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One January morning in 1806, Matthew Fontaine Maury was born into a pioneer family in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Without any undue celebrating, the boy was lovingly welcomed into the stern, religious family of Matthew Maury and his wife, the former Mary Anne Fontaine.
It was at the age of 19 that Maury's dream for a life at sea became a reality. Sam Houston, also a native Virginian, was serving in Congress at the time as a representative from Tennessee. Houston obtained a midshipman's berth for Maury. When he was 26, Maury was already a naval lieutenant with a background of exceptional nautical experience. By this time, he had completed his book on navigation, which was later to become a text at Annapolis. He was made Superintendent of Charts and Instruments, a position out of which grew the National Observatory at Washington, D.C. It was while serving in this capacity that Maury was inscribed in the annals of history as Pathfinder of the Seas. His famous Wind and Current Charts made seafaring a scientific and safer enterprise, involving much less risk and cost. This modest seaman not only urged and planned a system by which farmers could get daily weather reports, he also went around the country, lecturing at his own expense, to tell others of the advantages of the system. |
One of his other outstanding accomplishments was his work in ascertaining the feasibility of establishing a submarine telegraph across the Atlantic. And Cyrus Field's classic remark on the reception of the first telegraphic message is an ever-lasting tribute to Maury's genius. He said, "Matthew Maury furnished the brains, England the money, and I did the work!" It was in England that Maury made one of his greatest discoveries. . . the utilization of electrical power in the explosion of marine torpedoes. Once his work was complete, he returned to the United States to find that the Confederacy had fallen, and he was an alien in his own land.
In 1868, Maury returned to Virginia and accepted the offer of the Chair of Physics at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. It was here that, surrounded by his family and honored by all Americans, he came to the end of his days on February 1, 1873. (Excerpted from "The Life & Adventures of Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury," author unknown.)
In 1868, Maury returned to Virginia and accepted the offer of the Chair of Physics at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. It was here that, surrounded by his family and honored by all Americans, he came to the end of his days on February 1, 1873. (Excerpted from "The Life & Adventures of Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury," author unknown.)
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