Of all the famous men who went from Fredericksburg to take large parts in
the rapidly moving history of America, or in the work of the world,
Commodore Maury added most to the progress of science. Not only did he
create knowledge, but he created wealth by the immense saving he effected
to shipping by charting shorter ocean routes. He is buried in Hollywood
Cemetery, in Richmond, under a simple shaft which bears the name, "Matthew
Fontaine Maury." The great "pathfinder of the seas" was born in
Spotsylvania County, January, 1806, and died at Lexington in 1873.
[Sidenote: _A World Famed Scientist_]
He wore the most prized decorations the monarchs of Europe could give him;
he founded the most valuable natural science known, and was reckoned a
transcendent genius. Of him, Mellin Chamberlain, Librarian of Congress,
said, with calm consideration "I do not suppose there is the least doubt
that Maury was the greatest man America ever produced."
Alexander Humbolt said that Maury created a new science.
He plunged into the unknown; he charted the seas and mapped its currents
and winds. He was the first to tell the world that winds and currents were
not of chance, but of fixed and immutable laws, and that even cyclones
were well governed. He knew why a certain coast was dry and another rainy,
and he could, on being informed of the latitude and longitude of a place,
tell what was the prevailing weather and winds.
Maury went to sea as a midshipman in the American navy in 1825, and in
1831, at twenty-four years of age, he became master of the sloop Falmouth,
with orders to go to the Pacific waters, but, though he sought diligently,
he found no chart of a track for his vessel, no record of currents or of
winds to guide him. The sea was a trackless wilderness, and the winds were
things of vagrant caprice. And he began then to grapple with those
problems which were to immortalize him.
He came back from ocean wanderings in a few years and married an old
sweetheart, Miss Ann Herndon, of Fredericksburg, and he lived for a time
on Charlotte Street, between Princess Anne and Prince Edward, and wrote
his first book, "A Treatise on Navigation;" while from his pen came a
series of newspaper and magazine articles that startled the world of
scientific thought. For the man had discovered new and unsuspected natural
laws!
Misfortune--that vastly helped him--came in 1839, when his leg was injured
through the overturning of a stage coach. The government put him in charge
of a new "Bureau of Charts and Instruments," at Washington, and out of
his work here grew the Naval Observatory, the Signal Service and the first
Weather Bureau ever established on earth! Every other science was old. His
science was utterly new, a field untouched.
[Sidenote: _Charting Seas and Winds_]
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."
[Sidenote: _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.
The current of the Civil War swept Maury away from Washington, and he
declined offers from France, Germany and Russia, joining his native state
in the Confederacy. He introduced the submarine torpedo, and rendered the
South other service before the final wreck, which left him stranded and
penniless. He went to Mexico now, to join his fortunes with those of the
unhappy Maximilian, and when the Emperor met his tragic end he found
himself again resourceless--and crippled. In 1868 when general amnesty was
given, he came back to become the first professor of meteorology at the
Virginia Military Institute. In October, 1872, he became ill and died in
February of the next year.
And this man, who had from Kings and Emperors more decorations than any
American has ever received, and for whom Europe had ever ready the highest
honors and greatest praise, was ignored by his own government, to which he
gave his life's work. No word of thanks, no tribute of esteem, no reward,
was ever given him. A bill to erect a monument to him lies now rotting in
some pigeonhole in Congress. But an effort to renew this is underway.