6 INTRODUCTORY 



Indian Marine Survey did not go very much beyond 

 surveying the coasts for the actual necessities of 

 navigation and commerce. 



Though the Investigator and the present Marine 

 Survey of India are quite modern institutions, the 

 surveying of Indian waters is an old undertaking/^ 

 Between 1832 and 1862, when that service was 

 abolished, many valuable marine surveys were executed 

 by officers of the Indian Navy, whose bird's-eye view, 

 like that of Little Billee on the maintopgallant mast, 

 in Thackeray's ballad, almost literally ranged from 

 Jerusalem to Madagascar. Indian naval surveyors 

 carried on their operations from the upper reaches of 

 the Tigris and Euphrates, and the ruins of Nineveh 

 and Babylon, to the coral-reefs of the Seychelles ; and 

 it was one of these officers, Lieutenant John Wood, 

 who discovered the sources of the Oxus. 



But before the days of the Indian Navy, excellent 

 surveys of eastern waters, from the Red Sea to 

 China, had at various times been made by the officers 

 of the Bombay Marine — an extinct service, out of 

 which the Indian Navy was evolved in 1832. Among 

 the surveying ships of this time was an old In- 

 vestigator, long since broken up and, except that she 

 gave her name to some obscure channels in the 

 Mergui Archipelago, forgotten. 



See A Memoir on the Indian Surveys^ by Sir Clements 

 Markliam, published by the Secretary of State for India. 



