A NAVAL STUDY—_continued_.
FRENCH HYDROGRAPHIC CHARTS.—ONE TENDERED BY ME TO THE COURT.—REJECTED BY
THE PRESIDENT.—GROUNDS FOR ITS REJECTION.—THE OBJECT OF THE REJECTED
CHART.—WOULD HAVE PROVED TOO MUCH, IF ADMITTED.—REJECTION OF OTHER
CHARTS TENDERED BY ME.—MR. STOKES’S CHART.—ITS FALLACY AT FIRST
SIGHT.—JUDGE ADVOCATE’S REASONS FOR ADOPTING IT.—ITS ERRORS DETECTED
BY THE PRESIDENT, AND EXPOSED HERE.—PROBABLE EXCUSE FOR THE
ERROR.—IMAGINARY SHOAL ON THE CHART.—FALSIFICATION OF WIDTH OF
CHANNEL.—LORD GAMBIER’S VOUCHER FOR STOKES’S CHART.—STOKES’S VOUCHER
FOR ITS WORTHLESSNESS.—STOKES’S CHART IN A NATIONAL POINT OF
VIEW.—TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF BY THE FRENCH.
The charts to which the reader’s attention is invited are those alluded
to in the last chapter, as having, after the lapse of fifty-one years,
been traced for me by Captain Washington, by the order of his Grace the
Duke of Somerset. The subject being no longer of personal but of
historical interest, there can be no impropriety in laying before the
naval service, for its judgment, materials so considerately supplied by
the present First Lord of the Admiralty.