Matthew Fontaine Maury, the Pathfinder of the Seas

by Charles Lee Lewis

Copy of engraving furnished by Captain E. T. Pollock, U. S. N. Superintendent Naval Observatory.

Copy of an Engraving of Maury Which Hangs in the Superintendent’s Office at the United States Naval Observatory

The last-mentioned paper was made possible by the coöperation afforded by the government in authorizing in 1849 the Secretary of the Navy to detail three suitable vessels to assist in Maury’s wind and current investigations and to order all ships of the navy to coöperate in so far as it was compatible with the public interest. Maury had long had a desire to explore the bottom of the ocean, and he now saw to it that these ships especially detailed to help him were equipped and thoroughly instructed for making soundings. The first attempts were made by the schooner Taney, under the command of Lieutenant J. C. Walsh, in the autumn of 1849. But her work was of negligible value, as she succeeded only in losing some 5700 fathoms of line as well as her deep-sea sounding apparatus, and then proved so unseaworthy that she had to be condemned and sent back home under escort. Later, however, the results secured particularly by Captain Charles T. Platt in the sloop of war Albany and by Lieutenants S. P. Lee and O. H. Berryman in the brig Dolphin were of great importance. So extensive was the data regarding soundings at Maury’s command by the close of the year 1853 that he was able to publish in the sixth edition of his “Sailing Directions” (1854) ninety pages of matter under the heading of “Physical Geography of the Sea”.

This edition of the “Sailing Directions” was brought out by E. C. and J. Biddle of Philadelphia, and when Maury’s nephew, Dabney Maury, went to see the publishers about some question connected with its publication, one of the firm called his attention to the fact that Maury’s annual report contained materials for a most interesting and valuable book. He warned him that, unless the results of his investigations were thus guarded by a copyright, he would have the chagrin of seeing “some Yankee bookmaker steal his thunder and reap a fortune from it”. By the next mail Maury was advised of this. He at once became interested in the undertaking and, with the advice of the Biddles, arrangements were made with Harpers for the publication of such a book. It was begun in the spring of 1854, and finished and ready for the publishers by June 20 of the same year. Maury was of the opinion that it was to be his “great work”, and time certainly proved that he had not overestimated its importance.

The title of the book was taken from one of the chapter headings in the sixth edition of his “Sailing Directions”, and was originally suggested to Maury by Humboldt, who wrote that Maury’s investigations had produced an amount of useful information sufficient, in his opinion, to constitute a new department of science which he called the Physical Geography of the Seas. The first edition, published early in the year 1855, contained only 274 pages, and was dedicated “as a token of friendship and a tribute to worth” to George Manning of New York who had been of great assistance to Maury in the distribution of the wind and current charts. In 1861, the eighth and last American edition of 474 pages appeared, and at about the same time an English edition was published by Sampson Low, Son and Company in London. This American edition was dedicated to William C. Hasbrouck of Newburgh, New York “as a token of the friendship and esteem, from boyhood till now, of his former pupil”; while the English edition was inscribed to Lord Wrottesley. The book ran to as many as nineteen editions in England, where it bore the somewhat fuller title of “Physical Geography of the Sea and Its Meteorology”. It has been translated into Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Norwegian, and has been used as a textbook in several naval schools on the Continent.

As to the contents and general scope of his book, Maury wrote in the introduction, “Under this term will be included a philosophical account of the winds and currents of the sea; of the circulation of the atmosphere and ocean; of the temperature and depth of the sea; of the wonders that are hidden in its depths; and of the phenomena that display themselves at its surface. In short, I shall treat of the economy of the sea and its adaptations—of its salts, its waters, its climates, and its inhabitants, and of whatever there may be of general interest in its commercial uses or industrial pursuits, for all such things pertain to its Physical Geography”. It contained also a number of illustrative plates, among which was the first bathymetric map ever made of the North Atlantic Ocean, with contour-lines drawn in at 1000, 2000, 3000, and 4000 fathoms.

Some idea of the nature of the book and of Maury’s peculiar style can be best secured by the consideration of some selections taken from it here and there. Those quoted below are, of course, of the nature of “purple patches”, for it must not be supposed that there are no dry and uninteresting passages in the book; but they are fairly representative and will probably serve the purpose intended. Maury was the first scientist to make a careful study of the Gulf Stream, and the first chapter of his “Physical Geography of the Sea” is devoted to this mighty ocean current. The reader’s interest is gained and his imagination is excited at once by these opening sentences: “There is a river in the ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its current is of warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is in the Arctic Seas. It is the Gulf Stream. There is in the world no other such majestic flow of waters. Its current is more rapid than the Mississippi or the Amazon, and its volume more than a thousand times greater”.

In the chapter on the “Influence of the Gulf Stream upon Climates” is the following striking passage on whales and other animals of the sea: “Now, the Western Islands is the great place of resort for whales: and at first there is something curious to us in the idea that the Gulf of Mexico is the harvest-field, and the Gulf Stream the gleaner which collects the fruitage planted there, and conveys it thousands of miles off to the hungry whale at sea. But how perfectly in unison is it with the kind and providential care of that great and good Being which feeds the young ravens when they cry, and caters for the sparrow....

“The inhabitants of the ocean are as much the creatures of climate as are those of the dry land; for the same Almighty hand, which decked the lily and cares for the sparrow, fashioned also the pearl and feeds the great whale, and adapted each to the physical conditions by which His providence has surrounded it. Whether of the land or the sea, the inhabitants are all His creatures, subjects of His laws, and agents of His economy. The sea, therefore, we may safely infer, has its offices and duties to perform; so, may we infer, have its currents, and so, too, its inhabitants; consequently, he who undertakes to study its phenomena must cease to regard it as a waste of waters. He must look upon it as a part of that exquisite machinery by which the harmonies of nature are preserved, and then he will begin to perceive the developments of order and the evidences of design; these make it a most beautiful and interesting subject for contemplation”.

This idea of divine order and design occurs again and again in the book like the motive in a piece of music; in fact, Maury, though he did not formally enter the church until late in life, was a very religious man and well read in the Bible, quotations from which appear in his writings by the dozen. He had very definite ideas about the relation between science and the Bible, and declared that it was his rule never to forget who was the Author of the great volume which Nature spreads out before men, and always to remember that the same Being was the author of the book which revelation holds forth for contemplation. It was his opinion that, though the works were entirely different, their records were equally true, and that when they bear upon the same point, as they occasionally do, it would be impossible for them to contradict each other. If the two cannot be reconciled, the fault therefore is in man’s weakness and blindness in interpreting them aright.