Earliest years was the first superintendent of the Survey of the Coast, renamed the U.S. Coast Survey during his tenure. The United States Coast and Geodetic Survey began its existence as the
United States Survey of the Coast, created within the
United States Department of the Treasury by an
Act of Congress on February 10, 1807, to conduct a "Survey of the Coast." The Survey of the Coast, the
United States governments first scientific agency, Hassler submitted a plan for the survey work involving the use of
triangulation to ensure scientific accuracy of surveys, but
international relations prevented the new Survey of the Coast from beginning its work; the
Embargo Act of 1807 brought American overseas trade virtually to a halt only a month after Hasslers appointment and remained in effect until Jefferson left office in March 1809. It was not until 1811 that Jeffersons successor, President
James Madison, sent Hassler to
Europe to purchase the instruments necessary to conduct the planned survey, as well as standardized weights and measures. Hassler departed on August 29, 1811, but eight months later, while he was in
England, the
War of 1812 broke out, forcing him to remain in Europe until its conclusion in 1815. Hassler did not return to the United States until August 16, 1815. The Survey of the Coast resumed field work in April 1833. In July 1833, Edmund E. Blunt, the son of hydrographer
Edmund B. Blunt, accepted a position with the Survey. The elder Blunt had begun publication of the
American Coast Pilot – the first book of
sailing directions,
nautical charts, and other information for mariners in North American waters to be published in
North America – in 1796. Although the Survey relied on articles it published in local newspapers to provide information to mariners in the next decades, Blunts employment with the Survey began a relationship between the
American Coast Pilot and the Survey in which the Surveys findings were incorporated into the
American Coast Pilot and the Surveys charts were sold by the Blunt family, which became staunch allies of the Survey in its disputes with its critics. Eventually, the relationship between the Survey and the Blunts would lead to the establishment of the Surveys
United States Coast Pilot publications in the latter part of the 19th century.
Association with United States Navy The Survey had barely resumed its work when President Jackson transferred it from the Department of the Treasury to the Department of the Navy on March 11, 1834. Survey results under Navy Department authority again were unsatisfactory, and on March 26, 1836, Jackson ordered the Department of the Treasury to resume the administration of the Survey, which was renamed the
United States Coast Survey in 1836. Under this system, which persisted until the Survey was granted the authority to crew its ships in 1900, nearly half the Survey's ships were crewed and officered by U.S. Navy personnel over the 50-year period between 1848 and 1898; U.S. Navy officers and Coast Survey civilians served alongside one another aboard ship, and many of the most famous names in hydrography for both the Survey and Navy of the period are linked. In addition, the
United States Department of War provided U.S. Army officers for service with the Survey during its early years. Hassler believed that expertise in coastal surveys would be of importance in future wars and welcomed the participation of Army and Navy personnel, and his vision in this regard laid the foundation for the commissioned corps of officers that would be created in the Survey in 1917 as the ancestor of todays
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Corps.
Growth years under Hassler During the nineteenth century, the remit of the Survey was rather loosely drawn and it had no competitors in federally funded scientific research. Various superintendents developed its work in fields as diverse as
astronomy,
cartography,
meteorology,
geodesy,
geology,
geophysics,
hydrography,
navigation,
oceanography,
exploration,
pilotage,
tides, and
topography. The Survey published important articles by
Charles Sanders Peirce on the design of experiments and on
a criterion for the statistical treatment of
outliers. Ferdinand Hassler became the first Superintendent of Weights and Measures beginning in November 1830, and the Office of Weights and Measures, the ancestor of todays
National Institute of Standards and Technology, was placed under the control of the Coast Survey in 1836; until 1901, the Survey thus was responsible for the standardization of weights and measures throughout the United States. In 1838, U.S. Navy Lieutenant
George M. Bache, while attached to the Survey, suggested standardizing the markings of
buoys and navigational markers ashore by painting those on the right when entering a harbor red and those on the left black; instituted by Lieutenant Commander
John R. Goldsborough in 1847, the "red right return" system of markings has been in use in the United States ever since. In the early 1840s, the Survey began work in
Delaware Bay to chart the approaches to
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. In 1845, he instituted the worlds first systematic oceanographic project for studying a specific phenomenon when he directed the Coast Survey to begin systematic studies of the
Gulf Stream and its environs, including physical oceanography,
geological oceanography,
biological oceanography, and
chemical oceanography. Baches initial orders for the Gulf Stream study served as a model for all subsequent integrated oceanographic cruises. Disaster struck the Coast Survey on September 8, 1846, when the survey
brig Peter G. Washington encountered a
hurricane while she was conducting studies of the
Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of
North Carolina. She was dismasted in the storm with the loss of 11 men who were swept overboard, but she managed to limp into port. The
Mexican War of 1846–1848 saw the withdrawal of virtually all U.S. Army officers from the Coast Survey and the Coast Survey
brig was taken over for U.S. Navy service in the war, but overall the war effort had little impact on the Coast Surveys operations. Army officers returned after the war, and the expansion of U.S. territory as a result of the war led to the Coast Survey expanding its operations to include the newly acquired coasts of
Texas and
California. In the 1850s, the Coast Survey also conducted surveys and measurements in support of efforts to reform the Department of the Treasurys
Lighthouse Establishment, and it briefly employed the artist
James McNeill Whistler as a
draughtsman in 1854–1855. Ever since it began operations, the Coast Survey had faced hostility from politicians who believed that it should complete its work and be abolished as a means of reducing U.S. government expenditures, and Hassler and Bache had fought back periodic attempts to cut its funding. By 1850, the Coast Survey had surveyed enough of the U.S. coastline for a long enough time to learn that – with a few exceptions, such as the rocky coast of
New England – coastlines were dynamic and required return visits by Coast Surveyors to keep charts up to date. Another significant moment in the Surveys history that occurred in 1858 was the first publication of what would later become the
United States Coast Pilot, when Survey employee
George Davidson adapted an article from a
San Francisco, California, newspaper into an addendum to that years
Annual Report of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey. Although the Survey had previously published its work indirectly via the Blunts
American Coast Pilot, it was the first time that the Survey had published its sailing directions directly in any way other than through local newspapers. A Coast Survey ship took part in an international scientific project for the first time when
Bibb observed a
solar eclipse from a vantage point off
Aulezavik,
Labrador, on July 18, 1860, as part of an international effort to study the eclipse.
Bibb became the first Coast Survey vessel to operate in
subarctic waters.
American Civil War in
Louisiana below
Fort Jackson and
Fort St. Philip made by the U.S. Coast Survey to prepare for the
bombardment of the forts by
David Dixon Porter's
mortar fleet in April 1862 during the
American Civil War. The outbreak of the
American Civil War in April 1861 caused a dramatic shift in direction for the Coast Survey. All U.S. Army officers were withdrawn from the Survey, as were all but two U.S. Navy officers. Since most men of the Survey had
Union sympathies, all but seven of them stayed on with the Survey rather than resigning to serve the
Confederate States of America, and their work shifted in emphasis to support of the
Union Navy and
Union Army. Civilian Coast Surveyors were called upon to serve in the field and provide mapping, hydrographic, and engineering expertise for Union forces. One of the individuals who excelled at this work was
Joseph Smith Harris, who supported
Rear Admiral David G. Farragut and his
Western Gulf Blockading Squadron in the
Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip in 1862; this survey work was particularly valuable to
Commander David Dixon Porter and his
mortar bombardment fleet. Coast Surveyors served in virtually all theaters of the war and were often in the front lines or in advance of the front lines carrying out mapping duties, and Coast Survey officers produced many of the coastal charts and interior maps used by Union forces throughout the war. Coast Surveyors supporting the Union Army were given assimilated military rank while attached to a specific command, but those supporting the U.S. Navy operated as civilians and ran the risk of being executed as
spies if captured by the Confederates while working in support of Union forces.
Post–Civil War , U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey headquarters from 1871 to 1929, on New Jersey Avenue in
Washington, D.C., from ''
Harper's Weekly'', October 1888.Army officers never returned to the Coast Survey, but after the war Navy officers did, and the Coast Survey resumed its peacetime duties. The acquisition of the
Department of Alaska in 1867 expanded its responsibilities, as did the progressive exploration, settlement, and enclosure of the
continental United States. The Survey's requirement to update sailing directions led to the development of early
current measurement technology, particularly the Pillsbury current meter invented by
John E. Pillsbury,
USN, while on duty with the Survey. It was in connection with intensive studies of the
Gulf Stream that the Coast and Geodetic Survey ship
USC&GS George S. Blake became such a pioneer in oceanography that she is one of only two U.S. ships with her name inscribed in the façade of the
Oceanographic Museum (Musée Océanographique) in
Monaco due to her being "the most innovative oceanographic vessel of the Nineteenth Century" with development of deep ocean exploration through introduction of steel cable for sounding, dredging and deep anchoring and data collection for the "first truly modern bathymetric map of a deep sea area."
Mid-1880s crisis By the mid-1880s, the Coast and Geodetic Survey had been caught up in the increased scrutiny of U.S. government agencies by politicians seeking to reform governmental affairs by curbing the
spoils system and
patronage common among office holders of the time. One outgrowth of this movement was the
Allison Commission – a joint commission of the
United States Senate and
United States House of Representatives – which convened in 1884 to investigate the scientific agencies of the U.S. government, namely the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the
United States Geological Survey, the
United States Army Signal Corps (responsible for studying and predicting weather at the time), and the
United States Navy's
United States Hydrographic Office. The commission looked into three main issues: the role of geodesy in the U.S. government's scientific efforts and whether responsibility for inland geodetics should reside in the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey or the U.S. Geological Survey; whether the Coast and Geodetic Survey should be removed from the Department of the Treasury and placed under the control of the Department of the Navy, as it had been previously from 1834 to 1836; and whether weather services should reside in a military organization or in the civilian part of the government, raising the broader issue of whether U.S. government scientific agencies of all kinds should be under military or civilian control. At the Coast and Geodetic Survey, at least some scientists were not prone to following bureaucratic requirements related to the funding of their projects, and their lax financial practices led to charges of mismanagement of funds and corruption. When
Grover Cleveland became president in 1885, James Q. Chenoweth became First Auditor of the Department of the Treasury, and he began to investigate improprieties at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, U.S. Geological Survey, and United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries, more commonly referred to as the
United States Fish Commission. He had little impact on the Geological Survey or the Fish Commission, but at the Coast and Geodetic Survey he found many improprieties. Chenoweth found that the Coast and Geodetic Survey had failed to account for government equipment it had purchased, continued to pay retired personnel as a way of giving them a pension even though the law did not provide for a pension system, paid employees whether they worked or not, and misused
per diem money intended for the expenses of personnel in the field by paying
per diem funds to employees who were not in the field as a way of augmenting their very low authorized wages and providing them with fair compensation. Chenoweth saw these practices as
embezzlement. Chenoweth also suspected embezzlement in the Survey's practice of providing its employees with money in advance for large and expensive purchases when operating in remote areas because of the Survey's inability to verify that the expenses were legitimate. Moreover, the Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey,
Julius Hilgard, was exposed as a drunkard and forced to resign in disgrace along with four of his senior staff members at Survey headquarters. To address issues at the Coast and Geodetic Survey raised by the Allison Commission and the Chenoweth investigation, Cleveland made the Chief Clerk of the
Internal Revenue Bureau,
Frank Manly Thorn, Acting Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic Survey on July 23, 1885, and appointed him as the permanent superintendent on September 1. Thorn, a lawyer and journalist who was the first non-scientist to serve as superintendent, quickly concluded that the charges against Coast and Geodetic Survey personnel largely were overblown, and he set his mind to the issues of rebuilding the Survey's integrity and reputation and ensuring that it demonstrated its value to its critics. Ignorant of the Survey's operations and the scientific methods that lay behind them, he left such matters to his assistant,
Benjamin J. Colonna, and focused instead on reforming the Survey's financial and budgetary procedures and improving its operations so as to demonstrate the value of its scientific program in performing accurate mapping while setting and meeting production deadlines for maps and charts. To the Survey's critics, Thorn and Colonna championed the importance of the Coast and Geodetic Survey's inland geodetic work and how it supported, rather than duplicated, the work of the Geological Survey and was in any event an important component of the Coast and Geodetic Survey's hydrographic work along the coasts. Thorn also advocated civilian control of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, pointing out to Cleveland and others that earlier experiments with placing it under U.S. Navy control had fared poorly. Thorn described the Coast and Geodetic Survey's essential mission as, in its simplest form, to produce "a perfect map,". and to this end he and Colonna championed the need for the Survey to focus on the broad range of geodetic disciplines Colonna identified as necessary for accurate chart- and mapmaking:
triangulation,
astronomical observations,
levelling,
tidal observations,
physical geodesy,
topography,
hydrography, and
magnetic observations. To those who advocated transfer of the Coast and Geodetic Survey's work to the Navy Hydrographic Office, Thorn and Colonna replied that although the Navy could perform hydrography, it could not provide the full range of geodetic disciplines necessary for scientifically accurate surveying and mapping work. In 1886, the Allison Commission wrapped up its investigation and published its final report. Although it determined that all topographic responsibility outside of coastal areas would henceforth reside in the U.S. Geological Survey, it approved of the Coast and Geodetic Survey continuing its entire program of scientific research, and recommended that the Coast and Geodetic Survey remain under civilian control rather than be subordinated to the U.S. Navy. It was a victory for Thorn and Colonna.
Later 19th century and early 20th century —in 1902, with the
United States Capitol visible in the distance. in surveying. On February 5, 1889, by a joint resolution of Congress, the U.S. government accepted an invitation by the government of the
German Empire to become a party to the
International Geodetic Association. By law, the U.S. delegate to the association was a Coast and Geodetic Survey officer appointed by the President. On April 5, 1893, Survey Superintendent
Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, with the approval of
United States Secretary of the Treasury John Griffin Carlisle, formally issued the
Mendenhall Order, which required the Office of Weights and Measures to change the fundamental standards of length and mass of the United States from the customary
English system to the
metric system. The metric standards defined under the order remained the U.S. standard until July 1, 1959, by which time increasing precision in measurement required their revision. and modified from the Thomson Sounding Machine. Basic design of ocean sounding instruments stayed the same for the next 50 years. Here the sounding machine is used to set a Pillsbury current meter at a known depth. In:
The Gulf Stream, by John Elliott Pillsbury, 1891. Note caption on photo: "Sounding Machine And Current Meter In Place, Steamer
Blake." During the 1890s, while attached to the Coast and Geodetic Survey as
commanding officer of
George S. Blake,
Lieutenant Commander Charles Dwight Sigsbee,
USN, Assistant in the Coast Survey, developed the
Sigsbee sounding machine while conducting the first true bathymetric surveys in the
Gulf of Mexico. With the outbreak of the
Spanish–American War in April 1898, the U.S. Navy again withdrew its officers from Coast and Geodetic Survey duty. As a result of the war, which ended in August 1898, the United States took control of the
Philippine Islands and
Puerto Rico, and surveying their waters became part of the Coast and Geodetic Survey's duties. Thereafter, the Coast and Geodetic Survey operated as an entirely civilian organization until May 1917. In 1901, the Office of Weights and Measures was split off from the Coast and Geodetic Survey to become the separate National Bureau of Standards. It became the
National Institute of Standards and Technology in 1988. In 1903, the Coast and Geodetic Survey was transferred from the Department of the Treasury to the newly created
United States Department of Commerce and Labor. In 1903, the
Organization and Law of the Department of Commerce and Labor stated that from the time the Survey began scientific activities in the early 19th century it had produced "a stimulus to all educational and scientific work. The methods used by the Survey have been the standard for similar undertakings in the United States, and many commendations of their excellence have been received from abroad. The influence of the Survey in the various operations resulting from the advancing scientific activity of the country can hardly be overestimated." in 1921. In 1904, the Coast and Geodetic Survey introduced the
wire-drag technique into hydrography, in which a wire attached to two ships or boats and set at a certain depth by a system of weights and buoys was dragged between two points. This method revolutionized hydrographic surveying, as it allowed a quicker, less laborious, and far more complete survey of an area than did the use of lead lines and sounding poles that had preceded it, and it remained in use until the late 1980s. The Department of Commerce and Labor was abolished in 1913 and divided into the
United States Department of Commerce and the
United States Department of Labor. With this change, the Coast and Geodetic Survey came under the jurisdiction of the Department of Commerce.
World War II When the United States entered
World War II in December 1941, all of this work was suspended as the Survey dedicated its activities entirely to support of the war effort. Over half of the Coast and Geodetic Corps commissioned officers were transferred to either the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, or
United States Army Air Forces, while those who remained in the Coast and Geodetic Survey also operated in support of military and naval requirements. About half of the Surveys civilian work force, slightly over 1,000 people, joined the armed services. In 1964, a Coast and Geodetic Survey ship operated in the
Indian Ocean for the first time, when
Pioneer took part in the
International Indian Ocean Expedition, an international effort to study the Indian Ocean that lasted from 1959 to 1965.
ESSA years On July 13, 1965, the
Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA), was established within the Department of Commerce and became the new parent organization of both the Coast and Geodetic Survey and the
United States Weather Bureau. The National Ocean Survey was renamed the
National Ocean Service in 1983, and thus the National Ocean Service, National Geodetic Survey, Office of Coast Survey, and NOAA Corps all trace their ancestry to the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the NOAA fleet does in part as well. Outside NOAA, the U.S. Department of Commerce's
National Institute of Standards and Technology, although long separated from the Coast and Geodetic Survey, traces its ancestry to the Coast and Geodetic Survey's Office of Weights and Measures. ==Coast and Geodetic Survey leadership==