A large-scale chart of the inlet and town of Fowey on the southern coast of Cornwall issued by the French Dépôt de la Marine in 1824 and acknowledging the surveys of George Thomas. In 1661 the First Minister of France, Jean-Baptiste Colbert set up the Royal School of Hydrography. Its aim was the first survey of French coasts and the consolidation of charts in one place. The Dépôt des Cartes et Plans de la Marine otherwise known as the Dépôt de la Marine, was the central deposit for charts by the French Navy. In 1720, the two consolidated their collections. By 1737, the Dépôt was undertaking its own surveying and contributed to the science of determining accurate measurements of longitude. The foremost navigational issue of the eighteenth century.In 1773, the Dépôt received a monopoly on all navigational materials. Many of finest French cartographers of the day worked at the Dépôt, including Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, Rigobert Bonne, Philippe Bauche, and Charles-François Beautemps-Beaupré. The Dépôt was renamed the Naval Hydrographic Service in 1886. Chapius (2019).