1886 Hydrographic Office Map of Manila Bay

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privately funded nautical mapping and publishing left vast portions of the world uncharted and many excellent charts unpublished.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

Captain D. Claudio Montero (1824-1885) was a Spanish naval officer, and head of the Hydrographic and Scientific departments of the Spanish Navy. Upon entering the navy in 1839 at the age of 15, he was promptly tasked with hydrographic projects, clearly being groomed for position as a navigator and chartmaker. In 1845 he was made a Lieutenants, and assigned to the Philippines, where he would remain for a significant part of his military career. In 1856 he was appointed head of the newly-formed Comisión Hidrográfica de Filipinas. Both under his direction, and following it - between 1856 and 1899 - the Comisión published thirty-five nautical charts of the Philippine archipelago. By 1868, he had been appointed major general of the Philippine station, a position he retained until his return to the Spain to receive his 1869 appointment as head Hydrography and Science in the Ministry of the Navy.He continued to focus on Philippine affairs: in 1871, he joined the Philippine Council, of which he would become vice president - and in 1877, he returned to the Philippine Islands, this time as governor of Mindanao and commander of the Naval Division of the South of the Philippines. However, in early 1878, just a few months after his appointment, health problems forced him to submit his resignation in both positions. He returned to sea after his recovery for a time, and held positions as Rear Admiral in Spain and in Havana prior to his death. Learn More...