Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
CHART BY NELSON: Horatio Nelson, while a more junior officer, proved himself a competent
chart-maker, as we see in part of a manuscript survey of St John's in the Virgin Islands, dated 1784.
Official British sea charts were not printed until the 19th century. Before then, ships' cap-
tains had to buy their own, and commercial map publishers vied to provide charts for mar-
iners, as well as atlases for gentlemen's libraries. A chart of the Arctic from one of the latter
is shown
White on white
, which has much decorative detail, but little practical value to the
seafarer.
The Admiralty sponsored voyages of exploration, and charts for many of these great jour-
neys are in the archives. Char t-making was part of a British naval officer's training, refined
by long years at sea, and in some notable cases by a lineage of survey experience. James
Cook 's voyages in the Pacific (1768-1779) are the most famous of these (see
Discoveries
of the
Resolution
)
; Cook trained George Vancouver, who made an epic survey of America's
north-west coast, and William Bligh, who charted from the
Bounty
and the
Providence
(see
After the Mutiny
). On Bligh's successful breadfruit voyage Matthew Flinders served as mid-
shipman, learning skills useful for his survey of the Australian coast in 1801-1803. Flinders
trained his nephew John Franklin on that circumnavigation. Franklin was a friend of William
Parry (see
White on white
), and they both searched for a North-West Passage in the frozen
Arctic in the 1820s.
From 1800, the newly-established Hydrographic Office published Admiralty charts, aimed
to be authoritative and up-to-date navigation aids for the Royal Navy and other mariners.
Fewer manuscript charts were made after this, as navigators simply added hand-written in-
formation about the business at hand to their printed charts. From medieval portolan to pre-
war printed Admiralty chart - six centuries of seafaring are represented here. While some of
these charts stayed at home, many arrived here from afar, survivors of the rigours of life at
sea. They bear witness to long, tedious hours in fog and becalmed waters, subject to tides and
gales, and to the skill and adventures of their makers.
