During easterly gales on the coast there is no place of refuge for ships between Botany Bay and Cape Howe, if unable to work off the land, except Jervis Bay and Twofold bay. A light, therefore, that would direct a ship to a safe anchorage on such an occasion would be most serviceable; nor would that be the only service it would render. Ships passing up the coast ought to keep near the land, to avoid the strong southerly current that is experienced in the offing. In doing this, the projection of Jervis Bay being comparatively low, many find themselves either within it, or closer to it than is prudent. With a light the head may be passed close to, and a direct course be steered clear of the heads of Botany Bay. I am, therefore, of opinion that there should be three lights to assist the navigator of Bass Strait; and if a fourth could be afforded, one at the entrance of Jervis Bay would be very desirable. Those for Bass Strait should be placed as follows: : On the summit of the Eastern island of Kent Group. PHILIP P. KING, Captain, R.N. THE SURVEYS OF GREME SPENCE. SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT is one of the first laws of nature, employing the mind of man from the cradle to the grave. It is no doubt right, that he should follow the great precept of religion, "to learn and labour truly to get his own living, and do his duty in that state of life to to which it shall please God to call him." And many there are, who nobly persevere in this Christian duty, in the various walks of society, and many besides who care not, either to learn or labour, being content to take the world as they find it; unhappily for them the means of their own living having been previously prepared for them. There can be no question as to which of these classes is really the happiest, or which realizes the intentions of the great Author of the Universe; but those whose good fortune it is, while following up the principle of aggrandizement, to leave to posterity the benefit of their labours, are after all the most useful labourers of the vineyard. True it is, they reap the present reward of those labours, be that reward small or great; but they leave behind them the monuments of their industry, to remain as undeniable proofs of their right at least to that reward which they may have gained. Hence, while benefiting themselves, they have the additional satisfaction of knowing that they will also hereafter benefit posterity. The nautical surveyor is justly entitled to be included among this valuable, and happily extensive class of persons. His works are of a most useful nature. They remain after he has passed away, the faithful records of the faithful performance of his duty. He leaves behind him an ample return for any reward which he has gained, and his is the grateful feeling that he indeed labours not for himself alone, but for the good of his fellow-man. Of the various nautical surveyors whose works have occasionally ENLARGED SERIES.-NO. 5.-VOL. FOR 1842. 2 s formed the themes of this journal, few have more right to the gratitude of posterity, than the subject of the following pages. Engaged in the harassing labours of nautical surveying at an early period, when this useful science was but little understood, and, we might also add (judging from the instance afforded by him,) less appreciated, it was his lot to reap but a poor reward for his great industry; and while he assisted materially in extricating the art of nautical surveying from its original vague character, and paving the way towards its present advanced state as an exact science, he had the mortification of seeing those exertions coldly received, and himself rewarded with the bare pittance of existence. There is much to interest the nautical surveyor in the following account of the services of Græme Spence, and it is a duty that we owe to the memory of this excellent man, now no more, to inform the nautical world, how largely they are indebted to him. Having at the age of fifteen years finished that sort of education which was thought most fitting for the business he was intended for, he was bound apprentice to Mr. Murdoch Makenzie, jun., (his first cousin, they being sisters' children) for seven years, to learn the business of Maritime Surveying, on the 6th of April, 1773; Mr. Makenzie was then upon the survey about the Lands End of England; and as he had succeeded his uncle Mr. Murdoch Makenzie, sen., as head-surveyor in the service of the Admiralty, two years before, or in the year 1771, it was then, and ever afterwards, held out to Mr. Spence, that he should succeed him in like manner. With this stimulus Mr. Spence's application, and progress in a very little time, was so uncommonly great, that he was entrusted with the duty of surveyor's-assistant, in the summer of 1775; and in the course of which year, and the beginning of the next, he drew the chart of the North Coast of Kent, from the North Foreland to Yantlet and Lee, in the river Thames, which was the first clean chart he ever drew in his life, and it gave great satisfaction. The survey of the North Coast of Kent being finished, Mr. Spence assisted Mr. Makenzie in the year 1777, in the survey of Plymouth, Falmouth, Torbay, and other parts of the channel to the westward, and no sooner had the survey of Plymouth Sound been completed than the combined fleets of France and Spain appeared off it, in the summer of the year 1779. On this occasion, by order of Admiral Lord Shouldham, the buoys were scuttled and removed, boats with flags flying being placed at all their several situations, whenever any of our own ships came in, or went out,—a service on which Messrs. Makenzie and Spence were employed during the whole of the ensuing winter, and till the next spring. This duty, although not immediately connected with the survey, was carried on under the principal direction and management of Mr. Spence, because Mr. Makenzie being that year first made a lieutenant (he had been formerly round the world as midshipman, with Commodore Byron,) Lord Shouldham sent him upon various services in a custom-house cutter, particularly to Jersey and Torbay; thus, the management of the buoys became entrusted to his assistant, Mr. Spence, in the surveying-vessel. The surveys of Plymouth Sound and Torbay, were very serviceable to the engineers employed in erecting batteries for the defence of those places; and in consequence of the discoveries made in Plymouth Sound, in the course of the survey, several new buoys upon the new shoals there were recommended and laid down.* In part of the year 1780, and while upon the survey to the westward, Messrs. Makenzie and Spence were ordered up, by land, leaving the surveying-vessel at Plymouth, to survey the channel between the Isle of Sheppy and the Main, as there were suspicions of the Dutch, with whom we were then at war, getting into the river Medway, through this back channel; and consequently out of the reach of the guns of Sheerness. In the latter part of the year 1777, and the beginning of the year 1778, or about two years before Mr. Spence had completed his apprenticeship, Mr. Makenzie thought him so perfect a master of his business, that he entrusted the whole of the survey of Falmouth harbour to him, as well the surveying part as the planning and drawing part of the work, without his doing anything whatever, in either. Indeed, Mr. Makenzie's eyes now began to fail him, and he was well satisfied with Mr. Spence's execution of the above survey. About the year 1781, Messrs. Makenzie and Spence were ordered, at the request of the Trinity-House to survey the Needles Channel, and afterwards from thence up to the Owers, with a view to fix upon the best mode of lighting it. From this time, till Mr. Makenzie was paid off in the year 1788, his eyesight was so bad that he took no part whatever in the survey, for it was as much as he was able to write his own letters, much less to survey, plan, or draw. And as two observers were absolutely necessary to take the proper angles on the survey of the water work, according to their own new and accurate mode of surveying, which exploded compass bearings, and as he could not see to take any, Mr. Spence was consequently obliged to teach the mate, or midshipman, who had joined them, for the time being, to take the necessary angles with himself. While this survey of Spithead was going forward, the first of these young men getting tired of, to him, such unprofitable life, left them, and afterwards became a Post-Captain in the navy. The other never being very clever at it, and Mr. Spence seeing no prospect of getting any one to assist him in his laborious business, and fearful lest Mr. Makenzie would be obliged to drop the survey on account of his bad eyesight, about the year 1784, invented and constructed an instrument, to which he gave the name of the " Double Sextant," by which both angles could be taken by one observer; or, in other words, the work of two observers could be done with it, by one at the same time. He also made a model of a New Station-pointer, as a counterpart to this double sextant, by which the business of maritime surveying was still farther facilitated.+ The same service has been performed in the St. Lawrence by Capt. Bayfield, the buoyage of which river was very imperfect until his survey was completed; and at Portsmouth we find the buoyage of the entrance of the harbour, materially improved by the recommendation of Commander Sheringham, arising from his survey last summer. Our nautical surveyor will be much interested in this account of the invention, (from motives of necessity,) of one of the most useful instruments he employs. No surveyor ever thinks of being without the station-pointer, which, by the expertness of our instrument-makers, has been brought to great perfection both in its division and in applying lengthening legs. Had Mr. Makenzie's eyes not failed him, Mr. The rough models of these instruments were shewn by Mr. Makenzie to Lord Howe, then first Lord of the Admiralty, and his lordship was so pleased with them, that he ordered them both to be made at the expense of Governnent, and they were put into Mr. Troughton's hands, who accordingly made them. But notwithstanding the utility of these instruments, and the double duty the inventor thus entailed upon himself, he never received one penny in reward from Mr. Makenzie for the same, nor any addition to his small pay, £45 a year, from the Admiralty. While surveying the coast from the Needles to the Owers, which occupied them till the year 1786, the want of buoys at Spithead, and the bad situation of the few that were there, could not fail of attracting the attention of the surveyors. They proposed a new, and infinitely better scheme of buoys, which was approved of by the Admiralty, adopted, and put into execution, under their immediate direction. A plan of Portsmouth harbour was made on a large scale, in order to show how many more moorings that harbour would hold than were already in it.* From the year 1786 till 1788 Mr. Spence carried on surveys for Mr. Makenzie, from the Needles Channel down to the westward to Exmouth in Devonshire, including a particular survey of Pool Harbour, a survey of Weymouth, Bridport, and Lyme Cobb, on a large scale also. But at Exmouth, in the spring of the year 1788, the Admiralty thought fit to drop the survey suddenly, and to pay off Messrs. Makenzie and Spence, without giving the latter the least hopes of employment again, or one shilling of half pay, although he had then been in their service about sixteen years. Spence's ingenuity would not have thus been put to the test, and the honour of inventing the station pointer might have been claimed by some other person. The double sextant being only prized by those who are accustomed to its use, and familiar with its great advantages, is not so generally employed as the station-pointer. We have not been so fortunate as to have met with the instrument as invented by Mr. Spence, but that of the late Capt. Hewett, Capt. W. Owen, and Mr. D. Rowland, are no doubt well known to our readers. The two former possessed one radical fault, that of the two index glasses being placed one above another, both moving on a common axis, whereby the plane of reflection, common to the two exterior objects passed between the glasses. Hence, there is no reflection of those objects to the third between them, but by applying the power of the telescope, sufficient of their rays is collected to enable them to be seen. We apprehend this defect was not to be found in Mr. Spence's double sextant. Nor was it in Mr. Rowland's, whose application of the second index-glass, with its horizon-glass in the same plane as the first, is very ingenious, and has long since been described in this journal. We perceive, also, that the use of compass-bearings was here discontinued,-we believe for the first time. No doubt Mr. Makenzie's (sen.) experience in his survey of the western coasts of Scotland, had amply proved their fallacy. The scale of this survey is 8 inches to the mile, about three times that on which it was published, and no doubt it enabled the officers alluded to, to lay down the moorings as required. Another most important fact it has also established, in connection with Commander Sheringham's survey of the same place, made in the course of last summer, on the scale of 20 inches to the mile, shewing the great advantage of such surveys, They have proved that no change has taken place in the depths of water in the harbour, no accumulation of silt or filling up as had been feared by some. The depths have been pronounced by Conimander Sheringham to be precisely the same as in Spence's survey, and he has added his high opinion of the extraordinary accuracy of Spence's survey generally. Considering, we may add, the very limited means of the surveying party of 1786, the work which they have left behind them reflects honour on the names which it bears. During the year Mr. Spence was unemployed by the Admiralty his mind was fully occupied with schemes for the benefit of navigation. One of these was a floating light on the Owers, and another the Portland lights; and he went with some of the Elder Brethren of the Trinity-House in their yacht, in July 1788, and placed the Owers light at her proposed situation.* In February 1789 he accompanied one of the Elder Brethren to Portland, and planned out upon the spot, the situation and height of the Portland light, near Portland Bill; and contracted with Mr. Hamilton, the mason, to build it, agreeably to the elevations and sections of it in the scheme which he had proposed the year before. He was also at Portland assisting in the experiments making on the new Argand lamps, plano-convex lenses and reflectors. On the 11th of August, 1789, when Mr. Spence was about thirtythree years of age, he received orders from the Admiralty to survey the Scilly Isles. This survey, together with a particular report on the situation of the light-house there, was finished in February, 1793, or in about three years and a half. During this interval, Mr. Spence was called away from the work, to survey Fishguard Bay, in South Wales, and to make plans of and report upon an intended Pier Harbour there, which he accordingly did. He was also employed for a considerable time during this period, in drawing a clean copy of Mr. Makenzie's chart of Plymouth Sound, for the Honourable Trinityhouse. But while on the Scilly survey, he had an opportunity of rendering an important piece of service. On the evening of the 8th of June, 1790, during a very thick fog, he heard several signal guns of distress to the southward,—and by pursuing the sound, for he could not see the vessel, he got on board of the Pegasus frigate, Capt. Sawyer, then on shore among the rocks of the Isle of Annet. He assisted in getting her off, and anchored her in a place of safety for that night, and the next day saw her safe out to sea again, without receiving any material damage, except the loss of an anchor. Perhaps, but for this timely assistance, she might have been lost among the rocks off those islands. In the beginning of August, 1793, Mr. Spence was sent to Gallowayshire, in Scotland, (leaving the surveying-vessel at Plymouth,) to survey Garliestown Bay, Port Yarrock, Port Nessock, and Whitehorn Harbours, and was ordered to project, plan, and report upon intended Pier Harbours at each of those places, which he accordingly did, and on the 10th of February, 1794, he received orders from the Admiralty to survey the Downs, and afterwards the Owers, beginning at the North Foreland. He was directed to report upon the best situation for the intended Goodwin floating-light, and also upon the best situation for leading lights through the Gull Stream. The survey of the Downs was finished in the year 1796, and he placed the Goodwin Light on the 25th of August, 1795, off the North Sand Head. Mr. Spence then reported on the leading-lights through the Gull Stream,-also several *The old yacht was here laid down as a temporary light. He laid the proper light-vessel in the month of October afterwards. This piece of work is another of Mr. Spence's productions, which has stood the test of time. It confirms the well deserved reputation of this excellent surveyor for correctness. |