HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
This series of charts gave the first complete cover of all the coast line of the Gulf. Previous surveys were incomplete, omitting much of the Arabian coast; later surveys in the nineteenth century were partial revisions.
The immediate stimulus for the survey of the Persian Gulf coasts begun by Captain Philip Maughan and Lieutenant John Guy of the Bombay Marine in 1820 was the desire of the Bombay Government to combat the maritime warfare on the Arabian coast, where local sailors could outwit the East India Company´s ships with a detailed knowledge of the shallows and channels.
Maughan and Guy retired in turn through ill-health in 1821 and 1825, after surveying part of the Arabian coast southwestward from the Strait of Hormuz. The direction of the survey, on board the East India Company ships Discovery and Psyche, was taken over by Lieutenant George Brucks assisted by Lieutenant Stafford Haines. Brucks and Haines are the names to appear on the majority of the charts completed in the period 1823 to 1827. The whole of the Arabian coast had been completed by April 1825, and the survey of the Persian coast continued until April 1828.
The accurate survey of the Gulf coasts was no easy business: ´In order to form some idea of the difficulties encountered in these operations, as well as the energy and perseverance of the gentlemen employed, it may be observed that, in the course of a fortnight, in spite of all obstacles they met with from the extensive sand-flats running sometimes nearly eight miles off shore, through which the officers and men had to wade middle deep, they were enabled to complete a distance of seventy-nine miles.´ Throughout the survey the draughtsman, Lieutenant Houghton, was composing and laying down the results, as well as taking a series of water-colour coastal profiles to aid future navigation.
The historic texts reprinted in Volume 1 include a contemporary account of the survey; a plan for conductingthe survey; sailing directions for the Gulf, 1836; and other contemporary descriptions of navigation, the islands and coast, and coastal settlements.
