1966 Admiralty / Belcher Nautical Chart Map of Hong Kong

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of privately funded nautical mapping and publishing left vast portions of the world uncharted and many excellent charts unpublished.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. More by this mapmaker...

Sir Edward Belcher (February 27, 1799 – March 18, 1877) was a British naval officer, scientist, explorer, and marine surveyor active in the middle part of the 19th century. Belcher was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to a proud seafaring family. He entered the Royal Navy in 1812, at just 13 years of age. Thirteen years later, in 1825, he was assigned as official surveyor to the Frederick William Beechey expedition to the Pacific and the Bering Strait. By 1836 he was in command of his own surveying (and bombing) ship, the H.M.S. Sulphur in western Africa and the Pacific coast of South America. The Sulphur was ordered back to England via the Trans-Pacific Route in 1839. On the way, he was delayed and reassigned to China to take part in the First Opium War (1839 – 1842). During this period, on January 26 of 1841, he landed on Possession Point on the northern shore of Hong Kong Island. During this visit he made the influential first British survey of Hong Kong Harbor. On returning to England he was Knighted for his services and reassigned to the HMS Samarang to complete survey work throughout the East Indies, but most specifically in the Philippines. In 1852 he commanded the last and largest Admiralty expedition in search of the lost Arctic Explorer Sir John Franklin. The expedition had five ships, four of which were lost to the Arctic ice. Like all British naval officers who lose a ship, he was court-martialed on his return to England. Although exonerated, he never received another command. He died in London at the age of 78. Belcher is commemorated in Hong Kong through Belcher's Street, Belcher Bay and The Belcher's in Kennedy Town. His name is also commemorated in the Belcher Islands, in the Canadian Arctic. He is also commemorated with a plaque in the Admiralty Garden. Following his last active service, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1867 and an admiral in 1872. Learn More...