Vincente Tofiño de San Miguel (September 6, 1732 - 1795) was a Spanish naval officer and hydrographer active in the second half of the 18th century. Tofiño was born in Cadiz, Spain. His father, a career army officer, died in the 1746 Battle of Placentia, leaving Vincente an orphan from age 14. He moved to Extremadura where his uncle, a priest, raised him. In 1750, following in his father's footsteps, he joined the army. Having discovered a proficiency in mathematics, Tofiño was assigned to an artillery unit. In 1755, moving from the army to the navy, where his skills were better suited, he became a professor of mathematics at the Academia de Guardia Marinas de Cádiz. He would remain in the navy for the subsequent 30 years, ultimately attaining the rank of Rear Admiral. Between 1783 and 1788, as a navy officer, astronomer, and hydrographer, he was deployed to survey the Mediterranean ports of Spain, the Balearic Islands, and the Barbary Coast. He trained the explorers Dionisio Alcalá Galiano and Cayetano Valdés y Flores Bazán, who named Tofino Inlet, in Vancouver, after him. Tofiño was elected correspondent of the Spanish Academy of History and of the French and Portuguese Academies of Science. He died in Cadiz in 1795. More by this mapmaker...

Charles Pierre Claret, Comte de Fleurieu (July 2, 1738 - August 18, 1810) was a French explorer, and hydrographer. He served in the French Navy from the age of 13, campaigned in the Seven Years' War, and quickly became regarded an officer of distinction and intelligence. By 1765 he was engaged under Ferdinand Berthoud in the French efforts to produce a marine chronometer, the great 18th century arms race against Britain to determine a method to calculate longitude at sea. He was in command of an expedition aboard the frigate Isisin order to test Berthoud's chronometers at sea between autumn 1768 and October 1769 (as well as to observe the transit of Venus of June 3, 1769). By 1776 Fleurieu had been named capitaine de vaisseau,  and he was made director of ports and arsenals in 1777 by Louis XVI. He directed nearly all planning for French naval operations in the during the American Revolution, and all the French voyages of discovery during that period (including, for example, those of La Perouse). He continued to flourish under the Ancien Regime, but oddly his decades of loyal service seem to have been overlooked during the French Revolution which - as well as the Reign of Terror - he survived. He was able to return to service as a member of the Bureau des longitudes and became a member of the Institute de France, After the fall of Robespierre he was made a member of the Bureau des longitudes and of the Institut after M. de Bougainville's resignation in 1795. In 1797 (year V) he was elected deputy for the Seine in the Council of Ancients under the name Claret-Fleurieu. He remained so until the coup d'état of 18 Fructidor when he was excluded from the Council. He was elected a member of the Conseil d'État on 24 December 1799, and during the French First Empire he would become a successful politician until his sudden death in 1810. Learn More...

Dépôt des Cartes et Plans de la Marine (fl. 1720 - present), often called the Dépôt de Marine, was a French hydrographic mapping organization founded in 1720 under Charles-Hercule of Albert de Luynes (1674 - 1734). Much like the U.S. Coast Survey, the British Admiralty, and the Spanish Deposito Hydrografico, the Dépôt was initiated as a storehouse and distribution center of existing nautical and marine charts. Eventually the Dépôt initiated its own mapping activities in an attempt to improve and expand upon existing material. Some of the more prominent cartographers and hydrographers associated with the of Dépôt des Cartes were, Philippe Buache, Jacques-Nicholas Bellin, Giovanni Rizzi-Zannoni, Rigobert Bonne, and Jean Nicolas Buache. Learn More...