Nelson’s Pathfinders: A Forgotten Story in the Triumph of British Sea Power

260 pages

David Childs

I have always marvelled, when sailing past Ushant, how a British fleet could have so successfully blockaded the French in Brest while having to navigate and pilot this rock-strewn hostile coast.  What I had never considered was the effort that had to be made to provide the ships with adequate charts to keep them safe from the islands, reefs and shoals with which these waters are encumbered. This book shames my ignorance, by explaining how and by whom those charts were created and thus rebalances my admiration for the seamanship of the Masters and Commanders by highlighting the incredible dedication of the handful of skilled hydrographers who charted these waters often under the noses of the enemy and thus deserve at least equal credit for the success of the enterprise. Their labour, until now hidden like the shoals off Ushant, has been exposed brilliantly in this work by a former Hydrographer of the Navy.

The hero is Captain Thomas Hurd, appointed Hydrographer in 1808, in succession of Alexander Dalrymple, who, in 1804, had worked the waters off Brest in a small, oared boat, whose very motion in the spray and the swell worked against the taking of accurate measurements. The result was a series of charts accompanied by pragmatic sailing directions but also, equally important, the highlighting of areas which still needed to be entered with caution.

Although Ushant is the major focus for telling the story of hydrography during its infancy and the Napoleonic wars the author covers in commendable detail all other regions where the British fleet was operating and needed vital navigational intelligence. Painstakingly, this was gathered in, providing the detail necessary to launch amphibious operations, bombardments, offshore engagements and, of course, blockades, in every sea and ocean, making surveying vessels, in the words of one First Lord, “the Pioneers of the Fighting Fleet”. So, if I were to offer any criticism of the work it would be its very title for Hurd, and the skilled and dedicated teams that carried out these global surveys, were not just Pathfinders for Nelson, whose career takes up very little space in the publication, but for the whole of the Royal Navy operating world-wide.

And so it remains today. Despite several cut-backs, the service that Hurd championed has retained this pre-eminent role with HMS Roebuck, deployed up-threat in the Gulf War to pathfind a route to Umm Qasr, earning the accolade from the First Sea Lord that, “To one of the smallest ships in the Royal Navy befell one of the largest tasks of the operation”.  The story needs to be told, so that ignoramuses like me, can be enlightened and thus appreciate the contribution made by this brilliant but bashful arm of the Service.

Every reader of the NR will be aware of the preamble to the Articles of War issued by Charles II which state that: “It is upon the navy under the good Providence of God that the safety, honour, and welfare of this realm do chiefly depend”.

Perhaps, having finished this book, the reader might wish to add as a codicil the words written by Thomas Hurd in 1818, that: “Your Lordships cannot but be aware that it is upon the talents and attention of the Head of this Office and those employed under him, that the success of the enterprises, and the safety of the Navy most materially depends”.