Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873)
The Pathfinder
of the Seas Takes an Electrical Excursion
by
John Vardalas
Mathew Fontaine Maury was born two
hundred years ago on 14 January 1806. Probably few readers of this
article will recognize the name. But to those interested in the
science and history of the sea, Maury is a pioneer in
oceanography and meteorology. First, as a young officer in
charge of the U.S. Navy's Depot of Charts and Instruments, and
later as director of the U.S. Naval Observatory, Maury embarked
on a detailed and systematic analysis of the spatial and
temporal behavior of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans. Although
these peacetime scientific pursuits dominated Maury's
professional life, the demands of war led him to develop the
first application of electrical technology to naval warfare.
Maury understood full well the
great benefits to the United States of mapping the world's
winds and ocean currents. By 1850, U.S. territorial ambitions
had reached out to the west coast. Until the completion of a
transcontinental railway in 1869, the sea offered the most
practical and economic means of moving manufactured goods and
natural resources between the east and west coasts. It was a
journey that went around the infamous Cape Horn at the tip of
South America, and spanned three oceans. The Panama Canal
was still 60 years away. As rough as the sea could be, people
who could afford it preferred the relative safety and comfort of
the sea route over the land route. The sea offered the added
advantage of being navigable in winter, whereas winter travel
for horse and wagon was almost impossible. If the United States
was to forge an East-West national territory, then it would have
to master transoceanic routes that spanned half the planet.
Steam power was making its way into maritime transport, but sail
still dominated the movement of people and goods. With sail, the
shortest distance between two points was not the fastest. Good
navigation had to be supplemented with accurate information on
the wind and current patterns at various places around the
world. This knowledge also had to account for seasonal changes
in such patterns. Until Maury, such knowledge was quite crude.
With the discovery of gold in
California, people from around the world poured into the state.
The economic incentives to reduce maritime travel time between
the East Coast and California jumped dramatically. In 1849,
sailing times from New York City to San Francisco averaged about
180 days (half a year!). By 1855, the use of Maury's maps had
reduced the average sailing time from New York City to San
Francisco to 133 days.
An even more dramatic testament to the
utility of Maury's work was the famous race in 1851 between the
two clipper ships, Flying Cloud and Challenge.
The "extreme" clippers represented the most advanced
technologies in commercial transport under sail. Highly
publicized, the race captured the nation's imagination. It had
all the elements of an epic contest: man against the sea; ship
designer against ship designer; crew against crew; and skipper
against skipper. Flying Cloud won by a wide margin and
made the voyage in an astounding 89 days. Their design and
skilled captains were clearly important reasons for the speeds
the extreme clippers attained, but Flying Cloud had an
advantage that Challenge did not have — Eleanor Creesy.
Eleanor was the wife of Josiah Creesy, the Flying Cloud's
captain, and an exceptional woman. Not only was she the
ship's navigator and well versed in the mathematics of celestial
navigation, she was also an early follower of Maury's pioneering
work in oceanography and meteorology. Up until 1860, Maury's
professional life had been dedicated to the U.S. Naval
Observatory and to his studies on the sea geography. Then,
war pushed Maury in an unexpected direction: the use of
electrical technology in naval warfare.
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Maury's work, The Physical
Geography of the Sea, first published in
1855, opened the field of oceanography. |
When the Civil War broke out, Maury
resigned his commission in the U.S. Navy and his position as
Director of the U.S. Naval Observatory. It was with great regret
that Maury left the Observatory, which he had set up. "Its
associations," Maury wrote to Lieutenant Whiting, who was the
next in authority, "the treasures there, which with your help
and that of thousands of friendly hands, had been collected from
the sea, were precious to me, and as I turned my back upon the
place ,a tear furrowed my cheek." Maury felt that he had no
choice. He saw himself as a Virginian whose heart and mind was
with the Confederacy. Maury immediately offered his services to
the cause of the South and was granted a commission as commander
in the Navy of the Confederacy. Shortly thereafter, he was
appointed Chief of the "Naval Bureau of Coast, Harbor and River
Defense." Maury's mind turned immediately to the development of
electrically detonated naval mines. The telegraph had already
illustrated the importance of electrical technology in military
affairs. But the use of the telegraph in war was merely an
extension of the commercially successful technology that Morse
had pioneered long before Civil War broke out. On the other
hand, Maury's idea appears to mark the first time that electrical
technology is applied directly to a weapons system.
To protect the Confederacy coasts
from northern naval forces, Maury advocated a network of naval
mines, or "torpedoes" as he called them, to guard the entrances
to strategic harbors and rivers. Maury envisioned a dense
cluster of mines capable of catching any enemy ship in its
deadly net. The problem was that if the mines were detonated
through direct contact
with a ship, then any great dispersal of mines could just as
easily destroy Confederate ships. But, if the detonation could be
achieved through an electrical signal sent from land observation posts, then Confederate ships could move easily —
and safely — through the mines,
while Union ships could not.
Maury's efforts to develop his
electric "torpedoes" immediately ran into problems. He could not
find sufficient insulated wire. He sent a secret agent to New
York to buy and smuggle out the needed wire. But the mission
failed. Rather than stop all his work, he temporarily shifted
his efforts to developing "contact" naval mines. Detonation was
to come from some form of mechanical interaction between the
enemy ship and the mine. Even this non-electrical alternative
proved difficult to implement. The mines were to be submerged
below water to escape detection. Prototypes successfully tested
at 10 ft. of water depth failed at 20 ft. The greater pressure
found at 20 ft. made it more difficult for the fuse to burn. He
did succeed in deploying these mines, but they were very
temperamental and their effectiveness uncertain. Then,
serendipity brought Maury the opportunity he needed to
return to his electrical option.
In 1862, the Union forces wanted to
establish telegraph communications across the Chesapeake Bay.
With the wire already run under the water, the North had to
abandon its plans. In May of 1862, shortly after the famous
battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack, a storm hit the
Chesapeake and washed this wire onto the shore near Norfolk,
Virginia. Now, Maury had ten miles of insulated wire for his
experiments. In June 1862, Maury successfully mined the James
River with his electric "torpedoes." Wires ran from the mines to
large batteries on shore. Although this time was the first that
an electric mine had been used against an enemy in war, Maury
did not have original ownership of the idea. Robert Fulton had a
similar idea but was never able to make a working prototype. In
1842, Samuel Colt blew up a raft with an electric mine as part
of and Independence Day. Maury, however, was the first
to show that such a weapon was practical for warfare. An
1865 report from the Secretary of Navy for the North
underscores the effectiveness of Maury's naval mines. The report
states that "the navy lost more vessels by torpedoes than from
all other causes whatsoever."
Always an outspoken man, Maury soon
entered into a public argument with the Secretary of the Navy
for the Confederacy, Stephen Mallory, over the kind and size of
navy the South should have. Maury had become a painful thorn in
Mallory's life. To rid himself of this all-too-public problem,
Mallory arranged for Maury to take up a foreign posting in
England. There, he would promote the Confederacy's interests. In
addition to procuring British-made ships for the South, Maury
again threw himself into his work on electric "torpedoes."
Working with Wheatstone, Maury pursued secret experiments for
the British. In return, Maury was able to get large quantities
of British-made insulated wire and material for batteries
shipped to the Confederate forces.
Maury had established an
international reputation, and on numerous occasions, the French,
Russians and British tried to induce him to work for them.
Napoleon III asked Maury to abandon the South and head up
France's National Observatory. Grand Duke Constantine, the Grand
Admiral of Russia, offered Maury and his family a grand estate
and a life of comfort in Russia. But Maury felt honor bound to
stay at his post until the end of the war. When the Civil War
ended, Maury wrote a formal letter of surrender to the officer
in command of the United States naval forces in the Gulf of
Mexico. He was ready to hand himself in as a prisoner of war.
But Maury's friends warned him that a great deal of
hostility existed toward him. While many officers had switched
allegiances at the outbreak of the Civil War, Maury was singled
out for the harshest of criticism. Maury's friends felt the
North would be particularly vindictive towards him. "Do not come
home," wrote Maury's daughter, "General Lee told me the other
day to tell you not to." Instead Maury went to Mexico on
Maximilian's invitation. As soon as he arrived in Vera Cruz, in
1865, Maury immediately offered to demonstrate his electric
torpedoes to the Mexican military.
Although a scientific and naval
visionary, Maury lacked political acumen. Still committed to the
ideals of the South, he came up with a bizarre scheme to recreate
pre-Civil War Virginia in Mexico. He wanted Maximilian to
encourage the large-scale immigration of Virginian land owners,
and their slaves, of course, to Mexico. Intrigued with the idea,
Maximilian appointed Maury Imperial Commissioner of
Colonization. Again, General Lee advised Maury against this
foolish enterprise. Maury also seriously misread the post-war
sentiment in Virginia. Few wanted to emigrate. With the project
going nowhere and the instability of Maximilian's regime finally
apparent, Maury drifted back to England to join his family.
Although general amnesty would not be officially declared until
1872, Virginia had passed from military rule to home rule.
Friends advised Maury that it was time to return home. In 1868,
Virginia Military Institute appointed Maury to the new Chair of
Meteorology. He died on 1 February 1873, after a long illness.
Maury had been long forgotten, until 1923, when the state
of Virginia dedicated a memorial to him. On it are inscribed the
words:
Pathfinder of the Seas
The Genius Who First Snatched
From Oceans & Atmosphere
The Secret of Their Laws
Though he was not a pathfinder in
the new science and technology of electricity, Maury did have a
pioneering attitude towards the use of electricity in naval
technology.
For further information on Mathew
Fontaine Maury, here are some possible readings:
Charles Lee Lewis, Matthew
Fontaine Maury: The Pathfinder of the Seas, (Annapolis:
United States Naval Institute, 1927).
Jacquelin Ambler Caskie, Life
and Letters of Matthew Fontaine Maury, (Richmond, Virginia:
Richmond Press, 1928).
Patricia Jahns, Matthew Fontaine
Maury & Joseph Henry: Scientists of the Civil War, (New
York: Hastings House, 1961).
Frances Leigh Williams, Matthew
Fontaine Maury, Scientist of the Sea, (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 1963).
Chester G. Hearn, Tracks in the
Sea: Matthew Fontaine Maury and the Mapping of the Seas,
(London: International Marine, McGraw-Hill, 2002).
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