Portrait of Matthew Fontaine Maury. The photo was taken shortly before Maury left for Brussels, Belgium as the United States representative who launched the International Marine Conference of Nations.
Gallery of Matthew Maury
1923
Portrait of Matthew Fontaine Maury. A painting by Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer.
Gallery of Matthew Maury
Portrait of Matthew Fontaine Maury.
Gallery of Matthew Maury
Portrait of Matthew Fontaine Maury.
Gallery of Matthew Maury
Portrait of Matthew Fontaine Maury.
Achievements
Richmond, Virginia, United States
Matthew Fontaine Maury "Pathfinder of the Seas" monument in Richmond, Virginia - bottom portion only for detailed photo.
Portrait of Matthew Fontaine Maury. The photo was taken shortly before Maury left for Brussels, Belgium as the United States representative who launched the International Marine Conference of Nations.
Explanations and Sailing Directions to Accompany the Wind and Current Charts, Approved by Commodore Charles Morris, Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance and Hydrography
Matthew Fontaine Maury was an American naval officer, pioneer hydrographer, and one of the founders of oceanography. He is remembered chiefly for his The Physical Geography of the Sea of 1855, now recognized as the first textbook of modern oceanography.
Background
Ethnicity:
Maury's father was a descendant of a Huguenot family that had come to Virginia from Ireland about 1718. His mother's English and Dutch forebears had settled in Virginia by 1650.
Matthew Fontaine Maury was born on January 14, 1806, near Fredericksburg, Virginia, United States. He was the seventh child of a small planter, Richard Maury and the former Diana Minor. His grandfather (the Reverend James Maury) was an inspiring teacher to a future United States president, Thomas Jefferson. When he was five years old, his father moved the entire family, five boys, and four girls, to a cotton farm in Tennessee. He grew up there in Williamson County.
Education
Matthew Fontaine Maury attended local country schools. Injured when he was 12 years old, Maury was sent to the Harpeth Academy for further schooling. Though his father wanted him to study medicine, Maury was especially drawn to science.
Career
Matthew Fontaine Maury's oldest brother was a naval midshipman whose adventures in the South Pacific may have enticed Maury to a military career. It was a fateful day when, without his father's knowledge, Matthew secured an appointment as a midshipman in the navy with the help of Sam Houston, then-congressman from Tennessee. Maury was 19 years old when he reported for active duty in August 1825.
While visiting various countries, he compiled a lunar table to be used by navigators. When he returned home in 1829, the table was published, the first of many publications. He wrote more than 200 articles on navigation, oceanography, meteorology, astronomy, naval reform, and the need for a naval academic institution; the latter article spurred the construction of the United States Naval Academy in 1845. Maury also compiled a number of nautical charts. He collected information for his charts by communicating with all naval and merchant ship captains. He asked them to send him any information they had on currents, winds, and weather wherever they were in the world. The resulting charts made navigation less hazardous in all oceans and harbors of the world for anyone involved in merchant shipping or naval operations.
In 1836 Maury published A New Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Navigation, which the Navy immediately adopted as a textbook.
Maury first came into wide public notice through a series of articles dealing with naval reform written between 1838 and 1841. During this period he sustained a severe knee injury in a stagecoach accident, which resulted in permanent lameness and made him unfit for sea duty. He was appointed a superintendent of the Depot of Charts and Instruments of the Navy Department at Washington, a post which included the superintendency of the new Naval Observatory. Soon afterward he began his researches on winds and currents and, in 1847, issued his Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic, which was followed by supplementary sailing directions in subsequent years. The savings in time that ships were able to make by following his directions attracted so much notice that at an international congress held in Brussels in 1853 the uniform system of recording oceanographic data he advocated was adopted for the naval vessels and merchant marine of most European nations. Within a few years, nations owning three-fourths of the world's shipping were sending their oceanographic observations to Maury, who evaluated the information and distributed the results throughout the world.
So extensive was Maury's knowledge of the sea that he was called upon for help in selecting the most advantageous time and place for laying the Atlantic cable. He prepared a chart representing in profile the bottom of the Atlantic between Europe and America, calling attention to the existence of what he termed the telegraphic plateau. He also helped persuade the public that such a cable was practical.
Maury settled in Virginia and worked for extra money as superintendent of a gold mine. In the 1850s he charted the floor of the Atlantic Ocean between Europe and the United States, demonstrating that a telegraph cable could be laid to connect the two continents. He was soon promoted to the rank of Commander in the navy. His book The Physical Geography of the Sea was published in 1855.
Maury supported the Confederate States of America during the Civil War and was sent to England on a mission for his government. There he remained, receiving accolades from many nations on his work. He wrote a number of articles on his favorite subjects not only in English but also in French, Spanish, and German.
After the collapse of the Confederacy, Maury went to Mexico to promote a scheme for the colonization of former Confederates, lived in England for a while, and finally returned to Virginia, where he spent the last 4 years of his life as a professor of meteorology in the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington.
Matthew Fontaine Maury is remembered chiefly for his The Physical Geography of the Sea of 1855, now recognized as the first textbook of modern oceanography. For his achievements, he was knighted by several nations and given medals with precious gems. He was inducted into the Hall Of Fame For Great Americans in 1930. Several landmarks in Virginia are named after him.
Maury was a religious person. His Bible is depicted on his monument beside his left leg.
Politics
Maury was commissioned in the Confederate Navy, assigned to harbor defense, and began experimenting with electric mines. In 1862 the Confederate government sent him to England as a special agent.
Views
Despite Maury's pioneering efforts in oceanography, his de-emphasis of astronomy and preference for what he conceived as more practical work brought him into continuing conflict with leaders of American science, so much so that they met with genuine relief his defection to the Confederacy at the outbreak of the Civil War.
Quotations:
"Could the waters of the Atlantic be drawn off so as to expose to view this great seagash which separates continents, and extends from the Arctic to the Antarctic, it would present a scene the most rugged, grand and imposing. The very ribs of the solid earth, with the foundations of the sea, would be brought to light."
"Every physical fact, every expression of nature, every feature of the earth, the work of any and all of those agents which make the face of the world what it is, and as we see it, is interesting and instructive. Until we get hold of a group of physical facts, we do not know what practical bearings they may have, though right-minded men know that they contain many precious jewels, which science, or the expert hand of philosophy will not fail top bring out, polished, and bright, and beautifully adapted to man's purposes."
"It is a custom often practiced by seafaring people to throw a bottle overboard, with a paper, stating the time and place at which it is done. In the absence of other information as to currents, that afforded by these mute little navigators is of great value. "
"The rules of scientific investigation always require us, when we enter the domains of conjecture, to adopt that hypothesis by which the greatest number of known facts and phenomena may be reconciled."
"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."
Connections
Matthew Fontaine Maury married his cousin Ann Hull Herndon, who was 22. They had four daughters: Diana, Mary, Eliza, and Lucy; and three sons: Richard, John, and Matthew.
