Bernard Romans ( 1720–1784) was a Dutch-born navigator, surveyor, cartographer, naturalist, engineer, soldier, promoter, and writer who worked in the British American colonies and the United States. His best known work, A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida, published in 1775, is a valuable source of information about the Floridas during the period of British control. His maps and charts are considered better than any produced before, and also for many years after, their publication. Biography Romans was born Barend Romans in Delft, son of Pieter Barendsz Romans and Margareta van der Linden. He was raised and educated there, but emigrated to Great Britain as a youth or young man, and then to British North America around 1757, during the Seven Years' War, known as the French and Indian War in British North America. On March 3, 1761, Romans married Maria Wendel (born 1739) at the Dutch Reformed Church in colonial Albany, New York. A son, Peter Milo Romans, was born in Albany on January 16, 1762, who would marry in 1785 in Albany and have ten children. There is no further record of Maria Wendel Romans, who may have died young. Romans remarried in 1779. By his own account, in about 1761 Bernard Romans entered into the King's service as a commodore, "sometimes at the head of a large body of men in the woods, and at the worst of times ... master of a merchantman, fitted out in a warlike manner." After the war ended, Romans continued to go to sea. He sailed widely, both as a privateer during the war and as a merchant, reaching points as far north as Labrador, and as far south as Curaçao, Cartagena, and Panama. In 1774, Romans was elected to the American Philosophical Society. Travels in the Floridas In 1766–67, he commanded the sloop Mary. On his first voyage, the ship went aground on the Dry Tortugas, but he was able to get the ship off and reach port. On his second voyage, the ship was lost near Cape Florida (Key Biscayne). Having lost much of his personal wealth with the wreck of the Mary, Romans turned to surveying. He obtained employment as deputy surveyor of Georgia. He also accepted private commissions to survey land grants in East Florida, which had come under British control at the end of the French and Indian War. In 1768, Romans became principal