Nelson’s Pathfinders: A forgotten story in the triumph of British sea power

REVIEW BY NICK HEWITT No matter how long you study a subject, there is always something new to learn, and this reviewer learned a great deal from Michael Barritt’s excellent account of ‘how Thomas Herd made hydrographic capability a crucial enabler of strategic planning and frontline operations’ in the Golden Age of Sail. Although the evolution of nautical charts is a story that may have been told before, how the information to create them was gathered, Barritt argues, has not. The gathering of this information was primarily the work of sailors whom he calls ‘Nelson’s Pathfinders’. Barritt himself is a retired naval captain and former hydrographer of the Navy, and his pr