File:U.S. Coast Survey Preliminary Chart of Galveston Bay, Texas 1855 (1856) UTA.jpg

English: In many ways the U.S. Coast Survey charts represent humanity's constant struggle with nature. Early on, explorers found the flat, almost endless Texas coasts confusing, and the weather along them could turn quite dangerous almost instantly. An accurate knowledge of the shoals, inlets, bays, barrier islands, and harbors, along with exact latitude and longitude readings, was therefore essential to mariners. Lengthy sailing directions, hundreds of depth soundings, and many topographical features appear on this chart of Galveston Bay, site of Texas' largest port during the nineteenth century. Coastal improvements noted here include a securely anchored "Lt. Boat" (light boat) which had been placed at the entrance of Galveston Bay as early as 1849 and "L.H.'s" (light houses) at Bolivar Point completed in 1853, Morgan's Point, and opposite Edward's Point. The insets detail two shallow obstructions in the Bay: Clopper's Bar – at the mouth of the San Jacinto River (near the site of the 1836 battle) – and Red Fish Bar.

The U.S. Coast Survey, under its second superintendent Alexander Dallas Bache (1806-1867), began work on the Texas coast in 1847 during the U.S. War with Mexico. By 1852, the office published an annual report in which these charts of the Texas coast first appeared. Interestingly, Bache was a great grandson of Benjamin Franklin and the father-in-law of William H. Emory of the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. Bache's field workers along the Texas coast included Assistants Robert Fauntleroy, Richard D. Cutts, and J. Morris Wampler. Unfortunately, Fauntleroy died of cholera in Galveston before he could complete triangulations, so the various tasks fell to Cutts, Wampler, and others who toiled along the coast near

Galveston in the winter and spring of 1849-1850 and winter of 1850-1851, most of the time on board the schooner Nymph.