolutionary War atlas. Not content with just stealing from the map room, he also made his way upstairs to the rare-books collection on the library’s third floor, where, among other books, he ransacked
two editions of Samuel de Champlain’s
Voyages
for their maps.

Even as he was stealing, Smiley continued to compete on the auction floor. At one
auction at Swann Galleries in New York on December 9, 2004, a rare copy of John Smith’s map of New England came up for sale. The copy was the fifth state of the map, circa 1626, and was expected to fetch between $15,000 and $25,000. Smiley bid hard for it, watching as the price climbed above $30,000. Eventually, there were two bidders left, Smiley and a phone bidder. Finally, Smiley dropped out of the running, and the other bidder purchased the map for $36,000 plus 15 percent commission, for a total of $41,400. Though he didn’t know it at the
time, the other bidder was Graham Arader—who had beaten him once again.

The victory was particularly sweet for Arader when he found out about it. Lately, he’d become strident in his criticisms of Smiley. In an e-mail to a client in January 2005, he railed against his rival. “Forbes doesn’t advertise, do shows, issue a catalogue, his checks bounce, he rarely buys at auction, no collectors I know will have anything to do with him,” he wrote. “
He is a crook. A very bright guy with knowledge, but there is NO WAY that he can be getting these maps legally. He stinks.” The collector defended his decision to continue doing business with Smiley. “You need to get beyond your own ego on this and see that it is possible that every other dealer is not a crook or a thief and only you the safe harbor of true value.”

—

EVEN WHILE SMILEY
was struggling to succeed, both legally and illegally, in the map business, he was looking for his own “safe harbor” to replace the one he’d lost in Sebec—a new statement project that could demonstrate his success and provide a refuge for his family. Lisa had long wanted to tear down their dark Vineyard cottage and build a modern home, and Smiley finally gave her his blessing. The Smileys
demolished the home in the summer of 2004, moving into a small one-room studio on the property. That November, they signed a
contract with local contractor David Pizzano to build a house designed by Resolution: 4 Architecture, a New York–based architectural firm that specializes in stylish modular homes.

Watching from afar, his friends Paul Statt and Scott Slater thought it
seemed foolish, even for Smiley, to embark on such a big project so soon after the bruising fight in Sebec. But he threw himself into creating a new home on the Vineyard with all the energy he’d put into Maine. The up-island town of Chilmark was wealthy, but it also retained enough small-town atmosphere to make it feel like a real community, with a quaint general store on the corner and a clam shack down by the water for a local hangout.