Always trust your charts???

[tillergirl]

I'm not sure when UKHO went colour either but Stanford's yachtsman's Chart of 1903 was colour. 4/6 must have been quite a lot in 1903 (Do I have to explain '4/6'). I have a theory why UKHO colours are different. Most UKHO charts will have lots of deep water so most ot the chart will be white. Saves money. Simples.

I have just dug out a 1969 chart printed in 1971. It is still black and white. Imray charts were certainly coloured in 1938. 7/6 for a C1 chart.

 

[B27]

Exception that proves the rule?
I'd trust Uffa Fox's Tide Stream Atlas of the Solent over Navionics, give or take where they've moved the landscape for HMS Big Liz.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

I'm not sure when UKHO went colour either but Stanford's yachtsman's Chart of 1903 was colour. 4/6 must have been quite a lot in 1903 (Do I have to explain '4/6'). I have a theory why UKHO colours are different. Most UKHO charts will have lots of deep water so most ot the chart will be white. Saves money. Simples.

I have just dug out a 1969 chart printed in 1971. It is still black and white. Imray charts were certainly coloured in 1938. 7/6 for a C1 chart.

The colour scheme of Admiralty charts is an international standard, agreed through the IHO.

I have had reason to disagree with the way it has been applied on some Antarctic charts - the convention is that the yellow "land" colour (i.e. rock or moraine as opposed to white "ice") is applied as viewed from the sea - so many areas that are actually ice covered are coloured as if they were rock!

 

[zoidberg]

Blue job. Mrs S steers, I do the sounding. Normally because our good old fashioned rotating neon sounder had gone breasts up.

Can't you do the traditional thing and send her up to the crosstrees, there to con the boat through the coral bommies?

 

[Fr J Hackett]

I hope not THAT guilty - a 1972 chart in the UK would be on the OS1936 datum, and potentially up to 100m away from WGS84 positions! I think it would also be a black and white chart, but I'm not sure when UKHO went to colour!

I hope not THAT guilty - a 1972 chart in the UK would be on the OS1936 datum, and potentially up to 100m away from WGS84 positions! I think it would also be a black and white chart, but I'm not sure when UKHO went to colour!

I may be getting on but I never had a B&W chart in my portfolio, did have a few old one of the Azores but they were coloured. I tended to be quite Lazy and buy new charts for any area that I hadn't got and if it worked first time around I assumed it would work second time around, the exception being the East Coast as mentioned.

 

[zoidberg]

A powerful echo sounder with the correct charts can be exceedingly useful in submerged submarine navigation but it does tend to also signal your position to 'listeners'.

 

[tillergirl]

Oh yes, an international standard but I bet the UK lead the IHO.

 

[zoidberg]

We had you. Long before you pinged

Tha'll be down to all the hot air being exuded, all the burnt chip fat, beans 'n toast, sweaty artificer underpants, killick coffee beans and corroded cylinder linings wafting up into a pristine Atlantic morning for yer clever-clogs Autolycus operator to sniff, like a great hairy red setter.....

I've had but just two encounters with Her Majesty's Nuclear Submarines. One was during a very black night right in the middle of the Irish Sea after we'd dropped a mast on a newish trimaran and fought it back onto the sidedecks, when we two were terrified by a great black shape circling in the dark around us. Seems we'd provided the bored watch of HMS Torbay with a little distraction...

The other occasion was transiting E>W across the lower Clyde Estuary in a Canberra jet just below rather low cloud, doing around 360 knots. I was navigating from the perspex glazed front end, quietly (over)confident that we were 'clear of cloud and in sight of the surface' when several white things whizzed past level with our right wingtip. It was sometime later, during a stand-up interview with an irate Air Commodore at RAF Kinloss a couple of hundred miles further north, that I/we learned that the 'white things' had been the officers' caps on the sail of a Polaris submarine, surfaced, sneaking out of the Clyde.

I believe there was a bill, via MoD Navy in Whitehall, for a clutch of fresh underpants....

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Oh yes, an international standard but I bet the UK lead the IHO.

Quite possibly. I don't know the history!

 

[AntarcticPilot]

I may be getting on but I never had a B&W chart in my portfolio, did have a few old one of the Azores but they were coloured. I tended to be quite Lazy and buy new charts for any area that I hadn't got and if it worked first time around I assumed it would work second time around, the exception being the East Coast as mentioned.

The first charts I saw (early 60s) were B&W.

 

[LittleSister]

How many people think that their "bought it in 1972 and haven't updated it since" paper chart is more accurate?

I often (indeed usually) use out of date charts. One advantage is that I always doubt their accuracy1

Speaking of old charts, I am reminded of a trip across the North Sea to the Netherlands in the (pre-GPS) 1980s, when we were sort of in company with a couple of other boats and keeping in sporadic radio contact. One of them called us and said they were having trouble locating the light vessel they were expecting to see to check their progress and track. After consulting our (likely not very up to date) chart we were able to advise them it had been moved at least several years before. In the ensuing discussion it emerged the chart they were using still showed minefields!

 

[NormanS]

I've got lots of black and white, feet and fathoms Admiralty charts, some priced 11/-. I don't use them seriously nowadays, but they do have much more shore detail than any modern charts, and in their day, were excellent for inshore pilotage. Some of them are real works of art, with useful transits and sketches of views.

 

[Stemar]

Some of them are real works of art,

Surely the only use for such things.

 

[Frank Holden]

Re the colour of charts. UK and Oz went from B&W to colour when they went from imperial to metric from about 1970 onwards. I recall the first one I saw - Gulf of Carpentaria. The imperial used to have - in the title block - 'from the work of Mathew Flinders 1814 and other stuff' - the fancy new edition said 'from the latest available information'. Which was of course from 1814 apart from inshore detail around ports like Weipa.
Most of Bass Strait is still based on the work of the Beagle in the 1830s. Inshore from late 1940s, only harbours and approaches **may be** more recent.

US charts had colour - even though 'imperial' - when I first came across them in the 1960s.

 

[NormanS]

Surely the only use for such things.

Generations of seagoers used them, but that was in the days when we didn't need to know our actual position to within a fraction of a meter. We were quite happy to know that we were a sufficient distance away from danger.

 

[NormanS]

Re the colour of charts. UK and Oz went from B&W to colour when they went from imperial to metric from about 1970 onwards. I recall the first one I saw - Gulf of Carpentaria. The imperial used to have - in the title block - 'from the work of Mathew Flinders 1814 and other stuff' - the fancy new edition said 'from the latest available information'. Which was of course from 1814 apart from inshore detail around ports like Weipa.
Most of Bass Strait is still based on the work of the Beagle in the 1830s. Inshore from late 1940s, only harbours and approaches **may be** more recent.

US charts had colour - even though 'imperial' - when I first came across them in the 1960s.

I have a real admiration for the people who carried out these early surveys. There are still areas in the Outer Hebrides where charts are based on the work done in the 1850s, by among others, Captain Henry Otter of HMS Porcupine (stream and sail). Yes, they missed an odd rock, but in general their work was amazingly accurate.