Maury had the privilege of continuing his studies ashore in New York and Washington for several months before he embarked on his next cruise. He was then preparing himself for the examination for the rank of passed midshipman. This examination covered the following subjects: Bowditch’s “Navigation”; Playfair’s “Euclid”, Books 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6; McClure’s “Spherics”; Spanish or French; Mental and Moral Philosophy; Bourdon’s “Algebra”; and Seamanship. The time devoted to each midshipman by the examiners, in the order of his appointment, ranged from fifty minutes to two hours. To judge from the questions in seamanship, the examination was largely of a very practical nature,—on how to handle the sails of a ship and how to navigate her.
In his examination, Maury passed twenty-seven in a class of forty. An explanation of this apparently low standing may be gathered from the following account of the manner of conducting such examinations: “The midshipman who seeks to become learned in the branches of science that pertain to his profession, and who before the Examining Board should so far stray from the lids of Bowditch as to get among the isodynamic and other lines of a magnetic chart, would be blackballed as certainly as though he were to clubhaul a ship for the Board in the Hebrew tongue.... Midshipmen, turning to Bowditch, commit to memory the formula of his first or second method for ‘finding the longitude at sea by a lunar observation’. Thus crammed or ‘drilled’, as it is called, they go before the Board of Examination, where, strange to say, there is a premium offered for such qualification. He who repeats ‘by heart’ the rules of Bowditch, though he does not understand the mathematical principles involved in one of them, obtains a higher number from the Board than he who, skilled in mathematics, goes to the blackboard and, drawing his diagram, can demonstrate every problem in navigation”.[2] Maury, no doubt, wrote this out of his own personal experience; and even though the results of his examination may have indicated that in the ordinary duties of his profession he was not above the average, still it was to be in a special field of the service that his genius was to display itself.
During the winter which Maury spent in Washington he fell completely in love with his cousin, Ann Herndon, who was visiting relatives in Georgetown. Hitherto there had been a certain safety in numbers, as indicated by the numerous references in his letters to the charms of English girls and the “piercing eyes and insinuating smiles” of the Brazilian and Peruvian maidens. But before he went to sea again he became engaged to his cousin, and on his departure he gave her a little seal which was to be used only when she wrote to him; it bore the inscription of the single word Mizpah, that beautiful Biblical parting salutation, “The Lord watch between thee and me when we are absent one from the other”.
This love affair caused Maury to consider resigning from the naval service, but his hope of getting employment as a surveyor did not materialize and he finally concluded that he supposed Uncle Sam would have the selling of his bones to the doctors. Accordingly, in June, 1831 he sailed again for the Pacific, this time in the Falmouth. His ship touched at Rio for a brief visit, then doubled Cape Horn, and arrived at Valparaiso the last of October. The Falmouth remained on this station for about a year, and Maury renewed his former acquaintances and enjoyed the hospitality of Chilean society at dances and dinners without number. The vessel then cruised further north along the coast, visiting various ports and remaining several months at Callao.
One of Maury’s shipmates on this cruise has left some reminiscences which throw considerable light upon his young friend’s qualities as an officer. “I encountered some ridicule”, wrote Captain Whiting, “from my messmates for predicting that Maury would be a distinguished man. I asserted that there was that in him which could not be kept down.... In a survey of San Lorenzo Island while attached to the Falmouth I was an assistant to Maury, and he displayed that perseverance and energy undismayed by difficulty when he had once determined upon accomplishing a result, which ever marked his career. In prosecuting the survey of the Boca del Diables he scaled rocks and crept around the corners of cliffs when I was almost afraid to follow him, but the attainment of his object seemed to be with him the only subject of his thoughts. He landed on the Labos Rocks to the westward of San Lorenzo to make some astronomical and trigonometrical observations while I remained in the boat. When he landed it was almost a dead calm, and the sea comparatively smooth; but by the time he had finished his observations a fresh wind had sprung up from the southwards, the tide had risen, and the sea was raging so as to forbid the near approach of the boat, one minute receding from the rock so as to leave a yawning gulf of twenty or thirty feet depth, then rushing up again with appalling and irresistible force. Calling on me to approach as near as I dared, Maury ascended to the highest point of the rock, took off his jacket, and with a string which he found in his pocket tied in it his watch and sextant, and then threw it with all his might into the sea toward the boat, while the bowman of the boat stood ready to seize it with his boathook before the water had time to penetrate the wrapping. Maury then, watching the culmination of a wave, sprang from the rock himself and being a good swimmer and possessed of much youthful strength reached the boat in safety, but it was a fearful leap”.
The seeds of Maury’s later wonderful achievements in the science of the sea were implanted during this cruise of the Falmouth. He was the sailing master of the ship, and naturally wished to make as quick a voyage as possible. Before sailing he had searched diligently for information concerning the winds and currents and the best course for his ship to take, and was astonished to find that there was practically no information on the subject to be secured. The observations of these phenomena of the sea which he accordingly made on this voyage turned his mind toward a series of investigations which later was to make his name known round the entire world.
Maury did not return to the United States in the Falmouth, but shortly before her departure from Callao he was transferred on August 20, 1833 to the schooner Dolphin, in which vessel he performed the duties of first lieutenant. He remained on the little schooner but a few weeks, and then was attached to the frigate Potomac, which had just arrived at Callao under the command of Captain John Downes. This ship had been on duty on the Pacific coast of South America for a little more than a year, after having cruised almost around the world by way of the Cape of Good Hope, the Malay Archipelago, China, and the South Seas.
In a short time, however, the Potomac sailed for home, arriving at Valparaiso the middle of December. Here, according to Captain Whiting, Maury had a very unpleasant experience with a young lady named Manuela Poma with whom he had previously become acquainted. Her hand had been sought by a young officer of the Chilean army, who the evening before the Potomac sailed came on board the ship and told Maury that he had destroyed all his hopes of happiness. He said that the previous day he had made a declaration of his love to Manuela and that she had rejected him, telling him that her affections were already bestowed on the young American naval officer. Instead of priding himself on this conquest, as many young men would have done, Maury was exceedingly distressed as he had considered his relationship with the young girl to have been nothing more than that of friendship, and by a returning ship he sent a long letter to Manuela. Soon after his arrival in Boston he learned that she had died of consumption.
The voyage home round the Horn and by way of Rio was more or less uneventful, except for imminent peril for a time from icebergs off the Falkland Islands. After three years Maury was home again, and according to the decrees of Fate this was to be his last cruise. Hence a distinctive period in his life had come to a close; but his nine years of almost continuous sea duty had been a splendid preparation for the peculiar scientific work that he was soon to undertake.