The River Thames from London to Sea Reach 1850

This reproduction is taken from an original document, held in the archive of the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, Taunton, Somerset.

Originally published by RH Laurie of number 53 Fleet Street, London on the 1st January 1850 the plan is an extract from a larger chart. Seventeenth and eighteenth century charts were often very large in size, up to six feet long in some cases and were rolled for storage onboard ship. In order to reduce the number of charts that the captain of a ship had to buy, several larger scale plans were added to the small scale charts. This plan of the Thames was extracted from "A Survey of the Estuary of the Thames and Medway, with the Coast from Thorpness to Dover and the Rivers to London and Rochester".

The clear uncluttered style of the chart was very popular with British merchantmen trading in all corners of the empire. In 1903, Laurie's joined with other private publishers to become Imray, Laurie, Norie and Wilson, which still exists today.