Matthew Fontaine Maury, the Pathfinder of the Seas

by Charles Lee Lewis

Luckily for the young officer, the very first ship to which he was attached, the Brandywine, was the vessel which had been chosen to convey Lafayette home to France after his memorable visit to the United States. This ship, named from Brandywine Creek, the scene of the battle in which Lafayette was wounded on September 11, 1777, had been launched on June 16 of the year 1825. In equipping her for this special service, the officers had been selected so as to represent as many different states as possible and, where it was practicable, they were to be descendants of persons who had distinguished themselves in the Revolution. This accounted for the large number of midshipmen ordered aboard her, twenty-six instead of the usual eight or ten for a vessel of that size. Maury was thus brought in touch with young officers from various sections of the country; and among the senior officers were Captain Charles Morris, who had made a name for himself in the War of 1812, and Lieutenant David Farragut, who was to become one of the very greatest American naval leaders.

On the 8th of September the Brandywine set sail from the mouth of the Potomac, where Lafayette had been received on board the ship. She passed down the Chesapeake through a brilliant rainbow which was apparently supported on the Virginia and Maryland shores, as if Nature had reserved to herself the honor of erecting the last of the numerous triumphal arches that had been dedicated to the great Frenchman during his extraordinary visit. As the ship made her way to sea, almost the last glimpse which Lafayette had of America was the bluffs of the York River where he had so materially aided the American cause at the Battle of Yorktown.

The voyage turned out to be not a very pleasant one, for the ship had hardly gotten under way when she began to leak and for a time it was thought that she would have to return to port. But as it was reported that the leak was under control, Lafayette advised the captain to continue the voyage, and when the planks of the vessel swelled from immersion in the water the leak gradually diminished. The weather, however, then became stormy, and during most of the passage the distinguished passenger suffered so severely from sea-sickness and gout that he was unable to join the officers at dinner or to visit the deck. They were thus deprived, much to their regret, from listening as much as they desired to the reminiscences of the great general’s interesting and eventful life. There was another unpleasantness that affected the midshipmen in particular. This was caused by a steward who, in cleaning an officer’s uniform, upset a bottle of turpentine, the contents of which ran into a barrel of sugar belonging to the midshipmen’s mess. As a consequence, during the remainder of the voyage they had to eat their desserts strongly flavored with turpentine.

At the close of the voyage, the midshipmen presented to Lafayette, as a mark of their personal friendship, a beautiful silver urn appropriately engraved with scenes of the Capitol at Washington, Lafayette’s visit to the tomb of Washington, and the arrival of the Brandywine at Havre. At this French port, Lafayette disembarked, taking with him the flag of the American vessel as a souvenir of the voyage. From here Maury’s ship proceeded to Cowes where she was calked, and then sailed for the Mediterranean, joining Commodore John Rodgers’ squadron at Gibraltar on the 2nd of November. The ship was refitted here during the winter, and the following spring she returned to the United States, arriving at New York in May, 1826.

Such in brief outline was Maury’s first cruise. Though none of his letters giving his impressions of these first months at sea have been preserved, yet it is not difficult to imagine with what eagerness and delight his active young mind observed the strange sights and assimilated the new experiences. Many years afterwards he wrote of how he secured a Spanish work on navigation in order that he might acquire a new language and a science at the same time. In this connection he related how he resorted to various artifices for study while on watch. “If I went below only for a moment or two,” he wrote, “and could lay hands upon a dictionary or any book, I would note a sentence, or even a word, that I did not understand, and fix it in my memory to be reflected upon when I went on deck. I used to draw problems in spherical trigonometry with chalk on the shot, and put them in the racks where I could see them as I walked the deck. That with so much perseverance I should have failed in my prime object, I attribute to the want of books and proper teachers in the navy”. It was this seriousness of purpose and industry that caused Maury soon to become well known among his shipmates for his scholarship, and the story is told that even on this first cruise a certain mathematical problem was passed from steerage to wardroom without solution until he solved it.

After making a short visit to his home in Tennessee, Maury set sail on June 10, 1826 from Norfolk on the frigate Macedonian to which he had been ordered for temporary duty. This ship was bound for Rio Janeiro where she arrived after a passage of sixty-two days. After cruising in Brazilian waters for awhile, the frigate went on down the coast to Montevideo. At this time a war was raging between Brazil and Argentina over Banda Oriental, or Uruguay, which had been a sort of political football between the two countries until 1821, when it was partly subdued by Brazil. In 1825, however, it rose against this empire, and after a long struggle of three years it succeeded in having its independence recognized by the treaty of Rio Janeiro, on August 27, 1828. This state of affairs constituted the principal reason why American ships of war were sent to those waters. Thus was Maury brought into touch with history in the making, and the letters which he wrote at this time show an alert interest in what he was observing and display as well an unusual ability in recording experiences and his impressions of the people.

His name was still carried on the muster and pay rolls of the Brandywine; but that ship did not depart for South American waters until the last of August, 1826, when she set sail from New York with the Vincennes. Eventually it was Maury’s good fortune to be transferred to the latter vessel, in which he was to circumnavigate the globe. He first joined the Vincennes, on March 10, 1827, in Callao Roads, the port of Lima, Peru. The American warships had by this time entered the Pacific and were cruising up and down the South American coast from Valparaiso, Chile to Guayaquil, Ecuador to protect the commerce of the United States, as this part of South America also was then in turmoil.

Bolivar, after liberating the states of northern South America from Spanish rule, was endeavoring to organize Columbia, Peru, Bolivia, La Plata, and Chile into a grand republic, of which he aspired to be the ruler. The union of the first three of these states was practically realized, but the undertaking finally ended in failure because of the jealousy of Bolivar’s former companions in arms and the fickleness of the South American people. This characteristic of the people is humorously set forth in Maury’s letters in which he describes some of the fighting which he witnessed at Guayaquil. The young man’s historical outlook was thus further broadened by this personal contact with the affairs of the great Libertador, Bolivar.

On July 4, 1829, the war meanwhile having come to an end, the Vincennes, under the command of Captain William Compton (Bolton) Finch, set forth from Callao on her voyage across the Pacific. She was to make her first stop at the Washington Islands, now known as the Marquesas, in order, as Captain Finch’s orders read, to secure proper treatment from the natives for any of our defenseless seafaring countrymen who in their lawful pursuits were compelled by necessity to resort to the harbors of the islands for refreshment and supplies; to reclaim those who from improper motives had remained among the islanders; and by exhibiting the moral advancement of America to so raise the American national character in their estimation as to induce a praiseworthy imitation of it on their part. The ship arrived at one of the islands, Nukahiva by name, on July 26, and in order to carry out the spirit of his orders Captain Finch made his vessel a “tabu ship” that he might prevent the gross licentiousness to which ships from Christian lands were usually surrendered in those ports.

For an account of Maury’s experiences on this cruise little is to be derived from his extant letters, but fortunately Chaplain C. S. Stewart wrote a book entitled “A Visit to the South Seas in the U. S. Ship Vincennes during the years 1829 and 1830”, in which he mentions Maury as a member of the shore party which visited the Valley of Taioa and as one of those who went on various other expeditions on the island of Nukahiva under the direction of the chaplain. That these were unforgettable experiences is evident from Stewart’s rapturous descriptions of the people and the scenery of the island which, he declared, “seemed almost a fairy land, scarce less fascinating in its features than the imaginary haunts pictured by the pens of genius as the abode of Calypso, or the happy valley of the Abyssinian prince”.