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Issued by the United States Coast Survey in 1857, this large-scale hydrographic sheet captures the narrow, shifting entrance to Pensacola Bay just as the Gulf coast surveys reached full maturity under Alexander Dallas Bache. Assistant F.H. Gerdes fixed the framework of triangulation and shore topography, while Lieutenant J. K. Duer’s launch parties sounded the bar, the swash channels, and the deep inner bight in thousands of lead-line drops that appear here in feet at low water. Every shoal contour, from the long crescent of the outer bar to the serpentine Middle Ground inside Santa Rosa Island, is rendered with the stippled precision that distinguished the Coast Survey’s “preliminary” plates—so called because they were rushed to mariners before the final copper would be re-engraved at publication quality.
Along the northern shore the engravers lay out the grid of Pensacola, the Navy Yard, and the adjoining village of Warrington, threading streets, wharves, and slipways between the live-oak groves. Across the pass, the masonry bastions of Fort Pickens anchor the western tip of Santa Rosa, while Fort McRee ("McRae") and Fort Barrancas guard the mainland channel—fortifications that would become flashpoints in the opening months of the Civil War. Range lines published in the sailing directions steer vessels through three distinct alignments: first over the bar by the new lighthouse, then past Caucus Shoal, and finally up the Barrancas Range toward the anchorage of the Navy Yard. A separate block gives hourly tide observations from Fort Pickens, noting that the mean rise scarcely exceeds one foot, a reminder of why soundings had to be plotted so densely.
Bache’s office engraved the chart, crediting G. L. Metzeroth and J.V.N. Throop at the foot of the plate.
The most detailed pre-Civil War treatment of the area.
The United States Office of the Coast Survey began in 1807, when Thomas Jefferson founded the Survey of the Coast. However, the fledgling office was plagued by the War of 1812 and disagreements over whether it should be civilian or military controlled. The entity was re-founded in 1832 with Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler as its superintendent. Although a civilian agency, many military officers served the office; army officers tended to perform the topographic surveys, while naval officers conducted the hydrographic work.
The Survey’s history was greatly affected by larger events in American history. During the Civil War, while the agency was led by Alexander Dallas Bache (Benjamin Franklin’s grandson), the Survey provided the Union army with charts. Survey personnel accompanied blockading squadrons in the field, making new charts in the process.
After the Civil War, as the country was settled, the Coast Survey sent parties to make new maps, employing scientists and naturalists like John Muir and Louis Agassiz in the process. By 1926, the Survey expanded their purview further to include aeronautical charts. During the Great Depression, the Coast Survey employed over 10,000 people and in the Second World War the office oversaw the production of 100 million maps for the Allies. Since 1970, the Coastal and Geodetic Survey has formed part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and it is still producing navigational products and services today.
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