United Kingdom Hydrographic Office

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The United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (or UKHO) is an organisation within the UK government responsible for providing navigational and other hydrographic information for national, civil and defence requirements.

They are an executive agency of the Ministry of Defence and are directly responsible to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and Minister for Veterans. The current minister is Derek Twigg, MP. The Chief Executive of the agency is Mike Robinson, appointed in 2006.^[1] The agency is self-funding and has Trading Fund status.

1 History
2 Role
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

The Admiralty's first Hydrographer was Alexander Dalrymple, appointed in 1795 on the order of King George III. The first chart the Admiralty produced (of Quiberon Bay in Brittany) did not appear until 1800.

Dalrymple was succeeded on his death in 1808 by Captain Thomas Hurd, under whose stewardship the department was given permission to sell charts to the public. Hurd oversaw the production of sailing directions and the first catalogue of charts. Rear Admiral Sir W. Edward Parry was appointed Hydrographer in 1823 after his second expedition to discover a Northwest Passage. In 1829, at the age of 55, Rear Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort became Hydrographer. During this time, he developed his eponymous Scale and saw the introduction of official tide tables and Notices to Mariners in the 1830s. By the time of Beaufort's retirement in 1855, the Chart Catalogue listed 1,981 charts and 64,000 copies of them had been issued to the Royal Navy.^[2]

In 1953, the first purpose-built survey vessel was launched; HMS Vidal.^[3]

Under the Public Records Act 1958, UKHO became an authorised 'place of deposit' which has given it the responsibility of maintaining its own archive.