The originals (of Hurd's survey) are now the authority (for Bermuda) for the intricacies of the surrounding barrier reefs and other details. Within the last twenty years, air photographs were obtained over a considerable portion of the reef. A comparison proved conclusively the meticulous accuracy of the old work, and it is conceivable that Hurd used some form of water-glass, for the outline of the coral below the surface is shown in great detail and exactness. This could not have been delineated by the use of the lead alone, and is probably the only survey of its size in existence which shows such definite particulars of under-water features.

¿ Rear-Admiral Edgell, Hydrographer to the Navy, 1932-1945, writing in 1957

Some years ago, I had the privilege of viewing some of the archival maps and charts of Bermuda at the Hydrographic Office at Taunton in Somerset.

Robin Sturdy, whose parents retired to Bermuda and are credited with saving the Commissioner's House in the early days of the Maritime Museum, kindly arranged the visit and the treat of seeing some fine examples of Bermuda cartographic heritage.

There were a number of charts of the waters around the island and of special interest at the time were the plans of the early Bermuda Dockyard, several of which were not known to us and which we were able to copy for later display in the Royal Navy exhibit at the Museum. Foremost of these was the ten-foot-long coloured map of the whole of Ireland Island in 1816 by Hamilton Fulton, an English engineer on station at the new Dockyard.

There were also examples of printed, or published charts of Bermuda, as opposed to the singular manuscript maps just mentioned. Among those were black and white printed charts of the reefs around the island, which were based upon the great survey by Lieutenant Thomas Hurd, RN, later Captain, and from 1808 until his death in 1823, Hydrographer to the Royal Navy. The original, upon which those charts were based was listed in the catalogue at the Hydrographic Office, but was not available to be seen.

For some reason, I assumed that the original Hurd survey would be in pen and ink and would only show the reefs of the Bermuda platform, but not any other features. Thus the information on the later published maps would supply all one needed to know about Hurd's original charting of Bermuda waters. This long-held assumption was shattered some months ago when I received an e-mail from a fellow Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, Adrian Webb, who is working on a biography of Hurd.

Attached to his e-mail was a section of the original Hurd map, which by happenstance was of the Scaur Hill area, where I am fortunate to have my home overlooking some of the reef platform that the lieutenant studied for eight years. Astoundingly, the map was in colour and in addition to the detail of the reefs, the land area showed houses, roads and gardens, among other features.

This monumental map of the lands and reefs of Bermuda is without parallel in our history. Yet while historians and many other locals have known that Hurd made the survey between May 1789, when he arrived in Bermuda, and December 1797, when he returned to Britain, it seems that no one from the island ever saw the original and thus its significance was overlooked.

The exception might have been Hurd's son, Samuel Proudfoot Hurd, born at St. George's, who may have seen his father's magnum opus in England in his later years.

As recently as 1975, a series of articles on the "Maps & Surveys of Bermuda, 1511-1962" was published in the Bermuda Historical Quarterly. The significant items were there defined as the first appearance of Bermuda in the 1511 chart of Peter Martyr, the map made by Diego Ramirez in 1603, the Sir George Somers' map of 1609-10, the two Richard Norwood Surveys of 1616 and 1663, the great and first Ordnance Survey by Savage of 1901 and the maps created from aerial photography in 1962.

Hurd's survey is missing from that list possibly because no one knew that the original still existed in two great separate pieces, one six-foot square and the other slightly larger. These are shown here "stitched" together as a single map, about 12 feet by 6 feet. I do not believe that I overstate the case when I suggest that this is perhaps the most significant map in the history of Bermuda, between those of Norwood and Savage, for the wealth of recorded detail under the sea and on the land.

Aside from the depiction of the reefs, which is staggering in its detail considering the difficulty of surveying objects under the water from a boat, the information that has been recorded on the land is a feast for historical interpretation about the nature of Bermuda towards the end of its second century of settlement.

Lieutenant Andrew Evans, RN, assisted Hurd in the marine survey and the data for the land mapping was presumably derived from surveys carried out by Major Andrew Durnford of the Royal Engineers during the same period. The map appears to show all major, presumably stone, houses on the island. It records all of the principal roads in existence in the 1790s and it shows major patches of cultivated land in all of the parishes.

Combining the details of sea and shore, there is simply no other survey of Bermuda that can match the Hurd original for insight into the development of the island between 1616 and 1901. This is indeed the "Nonesuch" map of Bermuda, now brought "home" in a digital format.

Because of its extraordinary size and significance to military matters and to the Hydrographic Office, the two sheets of the chart were at times subject to some secrecy and always presented problems of storage and handling, and ultimately of copying. The chart survived almost two centuries of being rolled up, framed and later rolled again, and movement during the Second World War to avoid being bombed into oblivion.

At the request of the Bermuda Maritime Museum, the Hydrographic Office had the chart photographed, perhaps for the first time, and massive digital files of each sheet were given to the Museum. A facsimile of the survey will be exhibited at the Museum next year for the 200th anniversary of the beginning of the Dockyard in 1809.

By a happy chance of fate, Captain Thomas Hurd is still represented in Bermuda by his great great great great granddaughter, Margaret, who is married to Bermudian James A.H. Hallett, a trustee of the Maritime Museum.

I wish to thank Adrian Webb for giving us the first insight into the wondrous nature of Hurd's survey and for the Edgell quotation, through his ongoing and extensive research into the life of Captain Thomas Hurd. Additionally, I extend our thanks to the Staff at the Hydrographic Office, whose very considerable efforts found the means to copy the two sheets of the Hurd chart, thus delivering to Bermuda a major gift of previously unknown heritage at the time of our 400th anniversary of the settlement of the island.