Budleigh Salterton, Masonic Hall, 1 West Hill, EX9 6BW

19:00 for 19:30

Speaker: Ken Atherton

Summary of Talk:
Based primarily on material held in the Archives of the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, this presentation traces the charting of the River Exe from the early Portolan charts of the 16th century through to the modern electronic charts of the present day. The talk includes the work of the great Dutch cartographers, the first British sea atlases in the 17th century and the formation of the Hydrographic Office in 1795. Archive copies of published charts covering the River Exe are used to illustrate the development of the Admiralty chart of over the last 200+ years.

Brief biography of Speaker:
Ken joined the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) in 1963 as a Cartographer and apart from six years in the post of Curator of Original Documents, his 38 years in the UKHO has been divided almost equally between the compilation of Admiralty Charts and the application of aerial photography.

Ken took early retirement in 2001. He gives talks and presentations on all manner of subjects that interest him, many with an historical maritime cartography theme. He is author of a number of professional papers and has appeared in, and given advice to, a variety of radio and television programmes, including “The Antiques Road Show”, “Time Team”, Simon Scharma's “The History of Britain” and Nicholas Crane’s “The Map Man”.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, an Honorary Fellow of the British Cartographic Society and a member of the Society for Nautical Research, the Defence Surveyors’ Association and the South-West Maritime History Society.