'History of the Indian Navy. (1613-1863).' [‎424] (443/622)

424
HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY.
the survey of Chagos and Seychelles' groups; Powell and
Ethersey from the Gulf of Manaar and Coast of Gevlon: Haines
from the Arabian Coast; Carless and Barker from the African
Coast, the latter leaving a portion at the very entrance to the
Red Sea, which has remained unsurveyed for upwards of thirty
years. I was more recently recalled from the Gulf of Cutch, on
the accession to office of Sir Henry Leeke ; the result was that
a part of the entrance of that Gulf still remains unexamined.
Under such management it is only natural to find the work too
often disjointed and incompleted The want of a permanent
central office in India for the regulation of marine surveys, and
for the deposit, reproduction, and publication of the charts, was
another defect of the old system, and has caused the loss or
suppression of many valuable documents, including Captain
McCluer's original charts of the Malabar Coast on a large scale;
those also of the Red Sea, and others. From the same defect,
each of the Indian Navy officers engaged on detached duty
under the Governments of Bengal and Madras, handed in their
work to the Presidency The name given to each of the three divisions of the territory of the East India Company, and later the British Raj, on the Indian subcontinent. under which they were serving, and
seldom forwarded copies of their work to the head-quarters at
Bombay. Many of the originals are not now forthcoming, nor
are copies of some to be found."t
All this mismanagement and loss of manuscript surveys,
made at great cost, might have been obviated by the adoption
of the system which had always been in existence as regards
land surveys, namely, the placing of the Department under a
# Regarding the faulty conditions under which the officers of the Service con
tinued to work even up to the last. Lieutenant Taylor stated before the Bombay
Greographical Society (vol. xv., 1860) that " in no one instance were the survey
ors supplied with means of carrying on simultaneously all the inquiries which
one naturally expects from a scientific survey, when, at a trifling expense, such
inquiries should have been pursued." Again, in an official memorandum addressed
to the Hydrographer, Captain Washington, R.JST., at the close of the Indian Sur
veys in 1862, it is also recorded " that no steamer had ever been fitted out for
the Indian Surveys, and that the actual vessels on the Bombay side were ill-
adapted for the service. The supply of instruments (October, i860) was very
deficient both in quantity and quality. The chronometers were not of the best
class, being mostly old. No sextants fitted for accurate shore observations, and
no pocket chronometers or watches, were to be had."
f The following are some of the surveys made by officers of the Indian Navy,
but never published;—1. Large scale plan of Masireh Island and Straits, by
Sanders and Grieve, 1846. 2. Plan of Makullah, by Haines, 1835. 3. Large
scale plans of Khor Jeramah, Bunder K heir an, and Bunder Jezzar, by Lieutenant
Grieve, 1848-9. 4. Plan of the Deimaniyeh group, by Commander Constable
and Lieutenant Stiffe, 1858. 5. Chart of Soonmianee and Kurrachee Bays, by
Captain Carless, 1838. 6. Plans of Porebunder and Yeraweel Roads, by Lieu
tenants Constable and Stiffe, 1853. 7. Beyt Harbour; corrections to 1859, by
Lieutenant Taylor. 8. Captain Selby's Chronometric Measurements between
Minicoy and the Malabar Coast, and chart of the currents of that part of the
sea, 9. Chart of Hooringottah River, by Lieutenant Sweny. 10. Mouths of
the Indus from Hajamri to Waree, by Captain Selby and Lieutenants Tajlor
and Stroyan. 11. Charts of Sittang and Irrawaddy Rivers, by Lieutenant
Ward. 12. Shatt-ul-Arab, made by Captain Felix Jones and Lieutenant
Collingwood.