Marrin's Bookshop

Item Description

FIRST EDITION. 8vo. 8.75 x 5.75 inches. xi + [1] + 388 pp. Bound in original grey cloth, gilt, in unclipped pictorial dust wrapper, which has a few stains on rear wrapper and chips at head and tail of spine; otherwise a very good copy. Illustrated by frontispiece, by ten pages of black and white plates and by 12 maps in text, including 2 double page. A history of nineteenth century naval hydrography, including the Admiralty Hydrographic Department and the Surveying Service, whose function was to provide up to date Admiralty charts for the navy and merchant marine. It includes the figures of Vancouver, Flinders, Franklin, Beaufort, Darwin and Wharton and describes surveying work in the North Pacific, around Africa, Australia and the Antipodes, South America and the UK itself, the N.W. Passage and the Arctic. Rear Admiral George Stephen Ritchie (1914-1912) had a long career aboard naval surveying vessels and was appointed Hydrographer of the Navy, 1966-71.