OTTAWA - Canada has had its own Hydrographic Service for about 80 years, but hydrography in Canada is, of course, much older than that, reaching back to the beginnings of French and British exploration in the New World along the Atlantic coast. John Cabot, the first of the great explorers touching on our shores, was also the first to prepare a map - unfortunately, not sufficiently accurate to permit his voyages to be traced with certainty. But in the 16th century charts began to appear which bore a reasonable resemblance to the Atlantic coastlines, and by the time of Samuel de Champlain, who in 1604-7 surveyed Nova Scotia and the Bay of Fundy, charting had advanced sufficiently to provide seafarers with an indispensable tool.

Champlain was, in fact, the first great cartographer of Canada, and also the first great hydrographer, since in those days practically all travel and charting was done by water. Francis Parkman, the noted chronicler of North American history, says of him: "The untiring Champlain, exploring, surveying, sounding, . . . made charts of all the principal roads and harbors . . . busied himself throughout the voyage with taking observations , making charts, and studying the wonders of land and sea . . . It was a result of (his voyages) that precision and clearness began at last to supplant the vagueness, confusion, and contradiction of the earlier map-makers." Copies of Champlain's maps are preserved in many institutions, among them the Public Archives of Canada. The last one, dating from 1632, shows all the islands and inlets of Canada's Atlantic coast in generally accurate proportions, except that the northern half of Nova Scotia is too narrow and the southern too wide, as is the isthmus connecting Nova Scotia to the mainland.

Relatively little is known of French charting along the Canadian Atlantic coasts in the century preceding the British conquest. The cartographer Jean Deshayes mapped the St. Lawrence River and Gulf toward the end of the 17th century, and Jacques Nicolas Belling issued a large number of marine charts, including a number of Canada, in his Neptune Francais in 1753, charts which were to serve seafarers until Canada came into British possession.

British cartography along the Atlantic coast started in earnest with the beginning of the Seven Years' War. In order to carry the war into New France, the British navy was in urgent need of reliable aids to navigation, and several officers showing an aptitude for the job were pressed into mapping. Outstanding among them were Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres, Samuel Holland, and James Cook, who was later to acquire immortal fame in the exploration of the Pacific Ocean. The three men were working in newly founded Halifax, evaluating French charts which had fallen into British hands at the capture of Louisbourg and mapping the fortress itself, Later they also charted the St. Lawrence River and Gulf in preparation for the expedition against Quebec City,

After the fall of Quebec, Captain Cook returned to the coast and was given the task of charting Newfoundland waters, which occupied him for several years. Charles Morris, Chief Surveyor to the Governor of Nova Scotia, charted Halifax Harbour, Sambro Islands, Mahone Bay, Port Mutton, Port Senior, Port Metway as well as long stretches of coastline "with all the Islands, Shoals, and Ledges of Rocks and Sound- ings" in the early 1760s. Other charts of the Atlantic coast were drawn by Cook's assistants, William Parker and Michael Lane. Holland was appointed Surveyor General of Quebec and the Northern District of North America, and under his direction much mapping was carried out. It is clear that, in those days, no distinction was made between topo- graphic and hydrographic mapping, and surveyors switched from one to the other.

The grand old man of Atlantic coast charting was undoubtedly J. F. W. Des Barres, born in Switzerland and trained in England. Des Barres, by all accounts, was what is usually known as 'a character'.

Haughty, unbending, even selfish, a confirmed bachelor, he may easily have been the greatest hydrographer of his time. A British Admiralty publication says of him: "In a century of great marine surveyors, . . . Des Barres, for all his faults, stands pre-eminent. . . . For skill and versatility as both surveyor and draughtsman, he had no equal. The accuracy of his charting, often carried out under conditions of imminent danger, is matched only by the delicacy and balance of his compositions."

The mass of charts and sailing directions left by Des Barres is truly impressive. Compiled in his Atlantic Neptune 1777 (the term 'neptune' was applied to any collection of charts covering a given area), they numbered at least 250 separate sheets, Many of them were later amended and reissued, The Public Archives have 171 different plates and a total of 735 issues, of which 442 are variations. It must be admitted that some of the charts in the Neptune were originally compiled by others and later appropriated by Des Barres. Among the most dangerous undertakings was the charting of Sable Island, which took two years, during which Des Barres and his crew were in almost constant dange r of shipwreck.

It is interesting to compare one of Des Barres' charts with a modern one published by the Canadian Hydrographic Service. In the Public Archives' collection there is a chart of Halifax Harbour pub- lished by Des Barres in April, 1781, at a scale of about 1/2 mile to the inch. The chart has an elliptic inset containing written directions for finding one's way safely into the harbor, a panoramic view of the shore as seen from the open sea as a further aid to mariners, and a smeller view of the slender lighthouse on "Lighthouse Islandm, now Sambro. McNab Island was called "Cornwallis" by Des Barres, and Lawlor Island was "Bloss". Chebucto Head, whose name has survived unchanged, should be given "a Birth of 1QO fathoms". On the site of the present Dartmouth (also unchanged in name) only a few fields appear. What is remarkable is the almost complete agreement between Des Barres' soundings -- which are numerous -- and those on the modern chart. This evidences both the early hydrographer's competence and thoroughness and the absence of heavy silting during the past 180 years, one of the qualities which distinguish Halifax Harbour.

As to the city itself, another chart of Des Barres, published in 1779 when Halifax was 30 years old, shows the built-up area to be about two miles long along the waterfront. A small square fortifica- tion -- perhaps no more than a tower -- is drawn on the site of the Citadel, but a more substantial defence work, facing landward, occupies the site above the dockyard, A "Fresh Water River" falls into the harbor where the Ocean Terminals are now. Much in evidence are several batteries -- "nine gun battery", "thirteen gun batteryw, "governor's battery" -- and several breweries. A fortification is also shown on George's Island.

Des Barres was later appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Cape Breton, and Sydney was founded under his direction. In the early years of the 19th century he became Lieutenant-Governor and Commander in Chief of Prince Edward Island, but his record as a politician and administrator is less outstanding than that as a hydrographer. He lived to a ripe 103.

With Des Barres the age of pioneering hydrography in the Atlantic comes to an end, and hydrographic surveys from then on were undertaken periodically as a matter of routine by special ships of the British Admiralty. The Admiralty's hydrographic office was established in 1795, bringing a measure of order and standardization into the lusty and often lucrative -- but not always reliable -- business of marine charting,

All during the colonial period, the Atlantic seaboard con- tinued to receive more attention from British hydrography than any other region, for the obvious reason that it was the gateway to the British possessions in North America. L. S. Dawson, a British hydro- grapher, in his Memoirs of Hydrography published in England in 1885 supplied short biographical sketches of all officers of the navy who had engaged in hydrographic work, together with lists of the charts prepared by them, insofar as he could trace them. In the period from Des Barres to Dawson's time, Nova Scotia's coast and adjacent waters were covered in 40 charts, those of Newfoundland in 26, and those of New Brunswick in 8. This is no doubt an incomplete record. A point to be borne in mind is that hydrographic charts become outdated in several years end the areas covered need to be resurveyed because of the action of tides, waves, and currents.

Probably the most notable hydrographer to work on Canada's Atlantic coast after Des Barres was Henry Wolsey Bayfield, who entered the British Navy in 1806 at the age of 11 and died in Charlottetown at the age of 90. Bayfield was appointed Admiralty Surveyor for British North America in 1817, and from that time on he was occupied entirely with hydrographic surveys -- first on the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, and after 184l, when he took up residence in Charlottetown, in the Maritimes. He surveyed the Strait of Belle Isle, the Coast of Labrador, Anticosti Island, Prince Edward Island, the Magdalen Islands, Cape Breton, Sable Island, Halifax harbor, and the coast of NOva Scotia from Halifax to Canso. Other hydrographers who charted Atlantic waters during the 19th century were George Thomas (Croque Harbour, Newfoundland, 1808), George Holbrook (eastern New- foundland, 1814-2l), Anthony Lockwood (Nova Scotia, 1813-18 -- he also wrote a book about Newfoundland), Frederick Bullock (Newfoundland 1824-27), Henry Charles Otter (who helped to land the first Trans- atlantic telegraph cable in the Bay of Bull's Arm, Newfoundland, 1866), Peter Frederick Shortland and A. Kortright (l842-8, Bay of Fundy), John Orlebar (Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, 1833-64), J. H. Kerr (Newfound- land 1865-7l), William Chimmo (Newfoundland 1867) and W. F. Maxwell (Maritimes, 1872-84).

Hydrographic surveying is still difficult and exacting work, but the echo sounder and electronic position-finding equipment have made the task much more efficient and less time-consuming than in the period covered here, when the lead line and simple triangulation were the hydrographer's chief tools. The hydrographers, in their sailing ships and rowboats, had to seek out the reefs and shoals that other mariners tried to avoid, and their task was seldom without danger. The mass of reliable charts bequeathed to Canadian hydrography by the early marine surveyors of the rugged Atlantic coast is a magnificent monument to their skill and endurance.