| Matthew Fontaine Maury |
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Matthew Fontaine Maury ( January 14 , 1806 – February 1 , 1873 ), was an American Oceanographer . He was nicknamed ''Pathfinder of the Seas'' and ''Father of Naval Oceanography and Naval Meteorology'' and later, ''Scientist of the Seas'', due to the publication of his extensive work in his books, especially ''Physical Geography of the Sea 1855'', the first extensive and comprenhensive book on oceanography to be published. Maury made many important new contributions to charting Winds and Ocean Currents , including pathways for ships at sea. Maury was born in Spotsylvania, Virginia but moved to Tennessee at age five. In 1825 , at the age of 19, thanks to Sam Houston, Maury joined the United States Navy as a Midshipman on board the Frigate ''Brandywine'' . Maury was following the path of fame and adventure of his older brother, Flag Lieutenant John Minor Maury . John Maury caught Yellow Fever after fighting pirates before Matthew was in the Navy. He died at sea near home and was buried at sea, leaving his wife and two sons behind, one Dabney Herndon Maury ((three family surnames)) who served in three wars and became a Major General and later U.S. Minister to Colombia , South America. Maury was forbidden from joining the Navy by his father (Richard Maury) because of the painful death of the eldest son, John Minor Maury USN. Matthew Maury once considered attending West Point to get an education. But his opportunity of a Naval appointment came through Senator Sam Houston . From then until it was done Maury advocated naval reform, and a school for the Navy, land and sea, that would out-rival that of the army's West Point. Maury wrote many articles on this and other naval reform under noms de plumes and it was achieved in due time. It is presently the United States Naval Academy that we know today. Almost immediately he began to study the seas and record methods of Navigation . When a leg injury left him unfit for ''sea duty''. Maury devoted his time to the study of naval meteorology, Navigation , charting the winds, and currents, seeking the "Paths of the Seas" mentioned in Psalm 8 in the Bible . His hard work on and love of plotting the oceans paid off when he became superintendent of the Department of Charts and Instruments in 1842 , although this was mostly due to his articles on United States Naval reform published in newspapers. Upon the establishment of the United States Naval Observatory in 1844 thanks to President John Q. Adams in his last months of office, Lieutenant Maury became its ''first superintendent'', holding that position until his resignation in April 1861 . Here Maury studied thousands of ships' logs and charts that he discovered in storage in trunks dating back to the start of the Navy. Maury read and studied them, primiarily interested at first in charting the migration of whales which was unknown to whalers at the time since they went to sea sometimes for years not knowing that whales migrate and their paths could be charted. Lieutenant Maury published his ''Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic'', which showed sailors how to use the ocean's currents and winds to their advantage and drastically reduced the length of ocean voyages, and his ''Sailing Directions'' and ''Physical Geography of the Seas and Its Meteorology'' remain standard. Maury's uniform system of recording Synoptic Oceanographic Data was adopted by navies and Merchant Marine s around the world and was used to develop charts for all the major trade routes. Maury's work on Ocean Currents led him to advocate his theory of the Northwest Passage , as well as the hypothesis that an area in the ocean near the North Pole is occasionally free of ice. The reasoning behind this was sound for whales harpooned in the Atlantic showed up in the Pacific and vice versa with a frequency impossible had they traveled around Cape Horn. Logs of old whaler ships that indicated the designs and markings of harpoons used by the logs' authors as well as those of harpoons found in captured whales led to this idea. When whalers recorded descriptions of harpoons used by other ships on opposite oceans, Maury, knowing a whale to be a mammal and not a fish as many believed in his time, thought a passage between the oceans that was free of ice must exist to enable the whales to surface and breathe. Today, an area free of ice is known to be ''occasional'', but in the 19th Century it was a popular idea that inspired many explorers to seek a constant navigable sea route. Many of those explorers met their doom in the ice. Today nations know the reality of, and use, the Northwest Passage . With the outbreak of the American Civil War , Commander Matthew F. Maury, a Virginia n, reluctantly had to resign his commission as a U.S. Navy Commander after decades of international fame and honors including being knighted by several nations and given medals of precious gems, as well as a collection of all medals struck by the Pope during his pontificate, became a Commodore in the Virginia Provisional Navy, and a Commander in the Confederacy. The war would bring the North down to Virginia and the South up to Virginia and create the bloodiest battlegrounds including those in Fredericksburg, Virginia where Maury's immediate family lived. It was Virginia that joined the Confederacy , the Career Virginians like Robert E. Lee and Maury (now internationally famous) and others on farms, were pulled into the Confederacy at which time four states that had been "neutral" became part of the Confederacy. Maury spent the war in the South, as well as abroad in England , acquiring ships and trying through speeches and newspaper publications to get other nations to stop the American Civil War. He also worked on an advanced electric Torpedo design, and perfected it just after the war had ended. He later gave talks in Europe about the development of his torpedo and international cooperation on a weather bureau for land just as he had charted the winds and predicted storms at sea many years before. He gave these Weather on Land speeches until his last days when he collapsed giving a speech. He went home after he recovered and told Ann Hull Herndon-Maury, his wife, "I have come home to die." Following the war, Maury accepted a teaching position at the Virginia Military Institute , holding the chair of Physics . During this time Maury also wrote a book entitld The Physical Geography of Virginia. Maury died in 1873 after a long lecture tour placed him home in bed. Maury died easily, in his home at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia and his body was placed on display in the library there. Maury was buried in the Gilham vault, across from Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson until the arrival of spring at which time he was taken through Goshen Pass to Richmond, Virginia . He is buried between two USA Presidents John Tyler (Va.)and President James Monroe (Va.), in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. A monument to Maury, by sculptor Frederick William Sievers , was unveiled in Richmond on November 11 , 1929 . Dan Graves considered him to be one of 48 great Scientists Of Faith for the following reasons. Matthew Fontaine Maury lived by the Scriptures. Few things were ever written, or given as speeches, without the inclusion of scriptural references. He was raised with this and he also created his own prayer that he used every day. Three ships named USS ''Maury'' have been named for him. Reference Books
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