Why HMS Merlin was the most influential survey ship

Which Royal Navy survey ship was the most influential?

HMS Merlin, because her work with Grenville Collins established processes that later Royal Navy survey ships followed.

The famous Challenger expedition is separate from the narrower question of influence within the dedicated survey service. HMS Merlin is the choice because her long employment by Grenville Collins helped establish the process followed by later Royal Navy survey ships. Her seventeenth-century work turned systematic coastal measurement into a sustained naval assignment. This judgment rests on institutional precedent rather than the scale, fame, or technology of a later vessel.