iivDRoc.KAiMi i;r s ni:i'ARTM i:nt ok the admiralty. T,J^ 



Uic precautions mentioned by Dumpier. The instruments used 

 vere the compass, cross staff and astrolabe, log and hour-glass, 

 tOllowed by the vernier and quadrant, but I cannot here dwell 

 lip-on them, in 1599 Edward Wright invented the method of 

 r. lukino- charts which is called the projection of Alercator. 



In K)75 (Greenwich Observatory was established, and I'lam- 

 steed was placed in charge. The Government provided no in- 

 struments whatever, and all he had to start with were, one iron 

 sextant of 7 feet radius, a quadrant of 3 feet radius ( the old form 

 without mirrors), two small telescopes, two clocks, and Tycho 

 Brahe's catalogue of y// stars, nearly 100 years old. He did 

 valual)le work, and was succeeded, in 1720, by Halley (the Caj)- 

 lain Halley mentioned by Dampier), who held the position until 

 1742. 



The ([uadrant or sextant, in its present form, was invented 

 l)y John Hadley and Sir Isaac Newton, about 1731, and inde- 

 pendently by lliomas (Godfrey, a poor glazier, in Pliiladelphia. 



Until tiii.s time [as it is quaintly put] all instruments in u^c at sea 

 for measuring angles either depended on a pluml)line or re(|uired the 

 ohserver to look in two directions at once. 



The chronometer was invented bv John Harrison, about 

 1735. and the first Nautical Almanac was I'ublished by Nevil 

 Maskelyne. in 1766. 



In 1714 the body known as the Commission for the Dis- 

 covery of Longitude at Sea was established, and it is to them that 

 we owe all that was done by England for the suryey of coasts, 

 both at home and abroad, prior to the establishment of the Hydro- 

 graphic De])artment of the Admiralty, in 1795. This Commis- 

 sion also bore ])art of the expense of Ca])tain Cook's voyages and 

 of the pul)lication of their results.* This great seaman and 

 greatest of nayigators 



Was the founder of modern marine surveying and possessed qualifica- 

 liiins rarely comhined in . one man, which place him hrst on the roll of 

 maritime disco\-erers not onl\' in his time, hut for all time. He has no 

 equal and >tands alone. I 



()thers followed. Bligh, of the Bounty. I'hipps, Vancouver, 

 and many others, of whom perhaps the greatest were Matthew 

 Flinders and (ieorge Bass. The former 



Did his work on the Australian Coast so thoroughly that he left 

 comparatively little for his successors to do. 



In 1796 the two of them, with one boy, surveyed a considerable 

 stretch of the New South Wales Coast, in the Tuiii Thumb, a 

 boat 8 feet long, and in 1798 Bass explored 600 miles of the same 

 coast, in very tempestuous weather, in a whale boat, with a crew 

 of five convicts. Later, in the sloop Norfolk, they circumnavi- 

 gated Tasmania for the hrst time. 



* .\ppendix 111. 

 t C. R. Markham. 



