“Nothing therefore can be more necessary or essential to the improvement of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, than an accurate survey of the fishing grounds, lochs, and harbours, upon a scale considerably larger than Mackenzie’s charts, given in the form of a book of the size of a large quarto, containing only the lochs, etc., interleaved with printed directions and descriptions of each chart or harbour, which book of charts, accompanied with a general chart would sufficiently guide the mariner and fisher in their several pursuits.
“With regard to an accurate survey of the lochs and harbours in the Highlands published in the most commodious form for the use of small vessels, such an undertaking would require to be sanctioned in a manner similar to the survey undertaken by Murdoch Mackenzie, and though in process of time the sale of these charts might produce a considerable return to those concerned with it, yet the time and attention which such (with a laborious number of soundings) must occupy would certainly require that those concerned in the undertaking should be put in possession of certain sums of money to enable them to go on with that deliberation which is essential to accuracy, and this encouragement should be the more considerable that the charts might be procured to the public at a moderate price.”
This Memorial, written in 1803, was intended for and in some shape communicated to the Admiralty, and was followed by good results.
In “A Memoir of the Hydrographical Department of the Admiralty,” published in 1868,[13] are the following remarks:--“It was about this time,” 1810, “that the Admiralty first conferred on the Hydrographer the privilege of selecting a surveyor for the _home coasts_. Singular as it may appear, the Hydrographer had at this time great difficulty in finding a naval officer competent to fill the position, or who was acquainted with anything beyond surveying by common compass. At length, however, about 1811, Mr. George Thomas, a master, was selected” for home service. The Memoir also states that at the same time the Hydrographer appointed to foreign service Mr. Beaufort, afterwards Sir Francis Beaufort, the eminent Hydrographer to the Admiralty, who was, all his life, Mr. Stevenson’s intimate friend and constant correspondent.