A type-written letter, on two sheets of paper, from the Military Commissioner at Wei-Hai-Wei, China, to the War Office, London, 6th March 1901. Accompanied by a hand-drawn graph of monthly corrections to be made to allow for alterations in the Mean Sea Level at Wei-Hai-Wei.

Administrative / biographical background
When the Russians established a colony at Port Arthur in Manchuria in 1898, the British set up Wei-hai-wei (also known as Port Edward) in Shandong to counterbalance it. It was largely used as a naval station and a sanatorium. It became one of two major ports for ships of the Royal Navy in the Far East (the other being Hong Kong in the south) until relinquished in 1930. NMM has two charts of Wei Hai Wei (G272:6/12 and G272:6/13) surveyed by the WATERWITCH (the vessel named in the document) in 1898, before this sea-level document was compiled in 1901. The report is marked ‘copy’ however the whereabouts of the document from which the information has been extracted is not known.