NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey Historical Publications

Originally published February 2023 · pp. 26

NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey Historical Publications — lead photograph from the original article

publications listed have a ‘Related Charts’ box. Click on this box to open a new page containing maps and charts accompanying the report, for example, this Cedar Keys, Florida, map. Continued success in researching the American Civil War! Michael K. Shaffer is a Civil War historian, author, lecturer, and instructor, who remains a member of the Society of Civil War Historians, Historians of the Civil War Western Theater, and the Georgia Association of Historians. Readers may contact him at [email protected] or request speaking engagements at www.civilwarhistorian. net. Follow Michael on Facebook, www.facebook.com/ michael.k.shaffer, and Twitter @ michaelkshaffer

Publication search page.

1861 Report.

NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey Historical Publications — photograph 2 from the original article

Search results. Researchers seeking information on coastal operations during the American Civil War can augment their searches using the various publications found at the Historical Map

& Chart Collection website at https://historicalcharts.noaa.gov/ publications.php. Many maps reviewed in last month’s column have supporting documentation, especially the

Notes on the Coast of the United States. The website states, “Coast Survey supervisor Alexander Dallas Bache published Notes on the Coast of the United States, secret documents used by the Union Blockade Board. Coast Survey superintendents prepared a report each year, showing the progress of the survey…full reports were over 200 pages, Bache’s summary statements… gave a sense of Coast Survey’s involvement in the war effort.” The image above shows an entry of search dates 1861– 1865, and results yielded 15 archival publications; various sort methods exist. See the image above. Mining the Report of the Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey Showing the Progress of the Work 1861 offers an example of the type of literature available in the archive. Each wartime report – 1861– 1865 – resides in PDF format. (See the image of the cover page for the 1861 report.) Note: several