He found a mass of log books of American warships. Over these he pondered. He sent hundreds of bottles and buoys to be dropped into the seven seas by fighting craft and merchantmen.
These were picked up now and again and came back to him, and from the information sent to him with them, and soundings in thousands of places, added to what he had gleaned in earlier years, he prepared his greatest work. It took ultimate form in a series of six “charts” and eight large volumes of “sailing directions,” that comprehended all the waters and winds in all climes, and on every sea where white sails bend and steamer smoke drifts.
The charts exhibit, with wonderful accuracy, the winds and currents, their force and direction at different seasons, the calm belts, the trade winds, the rains and storms—the gulf stream, the Japan current—all the great ocean movements; and the sailing directions are treasure chests for seamen. Paths were marked out on the ocean, and a practical result was, that one of the most difficult sea voyages—from New York to San Francisco, around the Horn—was shortened by forty days. It has been estimated that by shortening the time of many sea voyages, Commander Maury has effected a saving of not less than $40,000,000 each year.
Of his own work, Maury wrote:
“So to shape the course on voyages at sea as to make the most of winds and currents, is the perfection of the navigator’s art. How the winds blow or the currents flow along this route or that is no longer a matter of speculation or opinion. The wind and weather, daily encountered by hundreds who sailed before him, have been tabulated for the mariner; nay, the path has been blazed for him on the sea; mile posts have been set upon the waves and time tables furnished for the trackless waste.”
It was this work that, reaching over Europe and Asia, brought on the Brussels conference in 1853, to which Maury, founder of the science of hydrography and meteorology, went as America’s representative, and here he covered himself with honors. He came back to write his “Physical Geography of the Sea and Its Meteorology.”
This, the essence of his life work, the poetry and the romance of his science, passed through twenty editions and was known in every school, but the book’s greatest interest was killed by the removal of the poetic strain that made it beautiful. It has been translated into almost every language. In it is the story of the sea, its tides and winds, its shore lines and its myriads of life; its deep and barren bottoms. For Maury also charted the ocean floors, and it was his work in this line that caused Cyrus Field to say of the laying of the Atlantic cable:
“Maury furnished the brains, England furnished the money, and I did the work.”
Honored by All Europe
No other American ever was honored by Emperors and Kings as was Matthew Fontaine Maury. He was given orders of Knighthood by the Czar of Russia, the King of Denmark, King of Spain, King of Portugal, King of Belgium and Emperor of France, while Russia, Austria, Sweden, Holland, Sardenia, Bremen, Turkey and France struck gold medals in his honor. The pope of Rome sent him a full set of all the medals struck during his pontificate. Maximilian decorated him with “The Cross of the Order of Guadaloupe” while Germany bestowed on him the “Cosmos Medal,” struck in honor of Von Humboldt, and the only duplicate of that medal in existence.