Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt (May 11, 1811 - March 12, 1888) was an English Royal Navy officer, hydrographer, and geologist active throughout the 19th century. Spratt was born in Woodway House, a gentlemanly estate in East Teignmouth, Devon, England. He was the eldest surviving son of Royal Navy Commander James Sprat, a hero of the Battle of Traflagar. He joined the Royal Navy in 1827, at 16, and was taught surveying on board the HMS Victory. Spratt was assigned to survey the Mediterranean, working with various officers, but most notably Thomas Graves, with whom he produced a revolutionary map of the Troada, subsequently known as 'Spratt's Map,' which led directly to Schliemann's discovery of Troy. Subsequently he befriended Edward Forbes, an English naturalist, with whom he published Travels in Lycia. Spratt was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of the work. He was Kent's Commissioner of Fisheries from 1866 to 1873; and acting conservator of the River Mersey from 1879 until his death at Tunbridge Wells in 1888. More by this mapmaker...

Thomas Graves (1802 - August 28, 1856) was a Northern Irish office in the Royal Navy and gentleman scholar. Graves was born in Belfast and joined the Royal navy in 1816. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1827 by Philip Parker King of the HMS Adventure, under whom he learnt surveying at the South America Station. He was promoted to Lieutenant-Commander in 1836, given command of the HMS Mastiff, and assigned to survey work in the Mediterranean. He was joined on this post to Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt (May 11, 1811 - March 12, 1888), with whom he mapped the Troada is stunning detail in search of the, then lost, city of Tory. In 1840 the Pair produced 'Spratt's Map,' as it came to be known, which led directly to Schliemann's discovery of Tory. Graves' next ship, from 1841, also in the Mediterranean, was as Commander of the HMS Beacon. With the Beacon, Graves was assigned to transport the Xanthian Obelisk from the Lycian coast to England. In 1846 he was assigned to command the HMS Ceylon, again in the Mediterranean. In 1853 he was made Superintendent of Ports at Malta. Graves died in Malta on August 28, 1856, from a wound inflicted by Maltese boatman Giuseppe Meli, who was later tried for Graves's murder. Learn More...

The British Admiralty Office (1795 - Present) or the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office refers to the Branch of the English government that is responsible for the command of the British Navy. In 1795 King George III created the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, known in short as the U.K.H.O., to provide top notch nautical charts to the vast Royal Navy. Prior the founding of the Admiralty the surveying and creation of nautical charts was primarily a commercial venture wherein the cartographer himself, more of than not, actually financed the printing of his own material. The great navigator Cook himself is known to have scrambled for funds to publish his own seminal charts - the most important and advanced of the period. The system of privately funded nautical mapping and publishing left vast portions of the world uncharted and many excellent charts unpublished. King George III, responding significant loss in trade revenue related to shipwrecks and delay due to poor charts, recognized the need for an institutionalized government sponsored cartographic agency - the Admiralty. The first head of the Admiralty, a position known as Hydrographer, was the important cartographer Alexander Dalrymple. Dalrymple started by organizing and cataloging obtainable charts before initiating the laborious process of updating them and filling in the blanks. The first official Admiralty Chart appeared in 1800 and detailed Quiberon Bay in Brittany. By 1808 the position of Hydrographer fell to Captain Thomas Hurd. Hurd advocated the sale of Admiralty charts to the general public and, by the time he retired in 1829, had issued and published some 736 charts. Stewardship of the organization then passed to Rear Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort. It was under Beaufort's administration that the Admiralty truly developed as a "chart making" as opposed to a "chart cataloging" institution. Beaufort held his post from 1829 to 1854. In his 25 years at the Admiralty Beaufort created nearly 1500 new charts and sponsored countless surveying and scientific expeditions - including the 1831 to 1836 voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle. By 1855 the Admiralty's chart catalog listed some 1,981 charts. Learn More...