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When the Potomac arrived in Boston, Maury applied for leave of absence and went directly to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he was married to Ann Herndon on July 15, 1834. In this charming old Virginia town he established his residence for the next seven years, living on Charlotte Street in a two-story frame house with a large old-fashioned garden, which he rented from a Mr. Johnston. He had always been generous with his money to different members of his family, and it is related that, as a consequence, he had but twenty dollars of ready money at the time of his marriage, all of which he gave as a fee to Parson E. C. McGuire. In the same generous way he shared his home for a considerable time with his brother John’s widow and her two sons.

With some leisure at his command, Maury determined to become an author, under the encouragement of the recent appearance in the American Journal of Science and Arts of his first scientific article, “On the Navigation of Cape Horn”. This, the first fruit of his sea experience, described forcefully the dangers of the passage of Cape Horn, and gave specific information concerning the winds and the peculiar rising and falling of the barometer in those latitudes. In the same number of this journal there appeared another article describing Maury’s “Plan of an Instrument for Finding the True Lunar Distance”, the instrument in question having been invented by him. With these beginnings, he ambitiously set to work to finish a book on navigation, which he had commenced during the last part of his recent tour of sea duty. He did not expect to receive much direct profit from such a nautical book, but hoped that it might be of a collateral advantage to him in making his name known to the Navy Department and to his brother officers. As it was the first nautical work of science ever to come from the pen of an American naval officer, he expected to base a claim for promotion on the merits of the book, and had hopes of being made a lieutenant of ten years’ rank with the accompanying back pay amounting to $4,000 or $5,000.

Courtesy of “The Journal of American History,” Vol. IV, Number 3 (1910).

Lieut. M. F. Maury

From a daguerreotype of about the year 1855

These plans of Maury’s did not fully materialize. President Jackson was of the opinion that the young author deserved promotion for his scientific work and reimbursement for the money which he had expended in its publication, but the Secretary of the Navy, Mahlon Dickerson, did not carry out the President’s wishes. The book itself, however, was a great success on its appearance early in the year 1836, under the title of “A New Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Navigation”. The publishers, E. C. and J. Biddle of Philadelphia, soon had the pleasure of printing a long list of favorable opinions of the work from professors and distinguished officers in the navy, among which the commendation of Nathaniel Bowditch gave Maury the greatest satisfaction. His book very quickly took the place of Bowditch’s “Practical Navigator” as a textbook for junior officers in the navy, and when the Naval Academy was established at Annapolis it was used for several years as the basis of the instruction given to midshipmen in navigation. In the title page appeared the significant words, “Cur Non?” (Why not?), the motto adopted by Lafayette when he espoused the cause of the American colonies; this was in effect Maury’s answer to any query that might be made as to why a young naval officer should attempt the writing of a book.

Of the reviews of Maury’s work, one of the most interesting appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger of June, 1836. It was written by Edgar Allan Poe, who was then editor of that magazine, and closed with the following paragraph: “The spirit of literary improvement has been awakened among the officers of our gallant navy. We are pleased to see that science also is gaining votaries from its ranks. Hitherto how little have they improved the golden opportunities of knowledge which their distant voyages held forth, and how little have they enjoyed the rich banquet which nature spreads for them in every clime they visit! But the time is coming when, imbued with a taste for science and a spirit of research, they will become ardent explorers of the regions in which they sojourn. Freighted with the knowledge which observation only can impart, and enriched with collections of objects precious to the student of nature, their return after the perils of a distant voyage will then be doubly joyful. The enthusiast in science will anxiously await their coming, and add his cordial welcome to the warm greetings of relatives and friends”. Poe, perhaps, had no idea how soon his prophetic words were to be fulfilled,—and by the very man whose book he had so favorably reviewed.

After making this successful entry into the field of authorship, Maury lectured on scientific subjects in Fredericksburg and set about the studying of mineralogy, geology, and drawing. In these studies he made such progress as to qualify himself to become superintendent of the United States Gold Mine near Fredericksburg. He spent the summer of 1836 with his family at this mine where he made some important improvements in its administration. Meanwhile, he had been promoted on June 10, 1836 to the rank of lieutenant, and though he had been offered a salary of $1200 as a mining engineer he decided to remain in the navy.

Maury’s interests were next directed to the Exploring Expedition to the South Seas. The little squadron selected to make the cruise, composed of the frigate Macedonian and the brigs Pioneer and Consort, rendezvoused at Norfolk in the autumn of the year 1836, under the command of Captain Thomas Ap Catesby Jones. Maury made an attempt to secure the command of one of the smaller vessels; but he failed in this, and had to be content with being attached to the Macedonian, March 18, 1837. Secretary of the Navy Dickerson had not, from its inception, been in favor of the expedition, which he looked upon as a scheme by President Jackson for self-glorification. He therefore did all that he could to block the sailing of the squadron by causing unnecessary delays, not caring for the waste of money involved in this procrastination. In this way the ships were kept at Norfolk until October when they finally sailed for New York.

In September, Maury had had the good fortune to be appointed “Astronomer” for the expedition with $1000 additional pay, and also as assistant to the “Hydrographer”, Lieutenant James Glynn. To prepare himself for these duties he went to Philadelphia, where in a little observatory in Rittenhouse Square he soon familiarized himself with the use of astronomical instruments. The expedition, however, still delayed to set sail, and the vexatious interference with his command so affected Captain Jones’s health as to give the Secretary of the Navy an excuse for removing him from his position. Matters had by this time come to such a pass that several officers declined the command when it was offered them; namely, Captains Shubrick, Kearny, Perry, and Gregory. Finally, in April, 1838, a junior officer, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, though there were eighty lieutenants above his grade, was selected, and he accepted the appointment.

The sloops of war Vincennes and Peacock and two smaller vessels were chosen instead of those originally prepared, and it became necessary to reorganize the personnel of the expedition. Maury had sympathized with Captain Jones in the unjust treatment which he had received from the Secretary of the Navy, and besides he had written that Wilkes was the only officer in the navy with whom he would not coöperate provided that he was put in command of the enterprise. He therefore asked to be detached from the expedition.

Maury might possibly have had the honor of commanding the exploring expedition himself, as clearly indicated by the following letter which he wrote years afterwards: “The expedition had been taken away from the Secretary of the Navy and transferred to Poinsett, Secretary of War. I was ordered to fetch the instruments to Washington and report myself to Poinsett. He received me with open arms, took me into his bosom, and asked me to give him the names of the officers without regard to rank that I thought best qualified for the expedition. I afterwards had reason to suppose that he expected me to name myself and intended to put me in command of it, as really I was the most important personage in it—Hydrographer and Astronomer. But I asked myself, what right have I to draw distinctions among brother officers? So I gave him a list of the officers belonging to the expedition; myself, the youngest lieutenant in the navy, at the bottom of the list. He froze up with disgust, ordered Wilkes home, and gave him the command, and so I was the gainer, for I preserved mine integrity”.

Maury was next assigned to the duty of surveying Southern harbors, relative to the establishment of a navy yard in the South. In this work he assisted Lieutenant James Glynn, in the schooner Experiment and the steamboat Engineer, in the examination and survey of the harbors of Beaufort and Wilmington, and the inlets Sapelo and Doboy on the coast of Georgia. Early in the month of August, 1839, Maury was detached from the Engineer at Norfolk with leave for one month, and he set out very soon thereafter from his home in Fredericksburg to visit his parents in Tennessee to look after some business affairs for his father who had become old and infirm, and also to make arrangements for conveying them to Virginia where they were to make their home with him.

Maury had written in vain, in February and again in August, 1839, to F. R. Hassler of the United States Coast Survey offering his services as head of a triangulation party. This was one of the several attempts he made at different times to find work of such a nature as to justify his resignation from the navy. By such small threads often hangs a man’s destiny. If Hassler had accepted Maury’s services, his whole future would probably have been different from what it became, for an event was soon to happen to him which, though apparently at first most unfortunate, was indirectly to place him on that flood tide which led him on to fortune.

Under orders to join the brig Consort at New York and continue the surveying of Southern harbors, Maury left his father’s home in Tennessee by stage coach to join his ship. He went by the northern route, and near Somerset, Ohio, on a rainy night about one o’clock in the morning, an embankment gave way and the coach was upset. Maury, having given his seat inside to a woman with a baby in arms, was riding on the seat with the coachman, and was the only person seriously injured. There were twelve other passengers; Maury, the thirteenth, had his right knee-joint transversely dislocated and the thigh-bone longitudinally fractured.

His recovery from the injury was slow and painful. The leg was improperly set, and at a time when the use of anesthetics was unknown it had to be reset with great pain to the unfortunate officer. During the three months of his confinement at the Hotel Phoenix in Somerset he managed to keep up his spirits in spite of the suffering and loneliness, and to break the tedium of the dull days he commenced the study of French without the aid of either grammar or dictionary. At last, in January, 1840, he thought himself strong enough to proceed to New York; but it was in the midst of winter and he had to be driven in a sleigh over the Alleghany Mountains. This occasioned considerable delay, and when he at length arrived at his destination he found that his ship had already sailed. He then made his way to his home in Virginia to recuperate his health and strength under the apprehension that his injury might be so serious as to incapacitate him for further active service in the navy.

During the long weeks in Ohio he had been greatly troubled with these fears and had considered gravely what he might do in the future. He had begun then to think seriously of resorting to the pen, and after his return home this notion “to take to books and be learned” began to take more definite shape in his mind, though he was greatly discouraged at his ignorance and confused by the wilderness of subjects from which to choose. He did not, however, wish to give the impression that he was shirking active service; so he made application on March 14, 1840 to Secretary of the Navy Paulding for any duty which he could perform in his present condition, “service on crutches” as he expressed it. This, of course, was not granted him, and thus relieved temporarily from active service, he began the writing of his “Scraps from the Lucky Bag”, a series of magazine articles which were soon to make his name very widely known.

In the summer of 1838, Maury had written five articles for the Richmond Whig and Public Advertiser under the nom de plume of “Harry Bluff, U.S. Navy”. His feelings were at that time raw over the outcome of the Exploring Expedition, and in these fearless, straightforward articles he bitterly criticised the former Secretary of the Navy Dickerson for his inefficiency and called upon his successor, Secretary Paulding, to restore to the navy its former prestige. The appointment of Wilkes to command the expedition was handled without gloves. “There was”, wrote Maury, “a cunning little Jacob who had campaigned in Washington a full term of seven years. More prodigal than Laban, you (Secretary of War, Joel R. Poinsett) gave him, for a single term, both the Rachel and the Leah of his heart. A junior lieutenant with scarcely enough service at sea to make him familiar with the common routine of duty on board a man-of-war, and with one or two short interruptions, a sinecurist on shore for the last fifteen years, he was lifted over the heads of many laborious and meritorious officers, and placed by you in the command of the Exploring Expedition in violation of law”.

Maury wrote, in December of the same year, seven more articles for this newspaper, hiding his identity by inscribing them “From Will Watch to his old messmate Harry Bluff”. In these he went further still into details as to the inefficiency of the administration of the navy, dealing especially with the waste connected with the building and repairing of ships, the need for a system of rules and regulations in the navy, and the advisability of establishing a naval school. As to the latter, he wrote, “There is not, in America, a naval school that deserves the name, or that pretends to teach more than the mere rudiments of navigation.... Why are not steps taken to have our officers educated and fitted for this high responsibility? The idea of a naval academy has been ridiculed. This may be the fault of Congress; I will not lay the censure at the wrong door—but the Department has been equally inattentive to providing the young officers with the proper means of learning even practical seamanship”.

These “Harry Bluff” and “Will Watch” articles, together with one other on “Navy Matters” by “Brandywine” which also appeared in the Whig at this time and reveals Maury’s authorship through its style, contained the germs of the ideas which he more fully developed in his “Scraps from the Lucky Bag”. This series of articles on the need of reform in the conduct of naval affairs appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger during the years 1840 and 1841, under Maury’s former pseudonym of “Harry Bluff”. The navy was then in a condition of dry rot, and the time was ripe for some courageous person to awaken the country to a realization of the true state of affairs and to point out the reforms that were needed. Maury’s former experience in the naval service and his present enforced leisure led him to take up the task, which he performed with a brilliancy and a degree of success that was far beyond even his own expectation and gave him a national reputation.

His choice of the Messenger as the medium for conveying to the public his ideas on maritime subjects had been made the previous year when there was published in it an unsigned article, entitled “A Scheme for Rebuilding Southern Commerce: Direct Trade with the South”. In this he first emphasized the importance of the Great Circle route for steamers between English and American ports and pointed out how the Great Western on her first voyage might have saved 260 miles by using such a route and thus have cut down the time of her passage by about one whole day. Maury claimed afterwards that after the appearance of his article a work on navigation was published in England and that one of its chief recommendations was its chapter on “great circle sailing”. Its author was rewarded with a prize from the Royal Geographical Society, and the work itself was extensively patronized by the Board of Admiralty, a copy of which they ordered to be supplied to each of the British men-of-war in commission.

The significance of the title, “Scraps from the Lucky Bag”, is indicated by the following introductory parody, which enumerates the contents of a lucky bag on shipboard:

“Shoe of middy and waister’s sock,

Wing of soldier and idler’s frock,

Purser’s slops and topman’s hat,

Boatswain’s call and colt and cat,

Belt that on the berth-deck lay,

In the Lucky Bag find their way;

Gaiter, stock, and red pompoon,

Sailor’s pan, his pot and spoon,

Shirt of cook and trowser’s duck,

Kid and can and ‘doctor’s truck’,

And all that’s lost and found on board

In the Lucky Bag’s always stored.”

It was a well-chosen and apt title, which enabled Maury to treat in the same article of various matters more or less unrelated. Among the various topics that he touched upon was, first, the desirability of having grades in the navy higher than those of captain, to correspond with those in foreign navies. He also declared that there should be a larger force on the coast of Africa to put down the traffic in slaves, and more warships in the Pacific to support American commerce with China and to protect American fishermen on the whaling grounds. Thus prophetically did he portray the future of American trade on that ocean: “If you have a map of the world at hand, turn to it and, placing your finger at the mouth of the Columbia River, consider its geographical position and the commercial advantages which, at some day not far distant, that point will possess. To the south, in one unbroken line, lie several thousand miles of coast indented with rich markets of Spanish America—to the west, Asiatic Russia and China are close at hand—between the south and west are New Holland and Polynesia; and within good marketable distance are all the groups and clusters of islands that stud the ocean, from Cape Horn to the Cape of Good Hope, from Asia to America. Picture to yourself civilization striding the Rocky Mountains, and smiling down upon the vast and fruitful regions beyond, and calculate, if you can, the important and future greatness of that point to a commercial and enterprising people. Yet the first line in the hydrography of such a point remains to be run. It has been more than twenty years since an American man-of-war so much as looked into the mouth of the Columbia River. Upon what more important service could a small force be dispatched than to survey and bring home correct charts of that river and its vicinity?”

He then pointed out the unpreparedness of the country for war, and dwelt upon how the United States was forced weakly to acquiesce in the blockading of Mexico and the La Plata by France, and make no protest at the strengthening of her forts on the Great Lakes by England who was thus violating her treaty with this government. The navy should, he declared, experiment with steam vessels of war, and Pensacola and some point on the coast of Georgia or the eastern coast of Florida should be fortified. Turning then to personnel, he continued: “It takes something more than spars and guns, and walls of wood to constitute a navy. These are only the body—the arms and legs without the thews and sinews. It requires the muscle of the brawny seaman, and the spirit of the well-trained officer to impart life and motion to such a body, to give vigor and energy to the whole system”.

A real system of education for the navy should be devised. The army, he said, had a Military Academy at West Point, “affording the most useful and practical education to be obtained in the country”; while the navy was forced to make out with inefficient schoolmasters on board ship, and the midshipmen secured only a practical knowledge of seamanship, the manipulation of the sextant, a few rules by rote from Bowditch’s “Epitome of Navigation”, and a knowledge of right-angled plane trigonometry. Maury claimed that a broader training was needed, and suggested the following subjects as requisite for study: drawing and naval architecture, gunnery and pyrotechny, chemistry and natural history, astronomy, mathematics, natural philosophy, navigation, tactics and discipline, gymnastics, international and maritime law, and languages (one of French, Spanish, or German and “that most difficult, arbitrary, and careful of all languages, the English”). These subjects were to be covered in a four years’ course, with a two months’ cruise each year, sometimes to foreign waters; while two years at sea after graduation and an examination at the end of that period of service were to be required before a commission in the navy was to be awarded.

At first, Maury proposed merely a school-ship; but a little later after his articles had been received with such favor by the public he declared that his advocacy of a school-ship had been made solely on the grounds of expediency and that he would hail with delight the establishment of a school for the navy anywhere, even on the top of the Rocky Mountains. He thereupon suggested Memphis, Tennessee as a suitable place for the school, on the grounds that the East had the Military Academy and the West should have the naval school, and besides that this would be a favorable place for experimenting on steam vessels on the Mississippi River. Though Maury was by no means the first to suggest the need for such an institution, yet no other person contributed so much as he did towards the education of public opinion and the preparation for the eventual establishment of the Naval Academy. It is with justice, therefore, that he has often been referred to as the father of this famous institution.

Continuing his discussion of the needs of the navy as to personnel, Maury recommended a reorganization and standardization of the number of officers in the various grades and a system of promotion that would keep alive the spirit and ambition of the officers. Surplus officers, he thought, might go into the merchant marine and constitute a naval reserve; while the revenue service should be taken over by the regular navy.

Maury then turned to the question of material and devoted a great deal of attention to the graft and inefficiency connected with the building and repairing of ships. “Honorable legislators”, he wrote, “are warned that the evils are deeply seated in the system itself, and are not to be removed by merely the plucking of a leaf, or the lopping off of a limb: the axe must be laid at the root—for nothing short of thorough and complete reorganization will do”. His attack was directed particularly against the Board of Navy Commissioners; and when this board attempted a reply, he answered with the most devastating article of the whole series, in which he piled up figures, and multiplied instances of graft and ruinous waste. As a summary, he wrote, “Vessels are built at twice the sum they ought to cost—they are repaired at twice as much as it takes to build—the labor to repair costs three times as much as the labor to construct—the same articles for one ship cost four or five times as much as their duplicates for another—it costs twice as much to repair ordnance and stores for a ship as it takes to buy them”. Maury advocated in place of this board a bureau system with divided responsibility. The Secretary of the Navy, he thought, should have an assistant under-secretary, who should be a post captain in the navy and have general oversight over the various bureaus. Then promotions would be taken out of politics, and the old saying that “a cruise of a few months in Washington tells more than a three years’ cruise at sea in an officer’s favor” would lose its significance.

In his attempt to improve conditions in the naval service, Maury had the sympathy of a large number of his brother officers, some of whom gave practical expression to their feeling by clubbing together and having large editions of the “Scraps from the Lucky Bag” printed for free distribution. In the month of July, 1841 there appeared a sketch of Maury in the Southern Literary Messenger, in which his name was for the first time connected with the authorship of the articles. It was written by a “Brother Officer”, who said that the “Scraps from the Lucky Bag” had produced “an enthusiasm which has not subsided and will not subside until the whole navy is reorganized”. Such indeed was the outcome. Congress took up the matter, and many of Maury’s suggested reforms were at once instituted, while practically everything that he contended for was eventually adopted for the naval service. So famous did Maury become through the publication of these articles that the President was urged to place him at the head of the Navy Department; and at one time President Tyler had actually made up his mind to make him his Secretary of the Navy in spite of the fact that he was then but a lieutenant.

In November, 1841, Maury made another request for active service. In order that his family and friends might not defeat his purpose, he went to Richmond and from there wrote to Secretary of the Navy George E. Badger, suggesting that he was able to perform any of the lighter duties at sea which did not call for much bodily exercise, and requesting that he be appointed flag-lieutenant in the Pacific Squadron under Commodore Jones, who had signified a desire to have him in this post. His purpose, however, was thwarted by Judge John T. Lomax, a warm personal friend, who wrote to the Secretary and enclosed a certificate from three of the best physicians of Fredericksburg to the effect that Maury was in no condition for life on board ship; and as a consequence he was retained on the list of those “waiting orders”.

After the completion of his “Scraps from the Lucky Bag”, Maury continued to write for the Southern Literary Messenger; he rendered editorial service to Mr. White, the owner of the magazine, during the year 1842, and was virtually the editor during the first eight months of 1843 after White’s death. He contributed also to the Army and Navy Chronicle and the Southern Quarterly Review of Charleston.

His “Letters to Clay” in the Messenger under the pseudonym of “Union Jack” strongly advocated the establishment of a national dockyard at Memphis, government subsidies for the building of steam packets as England and France were doing, a national steamboat canal from the upper Mississippi River to the Lakes for defense against Canada in case of war with Great Britain, a strong naval establishment at some place on the Atlantic seaboard south of Norfolk, and the making of Pensacola a veritable “Toulon on the Mediterranean”. The following year, 1842, he took up in the same journal the question of the right of Great Britain to visit and search American ships in the “suspicious” latitudes off Africa in the endeavor to suppress the slave trade. He was against according this right to England because of the temptation to use the power involved in an arbitrary manner greatly to the injury of American commerce, and he was of the opinion that it was merely an attempt, under the pretext of supporting the “Christian League” or Quintuple Alliance, to revive the old claim of England’s right to violate sailors’ rights and the freedom of the seas, principles fought for in the War of 1812. He referred, in passing, to the tense feeling against Great Britain on account of the Maine Boundary dispute, and the desire, on the part of many, even for war. “On the contrary”, he wrote, “I should view a war between the United States and Great Britain as one of the greatest calamities, except a scourge direct from the hand of God, that could befall my country”. But he added, “In the navy, there is but one sentiment and one feeling on this subject; it is, avert war, honorably if you can; if not, let it come: right or wrong, the stars and stripes shall not be disgraced on the ocean”.

He too was opposed to the slave trade, and thought that the United States would be glad to coöperate with Great Britain and furnish warships for the purpose; but he doubted the sincerity of England, and referred pointedly to the “hosts of murdered Chinese who prefer instant death at the mouth of British cannon to the slow poison of a British drug”,—the opium that was at that time being forced upon them by the British government. His conclusion was this: “When the British government shall cease to sell its captured slaves—when it shall abandon its intrigues for the right of search which has done the Africans so much more harm than good—and shall advocate some such practical plan as this (coöperation) for the suppression of the slave trade, then and not till then will we give the ‘old country’ credit for motives of humanity and a sincere desire to succor the slave”.

These were the last articles that Maury wrote before he was appointed to an office of great potential importance, which was to afford the appropriate place for the complete flowering of his peculiar genius. This appointment was given to him largely because of his writings; namely, his “New Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Navigation”, “Scraps from the Lucky Bag”, and other magazine articles. It might be said, therefore, that though he had been faithful in the performance of all the duties of his profession and, courageous as he was, would almost certainly have distinguished himself in warfare, yet up to this point in his career the pen, as an instrument for acquiring fame, had indeed been mightier than the sword.