Discussions of early modern English maps and sea charts have tended to focus on ahistorical questions of accuracy and progress in mapping. This emphasis on the assessment of the ‘quality’ of information contained in maps has often obscured the diverse range of people, activities and locations involved in the creation of these objects. In particular, the increase in Atlantic voyages for discovery and trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries provided opportunities for the collection of information for maps. This paper aims to begin to re-insert maps and charts into this Atlantic context, and will consider the role of ‘New World’ sources of information in a series of maps and charts of the Atlantic published in London 1660-1714. Looking predominantly at English-made maps as well as sea captain’s journals and mariner’s observations, this paper will also question the traditional condemnation of some English map-makers as ‘plagiarists’. Instead it will suggest that the practice of exchange or use of information from international sources was a fundamental aspect of map and chart production in the late seventeenth century. Firstly it will discuss map-maker William Hack’s manuscript atlas of the South Seas produced from Spanish sources in 1685, and secondly, Sir John Narborough’s voyage to the South Seas in 1669, his hand-drawn maps, and map-maker William Thornton’s chart of the Magellan Straits in 1673. These stories will contribute to discussions of how some forms of natural knowledge were created at significant geographical distance from what have been seen as traditional centres of ‘science’.