HIS THREE CRUISES
Maury’s early years in the navy afforded the lad from the backwoods
of Tennessee wonderful experiences, and excellent opportunities for
supplementing the desultory education that he had received. To a young
man of his intellectual capacity, these voyages to foreign lands during
the most plastic years of his life were invaluable in the development
of a mind capable of grappling later with questions and problems which
concerned the entire world.
Luckily for the young officer, the very first ship to which he was
attached, the _Brandywine_, was the vessel which had been chosen to
convey Lafayette home to France after his memorable visit to the United
States. This ship, named from Brandywine Creek, the scene of the
battle in which Lafayette was wounded on September 11, 1777, had been
launched on June 16 of the year 1825. In equipping her for this special
service, the officers had been selected so as to represent as many
different states as possible and, where it was practicable, they were
to be descendants of persons who had distinguished themselves in the
Revolution. This accounted for the large number of midshipmen ordered
aboard her, twenty-six instead of the usual eight or ten for a vessel
of that size. Maury was thus brought in touch with young officers from
various sections of the country; and among the senior officers were
Captain Charles Morris, who had made a name for himself in the War of
1812, and Lieutenant David Farragut, who was to become one of the very
greatest American naval leaders.
On the 8th of September the _Brandywine_ set sail from the mouth of
the Potomac, where Lafayette had been received on board the ship.
She passed down the Chesapeake through a brilliant rainbow which was
apparently supported on the Virginia and Maryland shores, as if Nature
had reserved to herself the honor of erecting the last of the numerous
triumphal arches that had been dedicated to the great Frenchman during
his extraordinary visit. As the ship made her way to sea, almost the
last glimpse which Lafayette had of America was the bluffs of the York
River where he had so materially aided the American cause at the Battle
of Yorktown.
The voyage turned out to be not a very pleasant one, for the ship had
hardly gotten under way when she began to leak and for a time it was
thought that she would have to return to port. But as it was reported
that the leak was under control, Lafayette advised the captain to
continue the voyage, and when the planks of the vessel swelled from
immersion in the water the leak gradually diminished. The weather,
however, then became stormy, and during most of the passage the
distinguished passenger suffered so severely from sea-sickness and gout
that he was unable to join the officers at dinner or to visit the deck.
They were thus deprived, much to their regret, from listening as much
as they desired to the reminiscences of the great general’s interesting
and eventful life. There was another unpleasantness that affected the
midshipmen in particular. This was caused by a steward who, in cleaning
an officer’s uniform, upset a bottle of turpentine, the contents of
which ran into a barrel of sugar belonging to the midshipmen’s mess.
As a consequence, during the remainder of the voyage they had to eat
their desserts strongly flavored with turpentine.
At the close of the voyage, the midshipmen presented to Lafayette, as a
mark of their personal friendship, a beautiful silver urn appropriately
engraved with scenes of the Capitol at Washington, Lafayette’s visit to
the tomb of Washington, and the arrival of the _Brandywine_ at Havre.
At this French port, Lafayette disembarked, taking with him the flag
of the American vessel as a souvenir of the voyage. From here Maury’s
ship proceeded to Cowes where she was calked, and then sailed for the
Mediterranean, joining Commodore John Rodgers’ squadron at Gibraltar on
the 2nd of November. The ship was refitted here during the winter, and
the following spring she returned to the United States, arriving at New
York in May, 1826.
Such in brief outline was Maury’s first cruise. Though none of his
letters giving his impressions of these first months at sea have been
preserved, yet it is not difficult to imagine with what eagerness
and delight his active young mind observed the strange sights and
assimilated the new experiences. Many years afterwards he wrote of how
he secured a Spanish work on navigation in order that he might acquire
a new language and a science at the same time. In this connection he
related how he resorted to various artifices for study while on watch.
“If I went below only for a moment or two,” he wrote, “and could lay
hands upon a dictionary or any book, I would note a sentence, or
even a word, that I did not understand, and fix it in my memory to
be reflected upon when I went on deck. I used to draw problems in
spherical trigonometry with chalk on the shot, and put them in the
racks where I could see them as I walked the deck. That with so much
perseverance I should have failed in my prime object, I attribute
to the want of books and proper teachers in the navy”. It was this
seriousness of purpose and industry that caused Maury soon to become
well known among his shipmates for his scholarship, and the story is
told that even on this first cruise a certain mathematical problem was
passed from steerage to wardroom without solution until he solved it.
After making a short visit to his home in Tennessee, Maury set sail
on June 10, 1826 from Norfolk on the frigate _Macedonian_ to which
he had been ordered for temporary duty. This ship was bound for Rio
Janeiro where she arrived after a passage of sixty-two days. After
cruising in Brazilian waters for awhile, the frigate went on down the
coast to Montevideo. At this time a war was raging between Brazil
and Argentina over Banda Oriental, or Uruguay, which had been a sort
of political football between the two countries until 1821, when it
was partly subdued by Brazil. In 1825, however, it rose against this
empire, and after a long struggle of three years it succeeded in having
its independence recognized by the treaty of Rio Janeiro, on August
27, 1828. This state of affairs constituted the principal reason why
American ships of war were sent to those waters. Thus was Maury brought
into touch with history in the making, and the letters which he wrote
at this time show an alert interest in what he was observing and
display as well an unusual ability in recording experiences and his
impressions of the people.
His name was still carried on the muster and pay rolls of the
_Brandywine_; but that ship did not depart for South American waters
until the last of August, 1826, when she set sail from New York
with the _Vincennes_. Eventually it was Maury’s good fortune to be
transferred to the latter vessel, in which he was to circumnavigate the
globe. He first joined the _Vincennes_, on March 10, 1827, in Callao
Roads, the port of Lima, Peru. The American warships had by this time
entered the Pacific and were cruising up and down the South American
coast from Valparaiso, Chile to Guayaquil, Ecuador to protect the
commerce of the United States, as this part of South America also was
then in turmoil.
Bolivar, after liberating the states of northern South America from
Spanish rule, was endeavoring to organize Columbia, Peru, Bolivia, La
Plata, and Chile into a grand republic, of which he aspired to be the
ruler. The union of the first three of these states was practically
realized, but the undertaking finally ended in failure because of the
jealousy of Bolivar’s former companions in arms and the fickleness
of the South American people. This characteristic of the people is
humorously set forth in Maury’s letters in which he describes some
of the fighting which he witnessed at Guayaquil. The young man’s
historical outlook was thus further broadened by this personal contact
with the affairs of the great _Libertador_, Bolivar.
On July 4, 1829, the war meanwhile having come to an end, the
_Vincennes_, under the command of Captain William Compton (Bolton)
Finch, set forth from Callao on her voyage across the Pacific. She
was to make her first stop at the Washington Islands, now known as
the Marquesas, in order, as Captain Finch’s orders read, to secure
proper treatment from the natives for any of our defenseless seafaring
countrymen who in their lawful pursuits were compelled by necessity
to resort to the harbors of the islands for refreshment and supplies;
to reclaim those who from improper motives had remained among the
islanders; and by exhibiting the moral advancement of America to so
raise the American national character in their estimation as to induce
a praiseworthy imitation of it on their part. The ship arrived at one
of the islands, Nukahiva by name, on July 26, and in order to carry out
the spirit of his orders Captain Finch made his vessel a “tabu ship”
that he might prevent the gross licentiousness to which ships from
Christian lands were usually surrendered in those ports.
For an account of Maury’s experiences on this cruise little is to
be derived from his extant letters, but fortunately Chaplain C. S.
Stewart wrote a book entitled “A Visit to the South Seas in the U. S.
Ship Vincennes during the years 1829 and 1830”, in which he mentions
Maury as a member of the shore party which visited the Valley of Taioa
and as one of those who went on various other expeditions on the
island of Nukahiva under the direction of the chaplain. That these
were unforgettable experiences is evident from Stewart’s rapturous
descriptions of the people and the scenery of the island which, he
declared, “seemed almost a fairy land, scarce less fascinating in its
features than the imaginary haunts pictured by the pens of genius as
the abode of Calypso, or the happy valley of the Abyssinian prince”.
Before leaving this island Maury had an experience of peculiar
interest. It was here that his brother John had spent two years
practically cut off from civilization. Just before the War of 1812,
he had secured a furlough from the navy and had gone as first officer
in a merchantman on a voyage to China. On departing from Nukahiva,
the captain of this ship left John Maury and six men on the island
to procure sandalwood and other articles of commerce. They were, of
course, to be taken off on the return from China; but the war broke out
and the ship was blockaded in a Chinese port by the English. Meanwhile
the Americans were left to shift for themselves on Nukahiva, and in
a war between two tribes, one of which was friendly to them, all the
white men were killed except John Maury and another man named Baker.
Fortunately, Porter visited the island during the famous cruise of
the _Essex_, and rescued the two survivors. In order that he might
learn something about the history of his brother while on the island,
Midshipman Maury set about studying the language of the natives, during
the three weeks or so of his visit. And shortly before his departure
he was able to converse with the old chief who had been his brother’s
friend. “The Happas and the Typees”, Maury wrote, “were at war. The
latter having just captured three children from the former, we went
to the rescue and recovered two, the third had been eaten. When we
returned to the Happa Valley from the expedition—it was the valley
where dwelt my brother—the men had liberty and the old Happa chief
remained on board as a hostage, for his subjects were all a set of
savages and the women literally in the fig leaf state. At night when
all the men had come off safe and sound, and a few days only before we
left, I was sent to take the old fellow ashore. Going ashore, I made
myself known to him. He was the firm and fast friend of my brother. Had
saved his life. He was then old. He it was that offered me his scepter,
his own wife, and the daughter of a neighboring chief if I would
remain”.
Needless to say, this flattering offer was rejected, and Maury was
on the _Vincennes_ when she sailed away from the island. In leaving
the bay, the ship narrowly escaped destruction, for the vessel was
at first becalmed and then suddenly carried by the swell toward the
breakers. Every face was pale with fear and the silence of the grave
hung over the ship, but a timely breath of air filled the topsails and
finally slowly carried her out to the open sea. In five days she was
seven hundred miles away at Tahiti, one of the Society Islands. Here
Maury had the pleasure of joining several shore parties, and was also
present at an interesting reception to the Queen of Tahiti on board the
_Vincennes_, when the firing of the salute to the queen greatly alarmed
her and caused her to behave in a very humorous and undignified manner.
The ship then set sail, after a month’s visit, for the Sandwich
Islands. On the island of Hawaii Maury visited the Cascade of the
Rainbow and probably saw also the volcano of Kilauea, about both of
which Chaplain Stewart goes into rhapsodies in his account of the
voyage. Captain Finch went also to Honolulu, on the island of Oahu,
and there presented to King Kamehameha III a pair of gloves and a
large map of the United States, and a silver vase to the regent and
two silver goblets to the princess. A letter from the Secretary of the
Navy was then delivered to the king. This was well received by his
majesty, and his reply was in the friendliest possible tone, agreeing
to treat American sailors with more consideration and fairness in the
future. The purpose of the visit having thus been accomplished, several
deserters having been reclaimed, and the settlement of claims for about
$50,000 for American citizens having been negotiated, the ship departed
for China.
Leaving behind the northern Bashee Islands, which are considered one
of the barriers of the Pacific as well as one of the portals to the
Celestial Empire, the ship came to anchor on January 3, 1830 in the
roads of Macao, a Portuguese city, situated on a small island about
seventy miles from Canton. The _Vincennes_ thus gained the distinction
of being the second American man-of-war to visit Chinese waters,
having been preceded only by the _Congress_ in 1819. After receiving
a statement from the American consul and merchants at Canton on the
advisability of having American men-of-war make periodic visits
to Chinese waters, Captain Finch was off again, this time for the
Philippines.
After a brief visit at Manila, the ship turned towards home, and,
stopping in the Straits of Sunda and at Cape Town, on the first of May
came in sight of the Island of St. Helena. Here ample time was afforded
the officers for seeing Longwood House in which Napoleon had lived and
also his tomb, from which the body of the great general had not at that
time been removed to Paris. After leaving this island, the ship made no
other stop until she arrived in New York on the 8th of June, 1830, with
her band appropriately playing, “Hail Columbia! Happy Land!”
After almost four years to a day, Maury was home again; but he was no
longer the raw lad from the Tennessee backwoods, for the information
and experience which he had gained on this cruise of the first American
man-of-war to circumnavigate the globe had gone a long way towards
taking the place of a college education. Men of the stamp of Commodore
Charles Morris, Lieutenant Farragut, Captain Finch, Chaplain Stewart,
and dozens of other officers with whom he had come in contact during
his first two cruises had contributed, by example at least, in making
him into an officer and a gentleman. During all this time he had
studied, and read as widely as opportunity afforded, having had the
privilege for a portion of the time of using the books of Midshipman
William Irving, a nephew to Washington Irving.
That the opportunities for instruction on shipboard were, however, very
limited is indicated by the following summary of Maury’s experience
with the school system of the navy. “The first ship I sailed in”,
he wrote, “had a schoolmaster: a young man from Connecticut. He was
well qualified and well disposed to teach navigation, but not having
a schoolroom, or authority to assemble the midshipmen, the cruise
passed off without the opportunity of organizing his school. From him,
therefore, we learned nothing. On my next cruise, the dominie was a
Spaniard; and, being bound to South America, there was a perfect mania
in the steerage for the Spanish language. In our youthful impetuosity
we bought books, and for a week or so pursued the study with great
eagerness. But our spirits began to flag, and the difficulties of
_ser_ and _estar_ finally laid the copestone for us over the dominie’s
vernacular. The study was exceedingly dry. We therefore voted both
teacher and grammar a bore, and committing the latter to the deep, with
one accord, we declared in favor of the Byronical method—
‘’Tis pleasant to be taught in a strange tongue
By female lips and eyes’;
and continued to defer our studies till we should arrive in the South
American vale of paradise, called Valparaiso. After arriving on that
station, the commander, who had often expressed his wish that we
should learn to speak Spanish, sent down ‘for all the young gentlemen’,
as the middies are called, and commenced to ask us one by one—‘Can
you speak Spanish?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘Then you are no gentleman’. ‘Can you?’
But always receiving the same answer, he sent us out of the cabin as
a set of blackguards. As he was as ignorant on this subject as any
of us, we included him among the number, and thought it an excellent
joke. Thus ended our scholastic duties on that ship. I was afterwards
transferred to another vessel in which the schoolmaster was a young
lawyer, who knew more about _jetsam_ and _flotsam_ than about lunars
and dead reckoning—at least, I presume so, for he never afforded
us an opportunity to judge of his knowledge on the latter subjects.
He was not on speaking terms with the reefers, ate up all the plums
for the duff, and was finally turned out of the ship as a nuisance.
When I went to sea again, the teacher was an amiable and accomplished
young man, from the ‘land of schoolmasters and leather pumpkin seed’.
Poor fellow!—far gone in consumption, had a field of usefulness been
open to him, he could not have labored in it. He went to sea for his
health, but never returned. There was no schoolmaster in the next ship,
and the ‘young gentlemen’ were as expert at lunars, and as _au fait_
in the mysteries of latitude and departure, as any I had seen. In my
next ship, the dominie was a young man, troubled like some of your
correspondents, Mr. Editor, with _cacoethes scribendi_. He wrote a
book. But I never saw him teaching ‘the young idea’, or instructing the
young gentlemen in the art of plain sailing; nor did I think it was his
fault, for he had neither schoolroom nor pupil. Such is my experience
of the school system in the navy; and I believe that of every officer
will tally with it”.[1]
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.