The Admiral’s Eyes

The little pocket notebook is easily missed amongst the Nelson manuscripts in the British Library. In it the admiral noted every alteration of course, with the depth-sounding taken as the Victory came onto a fresh tack, leading the Mediterranean fleet into a new anchorage. The track was also recorded by Mr Thomas Atkinson, master and navigational specialist in the flagship. He was another assiduous collector of hydrographic information, whose notebooks have recently been high-lighted in the archive of Pembroke College, Oxford. Atkinson scribed the final mooring of Victory in Agincourt Sound on a manuscript chart which survives in the archive of the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office. It had been drawn up by Captain Ryves of Agincourt, adding his observations to an earlier survey by a Royal Naval captain, carefully delineating safe water for the cumbersome sailing warships of that period. These pathfinders appreciated the operational advantage provided by an anchorage on the flank of the Strait of Bonifacio with exits at west and east. It was there that Nelson received news that the French fleet had sailed from Toulon. He was soon in pursuit. The Trafalgar campaign was underway.

This is just one example which belies the received wisdom amongst some at the time, and in many subsequent history books, that the Royal Navy showed neither interest in, nor aptitude in, hydrography. My researches amongst overlooked documents in the archives have revealed that over 350 Royal Naval personnel made surveys during the wars of 1793-1815 and their tumultuous aftermath. Throughout his commands, Nelson encouraged hydrographic intelligence gathering. He tasked his junior officers with survey work under the tutelage of Thomas Atkinson, and promoted the most promising ones into ships with captains who shared his insight. In 1801 he told Alexander Briarly, the master who marked the shoals around which the British squadron manoeuvred at the opening of the Battle of Copenhagen, that he had witnessed to the Prime Minister, no less, of his indebtedness to his skills.

Nelson was by no means the only senior officer to encourage hydrographic practitioners. Successive senior officers on the East Indies station gave their patronage to skilled and active officers. William Cornwallis, who grabbed opportunities to take part personally in boat surveys in the Andaman Islands, spotted the talent of Jane Austen’s brother Francis, who had completed a rigorous mathematical syllabus at the Naval College in Portsmouth. Peter Rainier employed two young men who had served with William Bligh in Bounty. Thomas Hayward was deployed to patrol and explore the waters in which he had survived two open boat voyages, the first with Bligh after the mutiny, the second following the shipwreck of Pandora. Tragically, he did not survive when his little command, the ship-sloop Swift, vanished in a typhoon. Peter Heywood, the pardoned mutineer, did survive heavy weather off Timor, where he took copious soundings on which today’s charts are still based. He went on to distinguish himself in campaigns in the Mediterranean, English Channel and River Plate, rendering many surveys from the front line.

Sir Joseph Banks was a powerful advocate for officers who had served in the Pacific voyages of Cook and Vancouver, urging their tasking for surveys on the coast of the counties that were vulnerable to invasion and also with the squadrons blockading enemy bases on the opposite shores. William Bligh and William Broughton rendered observations from the approaches to the Scheldt. Admiral Keith, flag officer on station, was only too ready to employ fellow Scotsmen John Murray and James Johnstone. They had benefitted from the educational system north of the border, which gave every pupil a grounding in mathematics. Thomas Hurd, a most significant figure in this story, had acquired survey skills on the eastern seaboard of North America, working with army surveyors after the end of the Seven Years War. His subsequent performance of the task of surveying the channels in the complex reef system of the Bermuda archipelago, enabling the establishment of a naval base, commended him to the Admiralty.

He was their choice to perform an urgent front-line survey in response to the loss of a 74-gun ship of the line amongst the rocks and skerries of the Ushant archipelago, which Admiral Collingwood, in command of the blockade of Brest, judged to present ‘more danger than a battle once a week’. Hurd’s work was of a higher calibre than the simple sketch surveys of many of the practitioners. He established a control scheme, landing with his theodolite to observe on islets and rocks within sight of the enemy batteries. This was the framework to plot his soundings and produce a chart that enabled the Inshore Squadron to tighten the vice of the blockade, whilst the channels that he delineated were used by smaller vessels to swoop on French convoys and starve the fleet in Brest of vital supplies. His work earned him appointment as Hydrographer to the Board of Admiralty.

In this role Hurd lost no time in urging the realisation of a vision that had been consolidated during the work off Brest. He had had to work from borrowed boats and train their crews. He had no skilled assistant. He would urge that a cadre of skilled men be formed and provided with their own specially equipped ships and boats. He argued that there were plenty of candidates in the Fleet, and he was alert for the incoming products that identified them. In the peak year of incoming surveys, 1809, there were major campaigns underway in testing waters, in the Baltic, the Low Countries, the Iberian peninsula, and the River Plate. As well as confirming the skills of men such as Francis Austin and Peter Heywood, Hurd spotted new talent, commending a survey by Mr George Thomas as the best that had landed on his desk since he took office. An extraordinarily detailed survey by Lieutenant Martin White, commanding the guardship at the strategic island of Jersey, also caught his eye. Both men would become leading lights in the new specialisation when Hurd’s vision was fulfilled. So too would Anthony De Mayne, who, to the Hydrographer’s delight, was appointed surveyor on the staff of the commanding admiral on the US coast during the war of 1812.

Before Hurd’s death in 1823, there had been ample opportunity to fulfil his prediction that his officers with ‘scientific merits’ would tackle ‘the deficiency of our nautical knowledge’ as they deployed as servants of a ‘great Maritime Empire, whose flag flies triumphant in every part of the world’. They took leading roles in the famous polar voyages, and were present in the squadrons combatting piracy and the slave trade, as well as launching the intensive examination of Home Waters. He had laid the foundation of the specialisation which would underpin the reputation of the British Admiralty Chart scheme with its world-wide coverage. The pathfinders remained an essential element of the fighting fleet. When Francis Beaufort as Hydrographer despatched instructions to his survey captains in the Baltic and Black Sea at the outset of the mid-century war with Russia, he urged them to be ‘the Admiral’s Eyes’, expressing his confidence that through them the commanders would see all that they needed to see. In both theatres, surveys and pilotage in their little paddle-steamers earned commendation for men such as Henry Otter, whose skills had been honed in the complex waters of Scotland. Meanwhile, as Professor Andrew Lambert has observed, back in Whitehall, the Hydrographer and his staff were key players in discussions of high strategy.

Recent publicity during the celebration of the 80th anniversary of D-day, has high-lighted similar activity by front-line practitioners in covert survey of the approaches to the landing beaches, whilst counterparts in the Hydrographic Department were amassing vital tidal data and preparing special charts. It had been necessary, as in World War One, for lessons to be relearned. All surveying ships and their personnel had been allocated to other duties at the outbreak of war. It was not long before their skills were missed. During the Suez crisis the surveying ship in the Mediterranean was commandeered for other work, but rapidly re-tasked in her true role. No future Task Force, the senior officer declared, should be without a surveying ship. This lesson was forgotten at the outset of the Falklands Crisis. My urging that one of the ships in my surveying squadron should sail with the task force bound for Sierra Leone in 2000 was rejected. ‘Too slow to keep up’. Beagle was rapidly deployed when the inadequate knowledge of coastal waters hampered operations. Prolonged arguments in Whitehall over acquisition of new surveying ships had barely been won, when Roebuck, the only available allied hull for the task, surveyed the approaches for the amphibious landings in Iraq in 2003. The First Sea Lord commented that: ‘To one of the smallest ships in the Royal Navy befell one of the largest tasks of the operation’. Thomas Hurd’s arguments and experience are worth revisiting today, as future front-line hydrographic surveyors compete for task time in multi-role auxiliary vessels.

Michael Barritt is a former Hydrographer of the Navy and the author of Nelson’s Pathfinders: A Forgotten Story in the Triumph of British Sea Power