Every one who has heard of Robert Fulton, certainly every one who has heard of S. F. B. Morse or Cyrus W. Field, ought also to have heard of Matthew Fontaine Maury. But that is not the case. For myself, I must confess that, until I visited Virginia, I was ignorant of the fact that such a person had existed; nor have northern schoolboys, to whom I have spoken of Maury, so much as heard his name. Yet there is no one living in the United States, or in any civilized country, whose daily life is not affected through the scientific researches and attainments of this man.
Maury's claim to fame rests on his eminent services to navigation and meteorology. If Humboldt's work, published in 1817, was the first great contribution to meteorological science, it remained for Maury to make that science exact.
While it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that Maury alone laid the foundation for our present Weather Bureau, he certainly shares with Professors Redfield, Espy, Loomis, Joseph Henry, Dr. Increase Lapham, and others, the honor of having been one of the first to suggest the feasibility of our present systematic storm warnings.
Maury was born in 1806. When nineteen years of age he secured a midshipman's warrant, and, as there was no naval academy at Annapolis then, was immediately assigned to a man-of-war. Within six years he was master of an American war vessel. Before starting on a voyage to the Pacific he sought information on the winds and currents, and finding that it was not available, determined himself to gather it for general publication. This he did, issuing a book upon the subject.
When a broken leg, the result of a stage-coach accident, caused his retirement from active service at sea, he continued his studies, and, in recognition of his services to navigation, was given charge of the Depot of Charts and Instruments at Washington. There he found stored away the log books of American naval vessels, and from the vast number of observations they contained, began the compilation of the Wind and Currents Charts known to all mariners.
A monograph on Maury, issued by N. W. Ayer & Son, of Philadelphia, says of these charts:
"They were, at first, received with indifference and incredulity. Finally, a Captain Jackson determined to trust the new chart absolutely. As a result he made a round trip to Rio de Janeiro in the time often required for the outward passage alone. Later, four clipper ships started from New York for San Francisco, via Cape Horn. These vessels arrived at their destination in the order determined by the degree of fidelity with which they had followed the directions of Maury's charts. The arrival of these ships in San Francisco marked, likewise, the arrival of Maury's Wind and Currents Charts in the lasting favor of the mariners of the world. The average voyage to San Francisco was reduced, by use of the charts, from one hundred and eighty-three to one hundred and thirty-five days, a saving of forty-eight days.
"Soon after this, the ship San Francisco, with hundreds of United States troops on board, foundered in an Atlantic hurricane. The rumor reached port that there was need of help. Maury was called upon to indicate her probable location. He set to work to show where the wind and currents would combine to place a helpless wreck, and marked the place with a blue pencil. There the relief was sent, and there the survivors of the wreck were found. From that day to this, Maury's word has been accepted without challenge by the matter-of-fact men of the sea.
"These charts, only a few in number, are among the most wonderful and useful productions of the human mind. One of them combined the result of 1,159,353 separate observations on the force and direction of the wind, and upward of 100,000 observations on the height of the barometer, at sea. As the value of such observations was recognized, more of them were made. Through the genius and devotion of one man, Commander Maury, every ship became a floating observatory, keeping careful records of winds, currents, limits of fogs, icebergs, rain areas, temperature, soundings, etc., while every maritime nation of the world coöperated in a work that was to redound to the benefit of commerce and navigation, the increase of knowledge, the good of all.
"In 1853, at the instance of Commander Maury, the United States called the celebrated Brussels Conference for the coöperation of nations in matters pertaining to maritime affairs. At this conference, Maury advocated the extension of the system of meteorological observation to the land, thus forming a weather bureau helpful to agriculture. This he urged in papers and addresses to the close of his life. Our present Weather Bureau and Signal Service are largely the outcome of his perception and advocacy."