"Matthew Fontaine Maury, the Pathfinder of the Seas" by Charles Lee Lewis. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
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Charles Lee Lewis. Matthew Fontaine Maury, the Pathfinder of the Seas
Matthew Fontaine Maury, the Pathfinder of the Seas
Table of Contents
FOREWORD
PUBLISHER’S STATEMENT
PREFACE
CHAPTER I. His Early Years
CHAPTER II. His Three Cruises
CHAPTER III. He Resorts to the Pen
CHAPTER IV. His Astronomical Work
CHAPTER V. His Wind and Current Charts
CHAPTER VI. His Physical Geography of the Sea
CHAPTER VII. His Extra-Professional Interests
CHAPTER VIII. His Treatment by the “Retiring Board”
CHAPTER IX. Shadows of Coming Troubles
CHAPTER X. As His Friends and Family Knew Him Before the War
CHAPTER XI. His Part in the Civil War: In Virginia
CHAPTER XII. His Part in the Civil War: In England
CHAPTER XIII. With Maximilian in Mexico
CHAPTER XIV. Reunited with His Family in England
CHAPTER XV. His Last Years in Virginia
CHAPTER XVI. His Posthumous Reputation
LIST OF LETTERS
INDEX
PILOT CHART OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC
PILOT CHART OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN
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Charles Lee Lewis
Published by Good Press, 2021
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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”.
