‘There are no charts of any part of the world so accurate and no directions so perfect as not to furnish frequent occasion for revision and amendment.’ (From the title page of the Nautical Magazine, 1832.)

In March 1832 a new monthly was published, the Nautical Magazine. Subsidized at first by the Admiralty and the Mercantile Marine Fund, it was edited by Beecher who was the right-hand man to Admiral Beaufort in the Hydrographic Department. Part of the introduction to this first volume read as follows: ‘The principal feature of the work will consist of the particulars of those hidden maritime dangers which are too often fatal to ships. … Much information, of a nature highly valuable to mariners, is scattered about, destitute of any systematic arrangement by which it can be made available to them; but the pages of the Nautical Magazine will hereafter become the receptacle, in which it will be preserved for their reference.’