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Matthew Fontaine Maury

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125-673: Matthew Fontaine Maury (January 14, 1806 – February 1, 1873) was an American oceanographer and naval officer, serving the United States and then joining the Confederacy during the American Civil War. He was nicknamed "Pathfinder of the Seas" and is considered a founder of modern oceanography. He wrote extensively on the subject, and his book, The Physical Geography of the Sea (1855),

250-744: A commodore (often a title of courtesy ) in the Virginia Provisional Navy and a Commander in the Confederacy. Buildings on several college campuses are named in his honor. Maury Hall was the home of the Naval Science Department at the University of Virginia and headquarters of the university's Navy ROTC battalion until being renamed in 2022. The original building of the College of William & Mary Virginia Institute of Marine Science

375-586: A Superintendent's House on the Observatory grounds. Adams thus felt no constraint in regularly stopping by for a look through the facility's telescope. As a sailor, Maury noted numerous lessons that ship masters had learned about the effects of adverse winds and drift currents on the path of a ship. The captains recorded the lessons faithfully in their logbooks, which were then forgotten. At the Observatory, Maury uncovered an enormous collection of thousands of old ships' logs and charts in storage in trunks dating back to

500-427: A acertar: mas partiam os nossos mareantes muy ensinados e prouidos de estromentos e regras de astrologia e geometria que sam as cousas que os cosmographos ham dadar apercebidas (...) e leuaua cartas muy particularmente rumadas e na ja as de que os antigos vsauam" (were not done by chance: but our seafarers departed well taught and provided with instruments and rules of astrology (astronomy) and geometry which were matters

625-484: A collection of all medals struck by Pope Pius IX during his pontificate, a book dedication and more from Father Angelo Secchi , who was a student of Maury from 1848 to 1849 in the United States Naval Observatory . The two remained lifelong friends. Other religious friends of Maury included James Hervey Otey , his former teacher who, before 1857, worked with Bishop Leonidas Polk on the construction of

750-608: A few years, nations owning three-fourths of the shipping of the world were sending their oceanographic observations to Maury at the Naval Observatory, where the information was evaluated and the results were given worldwide distribution. As its representative at the conference, the United States sent Maury. As a result of the Brussels Conference, many nations, including many traditional enemies, agreed to cooperate in sharing land and sea weather data using uniform standards. It

875-468: A land system of weather observations. Maury became convinced that adequate scientific knowledge of the sea could be obtained only through international cooperation. He proposed that the United States invite the maritime nations of the world to a conference to establish a "universal system" of meteorology, and he was the leading spirit of a pioneer scientific conference when it met in Brussels in 1853. Within

1000-407: A naming commission created by federal law to reexamine Confederate-related names and symbols on military installations. James Madison University also has a Maury Hall, the university's first academic and administrative building. In the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests , JMU student organizations called for renaming the building. On Monday, June 22, 2020, hearing the calls of students and alums,

1125-478: A naval appointment through the influence of Tennessee Representative Sam Houston , a family friend, in 1825, at the age of 19. Maury joined the Navy as a midshipman on board the frigate Brandywine , which was carrying the elderly Marquis de La Fayette home to France following his famous 1824 visit to the United States . Almost immediately, Maury began to study the seas and to record methods of navigation . One of

1250-795: A new series on geography for young people. Maury was a descendant of the Maury family, a prominent Virginia family of Huguenot ancestry that can be traced back to 15th-century France . His grandfather ( the Reverend James Maury ) was an inspiring teacher to a future U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson . Maury also had Dutch-American ancestry from the Minor family of early Virginia. He was born in 1806 in Spotsylvania County, Virginia , near Fredericksburg ; his parents were Richard Maury and Diane Minor Maury. The family moved to Franklin, Tennessee when he

1375-471: A paper on reefs and the formation of atolls as a result of the second voyage of HMS Beagle in 1831–1836. Robert FitzRoy published a four-volume report of Beagle ' s three voyages. In 1841–1842 Edward Forbes undertook dredging in the Aegean Sea that founded marine ecology. The first superintendent of the United States Naval Observatory (1842–1861), Matthew Fontaine Maury devoted his time to

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1500-642: A school for the Navy that would rival the Army's United States Military Academy . That reform was heavily pushed by Maury's "Scraps from the Lucky Bag" and other articles printed in the newspapers, bringing about many changes in the Navy, including his finally fulfilled dream of the creation of the United States Naval Academy . During its first 1848 meeting, he helped launch the American Association for

1625-593: A ship, CSS  Georgia , while trying to convince several European powers to help stop the war. Following the war, Maury was eventually pardoned; he accepted a teaching position at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia . He died at the institute in 1873 after he had completed an exhausting state-to-state lecture tour on national and international weather forecasting on land. He had also completed his book, Geological Survey of Virginia , and

1750-608: A voyage around the Cape of Good Hope in 1777, he mapped "the banks and currents at the Lagullas " . He was also the first to understand the nature of the intermittent current near the Isles of Scilly , (now known as Rennell's Current). The tides and currents of the ocean are distinct. Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels created by the combination of the gravitational forces of the Moon along with

1875-670: A warm surface current pushing into the Arctic, and logs of old whaling ships indicated that whales killed in the Atlantic bore harpoons from ships in the Pacific (and vice versa). The frequency of these occurrences seemed unlikely if the whales had traveled around Cape Horn . 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, drastically reducing

2000-424: A wide range of disciplines to deepen their understanding of the world’s oceans, incorporating insights from astronomy , biology , chemistry , geography , geology , hydrology , meteorology and physics . Humans first acquired knowledge of the waves and currents of the seas and oceans in pre-historic times. Observations on tides were recorded by Aristotle and Strabo in 384–322 BC. Early exploration of

2125-628: Is due to the change in the regime of winds and currents: the North Atlantic gyre and the Equatorial counter current will push south along the northwest bulge of Africa, while the uncertain winds where the Northeast trades meet the Southeast trades (the doldrums) leave a sailing ship to the mercy of the currents. Together, prevalent current and wind make northwards progress very difficult or impossible. It

2250-713: Is likely to affect marine organisms with calcareous shells, such as oysters, clams, sea urchins and corals, and the carbonate compensation depth will rise closer to the sea surface. Affected planktonic organisms will include pteropods , coccolithophorids and foraminifera , all important in the food chain . In tropical regions, corals are likely to be severely affected as they become less able to build their calcium carbonate skeletons, in turn adversely impacting other reef dwellers. The current rate of ocean chemistry change seems to be unprecedented in Earth's geological history, making it unclear how well marine ecosystems will adapt to

2375-590: Is named Maury Hall as well. Another Maury Hall housed the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the Robotics and Control Engineering Department at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland . On February 17, 2023, the academy announced that it had renamed this building in honor of Jimmy Carter , the only Naval Academy graduate to become President of the United States. The change had been recommended by

2500-545: Is remembered in the navigation context for the determination of the loxodromic curve: the shortest course between two points on the surface of a sphere represented onto a two-dimensional map. When he published his "Treatise of the Sphere" (1537), mostly a commentated translation of earlier work by others, he included a treatise on geometrical and astronomic methods of navigation. There he states clearly that Portuguese navigations were not an adventurous endeavour: "nam se fezeram indo

2625-444: Is the scientific study of the ocean , including its physics , chemistry , biology , and geology . It is an Earth science , which covers a wide range of topics, including ocean currents , waves , and geophysical fluid dynamics ; fluxes of various chemical substances and physical properties within the ocean and across its boundaries; ecosystem dynamics; and plate tectonics and seabed geology. Oceanographers draw upon

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2750-693: The Challenger expedition . Challenger , leased from the Royal Navy, was modified for scientific work and equipped with separate laboratories for natural history and chemistry . Under the scientific supervision of Thomson, Challenger travelled nearly 70,000 nautical miles (130,000 km) surveying and exploring. On her journey circumnavigating the globe, 492 deep sea soundings, 133 bottom dredges, 151 open water trawls and 263 serial water temperature observations were taken. Around 4,700 new species of marine life were discovered. The result

2875-1098: The American Civil War , Maury joined the Confederacy. Upon his resignation from the U.S. Navy, the Virginia governor appointed Maury commander of the Virginia Navy. When this was consolidated into the Confederate Navy, Maury was made a Commander in the Confederate States Navy and appointed as chief of the Naval Bureau of Coast, Harbor, and River Defense. In this role, Maury helped develop the first electrically controlled naval mine, which caused havoc for U.S. shipping. He'd had experience with transatlantic cable and electricity flowing through wires underwater when working with Cyrus West Field and Samuel Finley Breese Morse . The naval mines, called torpedoes at that time, were similar to present-day contact mines and were said by

3000-628: The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), established in 1972 soon became a key player in marine tropical research. In 1921 the International Hydrographic Bureau , called since 1970 the International Hydrographic Organization , was established to develop hydrographic and nautical charting standards. USS Vincennes (1826) USS Vincennes was a 703-ton Boston-class sloop of war in

3125-496: The Cape of Good Hope . Commodore Biddle arrived safely in Macau only to find that Cushing had already left for home and that his successor, Alexander H. Everett , was too ill to make the trip. Therefore, Biddle determined to conduct the negotiations himself. Accordingly, Vincennes and Columbus sailed for Japan on 7 July 1846 and anchored off Uraga on 19 July. The Japanese surrounded the vessels and allowed no one to land. Otherwise

3250-694: The Ishiguro Storm Surge Computer ) generally now replaced by numerical methods (e.g. SLOSH .) An oceanographic buoy array was established in the Pacific to allow prediction of El Niño events. 1990 saw the start of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) which continued until 2002. Geosat seafloor mapping data became available in 1995. Study of the oceans is critical to understanding shifts in Earth's energy balance along with related global and regional changes in climate ,

3375-765: The Mariners' Museum property and is encircled by a walking trail. The Maury River , entirely in Rockbridge County, Virginia , near Virginia Military Institute (where Maury taught), also honors the scientist, as does Maury crater , on the Moon. Matthew Fontaine Maury High School in Norfolk, Virginia, is named after him. Matthew Maury Elementary School in Alexandria, Virginia , was built in 1929. Nearby Arlington, Va., renamed its 1910 Clarendon Elementary to honor Maury in 1944; Since 1976,

3500-1081: The Mediterranean Science Commission . Marine research institutes were already in existence, starting with the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples, Italy (1872), the Biological Station of Roscoff, France (1876), the Arago Laboratory in Banyuls-sur-mer, France (1882), the Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, UK (1884), the Norwegian Institute for Marine Research in Bergen, Norway (1900),

3625-745: The United States Navy from 1826 to 1865. During her service, Vincennes patrolled the Pacific , explored the Antarctic , and blockaded the Confederate Gulf coast in the Civil War . Named for the Revolutionary War Battle of Vincennes , she was the first U.S. warship to circumnavigate the globe. Vincennes —the first American ship to be so named—was one of ten sloops of war whose construction

3750-753: The University of Tennessee . From statements that he made in letters, it appears that he preferred being close to General Robert E. Lee in Lexington, where Lee was president of Washington College. Maury served as a pallbearer for Lee. He also gave talks in Europe about cooperation on a weather bureau for land, just as he had charted the winds and predicted storms at sea many years before. He gave speeches until his last days when he collapsed while giving one. He went home after he recovered and told his wife Ann Hull Herndon-Maury, "I have come home to die." He died at home in Lexington at 12:40 pm on Saturday, February 1, 1873. He

3875-560: The University of the South in Tennessee. While visiting there, Maury was convinced by his old teacher to give the "cornerstone speech." As a U.S. Navy officer, he was required to decline awards from foreign nations. Some were offered to Maury's wife, Ann Hull Herndon-Maury, who accepted them for her husband. Some have been placed at Virginia Military Institute or lent to the Smithsonian . He became

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4000-676: The West Indies and the Gulf of Mexico as part of the West Indies Squadron in 1831–32. After a long bout of yellow fever , she was decommissioned again for a time in 1833 before sailing once more. She departed for a second Pacific deployment in 1833, becoming the first American warship to call at Guam . She again sailed around the globe to return to the U.S. East Coast in June 1836. Decommissioned once again in 1836, while she underwent remodeling, she

4125-560: The biosphere and biogeochemistry . The atmosphere and ocean are linked because of evaporation and precipitation as well as thermal flux (and solar insolation ). Recent studies have advanced knowledge on ocean acidification , ocean heat content , ocean currents , sea level rise , the oceanic carbon cycle , the water cycle , Arctic sea ice decline , coral bleaching , marine heatwaves , extreme weather , coastal erosion and many other phenomena in regards to ongoing climate change and climate feedbacks . In general, understanding

4250-474: The 29 days Cabral took from Cape Verde up to landing in Monte Pascoal , Brazil. The Danish expedition to Arabia 1761–67 can be said to be the world's first oceanographic expedition, as the ship Grønland had on board a group of scientists, including naturalist Peter Forsskål , who was assigned an explicit task by the king, Frederik V , to study and describe the marine life in the open sea, including finding

4375-509: The 9th, dry-docked, and laid up. Vincennes remained in ordinary until 1849. Recommissioned on 12 November 1849, she sailed from New York exactly one month later, bound for Cape Horn and the west coast of South America . On 2 July 1850, while lying off Guayaquil, Ecuador , she harbored the Ecuadoran revolutionary General Elizalde for three days during one of that country's frequent civil disturbances. Sailing on to San Francisco, California ,

4500-543: The Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 1849, Maury spoke out on the need for a transcontinental railroad to join the Eastern United States to California . He recommended a southerly route with Memphis, Tennessee , as the eastern terminus, as it is equidistant from Lake Michigan and the Gulf of Mexico . He argued that a southerly route running through Texas would avoid winter snows and could open up commerce with

4625-634: The Azores), bringing what is now Brazil into the Portuguese area of domination. The knowledge gathered from open sea exploration allowed for the well-documented extended periods of sail without sight of land, not by accident but as pre-determined planned route; for example, 30 days for Bartolomeu Dias culminating on Mossel Bay , the three months Gama spent in the South Atlantic to use the Brazil current (southward), or

4750-462: The Confederacy. Maury traveled to England, Ireland, and France, acquiring and fitting out ships for the Confederacy and soliciting supplies. Through speeches and newspaper publications, Maury unsuccessfully called for European nations to intercede on behalf of the Confederacy and help end the American Civil War. Maury established relations for the Confederacy with Emperor Napoleon III of France and Archduke Maximilian of Austria , who, on April 10, 1864,

4875-503: The Depot of Charts and Instruments, later renamed the United States Naval Observatory , in 1844. There, Maury studied thousands of ships' logs and charts. He published the Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic , which showed sailors how to use the ocean's currents and winds to their advantage, drastically reducing the length of ocean voyages. Maury's uniform system of recording oceanographic data

5000-420: The Gulf Stream's cause. Franklin and Timothy Folger printed the first map of the Gulf Stream in 1769–1770. Information on the currents of the Pacific Ocean was gathered by explorers of the late 18th century, including James Cook and Louis Antoine de Bougainville . James Rennell wrote the first scientific textbooks on oceanography, detailing the current flows of the Atlantic and Indian oceans. During

5125-399: The Horn and New York, where she arrived on 13 July 1856 to complete yet another circumnavigation of the globe. Vincennes operated with the African Squadron in 1857–1860. After the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861, Vincennes was recommissioned on 29 June and assigned to duty in the Gulf Blockading Squadron . She arrived off Fort Pickens, Florida , on 3 September, and

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5250-419: The Horn to New York where she arrived on 21 September and was decommissioned on the 24th. Following repairs and a period in ordinary, Vincennes was recommissioned on 21 March 1853 and sailed into Norfolk, Virginia on 13 May to join her second exploratory expedition , serving as flagship to Commander Cadwalader Ringgold 's survey of the China Sea , the North Pacific, and the Bering Strait . Comdr. Ringgold

5375-445: The Laboratory für internationale Meeresforschung, Kiel, Germany (1902). On the other side of the Atlantic, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography was founded in 1903, followed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1930, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in 1938, the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in 1949, and later the School of Oceanography at University of Washington . In Australia ,

5500-407: The Passes of the Mississippi, capturing the blockade-running British bark Empress , aground at North East Pass with a large cargo of coffee on 27 November. On 4 March 1862, she was ordered to proceed to Pensacola, Florida , to relieve Mississippi and spent the next six months shuttling between Pensacola and Mobile, Alabama , performing routine patrol and reconnaissance duty. On 4 October, she

5625-399: The R/V Matthew F. Maury . The ship is used for oceanography research and student cruises. In March 2013, the U.S. Navy launched the oceanographic survey ship USNS Maury (T-AGS-66), in 2023 the ship was renamed USNS Marie Tharp . The Mariners' Lake , in Newport News, Virginia , had been named after Maury but had its name changed during the George Floyd protests . The lake is located on

5750-428: The Secretary of the Navy in 1865 "to have cost the Union more vessels than all other causes combined." In September 1862, Maury, partly because of his international reputation, and partly due to jealousy of superior officers who wanted him placed at some distance, was ordered on special service to England. There, he sought to purchase and fit ships for the Confederacy and persuade European powers to recognize and support

5875-399: The South, including those in Richmond, Virginia, Fletcher, North Carolina , Franklin, Tennessee , and several in Chancellorsville, Virginia . The Matthew Fontaine Maury Papers collection at the Library of Congress contains over 14,000 items. It documents Maury's extensive career and scientific endeavors, including correspondence, notebooks, lectures, and written speeches. On July 2, 2020,

6000-457: The Sun (the Sun just in a much lesser extent) and are also caused by the Earth and Moon orbiting each other. An ocean current is a continuous, directed movement of seawater generated by a number of forces acting upon the water, including wind, the Coriolis effect , breaking waves , cabbeling , and temperature and salinity differences . Sir James Clark Ross took the first modern sounding in deep sea in 1840, and Charles Darwin published

6125-498: The USN 1854 Darien Exploration Expedition , and others. Their duty at the observatory was always temporary, and new men had to be trained repeatedly. Thus Lt. Maury was simultaneously employed with astronomical and nautical work, as well as constantly training new temporary men to assist in these works. As his reputation grew, the competition among young midshipmen to be assigned to work with him intensified. Thus, he always had able assistants. Maury advocated for naval reform, including

6250-554: The Virginia Military Institute library. Maury was initially buried in the Gilham family vault in Lexington's cemetery, across from Stonewall Jackson , until, after some delay, his remains were taken through Goshen Pass to Richmond, Virginia the following year He was reburied between Presidents James Monroe and John Tyler in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. After decades of national and international work, Maury received fame and honors, including being knighted by several nations and given medals with precious gems as well as

6375-485: The advice of Robert E. Lee and other friends, he decided not to return to Virginia but sent a letter of surrender to U.S. naval forces in the Gulf of Mexico and headed for Mexico. There Maximilian , whom he had met in Europe, appointed him "Imperial Commissioner of Colonization". Maury and Maximilian planned to entice former Confederates to emigrate to Mexico, building Carlotta and New Virginia Colony for displaced Confederates and immigrants from other lands. Upon learning of

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6500-529: The building has been home to the Arlington Arts Center (rebranded in 2022 as the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington). There is a county historical marker outside the former school. Matthew Fontaine Maury School in Fredericksburg was built in 1919-1920 and closed in 1980. The building was converted into condominiums and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Adjoining it is Maury Stadium, built in 1935 and still used for local high school sports events. Numerous historical markers commemorate Maury throughout

6625-496: The cause of mareel , or milky seas. For this purpose, the expedition was equipped with nets and scrapers, specifically designed to collect samples from the open waters and the bottom at great depth. Although Juan Ponce de León in 1513 first identified the Gulf Stream , and the current was well known to mariners, Benjamin Franklin made the first scientific study of it and gave it its name. Franklin measured water temperatures during several Atlantic crossings and correctly explained

6750-573: The centre for oceanographic research well into the 20th century. Murray was the first to study marine trenches and in particular the Mid-Atlantic Ridge , and map the sedimentary deposits in the oceans. He tried to map out the world's ocean currents based on salinity and temperature observations, and was the first to correctly understand the nature of coral reef development. In the late 19th century, other Western nations also sent out scientific expeditions (as did private individuals and institutions). The first purpose-built oceanographic ship, Albatros ,

6875-406: The coast of Texas and received the thanks of the British government for this service. Buchanan was also ordered to prevent any attempted invasion by Mexico of the new Republic of Texas . This eventuality never materialized; and Vincennes returned to Hampton Roads on 15 August to enter dry dock. On 4 June 1845, Vincennes sailed for the Far East under command of Captain Hiram Paulding . She

7000-460: The context of the physical, chemical and geological characteristics of their ocean environment. Chemical oceanography is the study of the chemistry of the ocean. Whereas chemical oceanography is primarily occupied with the study and understanding of seawater properties and its changes, ocean chemistry focuses primarily on the geochemical cycles . The following is a central topic investigated by chemical oceanography. Ocean acidification describes

7125-448: The cosmographers would provide (...) and they took charts with exact routes and no longer those used by the ancient). His credibility rests on being personally involved in the instruction of pilots and senior seafarers from 1527 onwards by Royal appointment, along with his recognized competence as mathematician and astronomer. The main problem in navigating back from the south of the Canary Islands (or south of Boujdour ) by sail alone,

7250-434: The currents and winds of the Atlantic, is demonstrated by the understanding of the seasonal variations, with expeditions setting sail at different times of the year taking different routes to take account of seasonal predominate winds. This happens from as early as late 15th century and early 16th: Bartolomeu Dias followed the African coast on his way south in August 1487, while Vasco da Gama would take an open sea route from

7375-404: The decade long period between Bartolomeu Dias finding the southern tip of Africa, and Gama's departure; additionally, there are indications of further travels by Bartolomeu Dias in the area. The most significant consequence of this systematic knowledge was the negotiation of the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, moving the line of demarcation 270 leagues to the west (from 100 to 370 leagues west of

7500-406: The decrease in ocean pH that is caused by anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions into the atmosphere . Seawater is slightly alkaline and had a preindustrial pH of about 8.2. More recently, anthropogenic activities have steadily increased the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere; about 30–40% of the added CO 2 is absorbed by the oceans, forming carbonic acid and lowering

7625-413: The experiences that piqued this interest was circumnavigating the globe on the USS  Vincennes , his assigned ship and the first U.S. warship to travel around the world. Maury's seagoing days ended abruptly at the age of 33 after he broke his right leg in a stagecoach accident. After that he studied naval meteorology, navigation, and charting the winds and currents. He told his family that his work

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7750-567: The extra heat stored in the ocean from changes in Earth's energy balance . The increase in the ocean heat play an important role in sea level rise , because of thermal expansion . Ocean warming accounts for 90% of the energy accumulation associated with global warming since 1971. Paleoceanography is the study of the history of the oceans in the geologic past with regard to circulation, chemistry, biology, geology and patterns of sedimentation and biological productivity. Paleoceanographic studies using environment models and different proxies enable

7875-433: The first all-woman oceanographic expedition. Until that time, gender policies restricted women oceanographers from participating in voyages to a significant extent. From the 1970s, there has been much emphasis on the application of large scale computers to oceanography to allow numerical predictions of ocean conditions and as a part of overall environmental change prediction. Early techniques included analog computers (such as

8000-422: The first woman to have earned a PhD (at Scripps) in the United States, completed a major work on diatoms that remained the standard taxonomy in the field until well after her death in 1999. In 1940, Cupp was let go from her position at Scripps. Sverdrup specifically commended Cupp as a conscientious and industrious worker and commented that his decision was no reflection on her ability as a scientist. Sverdrup used

8125-441: The icy coast of the southernmost continent. The coast along which the ship sailed is today known as Wilkes Land , a name given on maps as early as 1841. The remainder of her deployment included visits to the islands of the South Pacific, Hawaii , the Columbia River area, Puget Sound , California , Wake Island , the Philippines and South Africa . This third voyage around the world ended at New York in June 1842. Vincennes

8250-491: The information in his office and instituting a reporting system among the nation's shipmasters to gather further information on sea conditions and observations. The product of his work was international recognition and the publication in 1847 of Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic , causing the change of purpose and renaming of the depot to the United States Naval Observatory and Hydrographical Office in 1854. He held that position until his resignation in April 1861. Maury

8375-442: The institution of slavery has been termed "proslavery international". Maury, along with other politicians, newspaper editors, merchants, and United States government officials, envisioned a future for slavery that linked the United States, the Caribbean Sea, and the Amazon basin in Brazil. He believed the future of United States commerce lay in South America, colonized by white southerners and their enslaved people. There, Maury claimed,

8500-400: The instructor billet vacated by Cupp to employ Marston Sargent, a biologist studying marine algae, which was not a new research program at Scripps. Financial pressures did not prevent Sverdrup from retaining the services of two other young post-doctoral students, Walter Munk and Roger Revelle . Cupp's partner, Dorothy Rosenbury, found her a position teaching high school, where she remained for

8625-412: The islands between the Ryūkyū chain and Japan, and then the Kurils . Vincennes left the squadron at Petropavlovsk, Russia , and entered the Bering Strait, sailing through to the northwest towards Wrangel Island . Ice barriers prevented the vessel from reaching this destination, but she came closer than any other previous ship. Vincennes returned to San Francisco in early October and later sailed for

8750-429: The latitude of Sierra Leone , spending three months in the open sea of the South Atlantic to profit from the southwards deflection of the southwesterly on the Brazilian side (and the Brazilian current going southward - Gama departed in July 1497); and Pedro Álvares Cabral (departing March 1500) took an even larger arch to the west, from the latitude of Cape Verde, thus avoiding the summer monsoon (which would have blocked

8875-531: The length of voyages. 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 marines around the world and was used to develop charts for all the major trade routes. Maury's Naval Observatory team included midshipmen assigned to him: James Melville Gilliss , Lieutenants John Mercer Brooke , William Lewis Herndon , Lardner Gibbon , Isaac Strain , John "Jack" Minor Maury II of

9000-478: The main factors determining ocean currents. The thermohaline circulation (THC) ( thermo- referring to temperature and -haline referring to salt content ) connects the ocean basins and is primarily dependent on the density of sea water . It is becoming more common to refer to this system as the 'meridional overturning circulation' because it more accurately accounts for other driving factors beyond temperature and salinity. Oceanic heat content (OHC) refers to

9125-538: The mayor of Richmond, Levar Stoney ordered the removal of a statue of Maury erected in 1929 on Richmond's Monument Avenue. The mayor used his emergency powers to bypass a state-mandated review process, calling the statue a "severe, immediate and growing threat to public safety." Oceanographer Oceanography (from Ancient Greek ὠκεανός ( ōkeanós )  ' ocean ' and γραφή ( graphḗ )  ' writing '), also known as oceanology , sea science , ocean science , and marine science ,

9250-509: The northern latitudes where the westerly winds will bring the seafarers towards the western coasts of Europe. The secrecy involving the Portuguese navigations, with the death penalty for the leaking of maps and routes, concentrated all sensitive records in the Royal Archives, completely destroyed by the Lisbon earthquake of 1775 . However, the systematic nature of the Portuguese campaign, mapping

9375-531: The northern states of Mexico . Maury also advocated construction of a railroad across the Isthmus of Panama . For his scientific endeavors, Maury was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1852. Maury also called for an international sea and land weather service. Having charted the seas and currents, he worked on charting land weather forecasting. Congress refused to appropriate funds for

9500-530: The ocean's physical attributes including temperature-salinity structure, mixing, surface waves , internal waves, surface tides , internal tides , and currents . The following are central topics investigated by physical oceanography. Since the early ocean expeditions in oceanography, a major interest was the study of ocean currents and temperature measurements. The tides , the Coriolis effect , changes in direction and strength of wind , salinity, and temperature are

9625-412: The oceans was primarily for cartography and mainly limited to its surfaces and of the animals that fishermen brought up in nets, though depth soundings by lead line were taken. The Portuguese campaign of Atlantic navigation is the earliest example of a systematic scientific large project, sustained over many decades, studying the currents and winds of the Atlantic. The work of Pedro Nunes (1502–1578)

9750-402: The pH (now below 8.1 ) through ocean acidification. The pH is expected to reach 7.7 by the year 2100. An important element for the skeletons of marine animals is calcium , but calcium carbonate becomes more soluble with pressure, so carbonate shells and skeletons dissolve below the carbonate compensation depth . Calcium carbonate becomes more soluble at lower pH, so ocean acidification

9875-488: The plan, Lee wrote Maury saying, "The thought of abandoning the country, and all that must be left in it, is abhorrent to my feelings, and I prefer to struggle for its restoration, and share its fate, rather than to give up all as lost." In the end, the plan did not attract the intended immigrants and Maximilian, facing increasing opposition in Mexico, ended it. Maury then returned to England in 1866 and found work there. In 1868 he

10000-690: The polar regions and Africa , so too did the mysteries of the unexplored oceans. The seminal event in the founding of the modern science of oceanography was the 1872–1876 Challenger expedition . As the first true oceanographic cruise, this expedition laid the groundwork for an entire academic and research discipline. In response to a recommendation from the Royal Society , the British Government announced in 1871 an expedition to explore world's oceans and conduct appropriate scientific investigation. Charles Wyville Thomson and Sir John Murray launched

10125-460: The proposals, and Maury's proposal received little or no support in the United States, especially in the South, which sought to perpetuate the institution and the riches made off the yoke of slavery. By 1855, the proposal had failed. Brazil authorized free navigation to all nations in the Amazon in 1866, only when it was at war against Paraguay, when free navigation in the area had become necessary. Maury

10250-466: The rest of her career. (Russell, 2000) Sverdrup, Johnson and Fleming published The Oceans in 1942, which was a major landmark. The Sea (in three volumes, covering physical oceanography, seawater and geology) edited by M.N. Hill was published in 1962, while Rhodes Fairbridge 's Encyclopedia of Oceanography was published in 1966. The Great Global Rift, running along the Mid Atlantic Ridge,

10375-513: The return route from the western coast of Africa (sequentially called 'volta de Guiné' and 'volta da Mina'); and the references to the Sargasso Sea (also called at the time 'Mar da Baga'), to the west of the Azores , in 1436, reveals the western extent of the return route. This is necessary, under sail, to make use of the southeasterly and northeasterly winds away from the western coast of Africa, up to

10500-495: The river highways of the Amazon valley". Brazil maintained legal enslavement but had prohibited the importation of newly enslaved people from Africa in 1850 under the pressure of the British. Maury proposed that moving people enslaved in the United States to Brazil would reduce or eliminate slavery over time in as many areas of the southern United States as possible and would end new enslavement for Brazil. Maury's primary concern, however,

10625-410: The route taken by Gama at the time he set sail). Furthermore, there were systematic expeditions pushing into the western Northern Atlantic (Teive, 1454; Vogado, 1462; Teles, 1474; Ulmo, 1486). The documents relating to the supplying of ships, and the ordering of sun declination tables for the southern Atlantic for as early as 1493–1496, all suggest a well-planned and systematic activity happening during

10750-555: The scientific community to assess the role of the oceanic processes in the global climate by the reconstruction of past climate at various intervals. Paleoceanographic research is also intimately tied to palaeoclimatology. The earliest international organizations of oceanography were founded at the turn of the 20th century, starting with the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea created in 1902, followed in 1919 by

10875-400: The shifting conditions of the near future. Of particular concern is the manner in which the combination of acidification with the expected additional stressors of higher ocean temperatures and lower oxygen levels will impact the seas. Geological oceanography is the study of the geology of the ocean floor including plate tectonics and paleoceanography . Physical oceanography studies

11000-505: The slave trade that accompanied his scientific achievements. Maury staunchly opposed secession, but in 1860, he wrote letters to the governors of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland urging them to stop the momentum toward war. When Virginia declared secession in April 1861, Maury nonetheless resigned his commission in the U.S. Navy, choosing to fight against the North. With the outbreak of

11125-413: The start of the U.S. Navy. He pored over the documents, collecting information on winds, calms, and currents for all seas in all seasons. His dream was to put that information in the hands of all captains. Maury's work on ocean currents and investigations of the whaling industry led him to suspect that a warm-water, ice-free northern passage existed between the Atlantic and Pacific. He thought he detected

11250-418: The study of marine meteorology, navigation , and charting prevailing winds and currents. His 1855 textbook Physical Geography of the Sea was one of the first comprehensive oceanography studies. Many nations sent oceanographic observations to Maury at the Naval Observatory, where he and his colleagues evaluated the information and distributed the results worldwide. Knowledge of the oceans remained confined to

11375-520: The submersible DSV  Alvin . In the 1950s, Auguste Piccard invented the bathyscaphe and used the bathyscaphe Trieste to investigate the ocean's depths. The United States nuclear submarine Nautilus made the first journey under the ice to the North Pole in 1958. In 1962 the FLIP (Floating Instrument Platform), a 355-foot (108 m) spar buoy, was first deployed. In 1968, Tanya Atwater led

11500-400: The topmost few fathoms of the water and a small amount of the bottom, mainly in shallow areas. Almost nothing was known of the ocean depths. The British Royal Navy 's efforts to chart all of the world's coastlines in the mid-19th century reinforced the vague idea that most of the ocean was very deep, although little more was known. As exploration ignited both popular and scientific interest in

11625-522: The university president announced it would recommend to the JMU board of visitors to rename Maury Hall, along with Ashby Hall and Jackson Hall. Ships have been named in his honor, including various vessels named USS  Maury ; USS Commodore Maury (SP-656), a patrol vessel and minesweeper of World War I; and a World War II Liberty Ship . Additionally, Tidewater Community College, based in Norfolk, Virginia , owns

11750-496: The vessel lost 36 members of her crew to the gold fever sweeping California at the time. Turning south, Vincennes cruised off South America until late 1851, closely monitoring the activities of revolutionaries ashore. She made a courtesy call to the Hawaiian Islands at the end of the year and proceeded thence to Puget Sound where she arrived on 2 February 1852. She anchored briefly there and returned via San Francisco and

11875-467: The visitors were treated with courtesy. However, Commodore Biddle's attempts to force the opening of feudal Japan to multinational trade were politely rebuffed, and the vessels weighed anchor on 29 July. Columbus returned to the United States by way of Cape Horn , but Vincennes remained on the China Station for another year before returning to New York on 1 April 1847. Here, she was decommissioned on

12000-489: The west coast of South America and in the South Pacific during the rest of the year, in late 1839 Vincennes arrived at Sydney, Australia , her base for a pioneering cruise to Antarctica . She unintentionally exposed the lack of defences and security at Sydney Harbour when she slipped unnoticed into Sydney Harbour on 30 November 1839 under the cover of darkness. Between mid-January and mid-February 1840, she operated along

12125-434: The world ocean through further scientific study enables better stewardship and sustainable utilization of Earth's resources. The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission reports that 1.7% of the total national research expenditure of its members is focused on ocean science. The study of oceanography is divided into these five branches: Biological oceanography investigates the ecology and biology of marine organisms in

12250-604: Was "work to be done by Africans with the American axe in his hand." In the 1850s, he studied a way to send Virginia's slaves to Brazil as a way to phase out slavery in the state gradually. Maury was aware of an 1853 survey of the Amazon region conducted by the Navy Lt. William Lewis Herndon. The 1853 expedition aimed to map the area for trade so that American traders could go "with their goods and chattels [including enslaved people] to settle and to trade goods from South American countries along

12375-823: Was a veteran of the Wilkes expedition. The squadron stood out of Norfolk on 11 June 1853, rounded the Cape of Good Hope , and charted numerous islands and shoals in the Indian Ocean before arriving in China in March 1854. Here Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry relieved Ringgold for medical reasons and gave command of the expedition to Lt. John Rodgers . Vincennes sailed on to survey the Bonin and Ladrone Islands and returned to Hong Kong in February 1855. The expedition sailed again in March and surveyed

12500-623: Was accompanied by the ship-of-the-line Columbus , under the command of Captain Thomas Wyman ; and the two vessels formed a little squadron under the command of Commodore James Biddle , who carried a letter from Secretary of State John C. Calhoun to Caleb Cushing , American commissioner in China , authorizing Cushing to make the first official contact with the Japanese Government. The squadron sailed for Macau by way of Rio de Janeiro and

12625-466: Was adopted by navies and merchant marines worldwide and was used to develop charts for all the major trade routes. With the outbreak of the American Civil War , Maury, a Virginian , resigned his commission as a U.S. Navy commander and joined the Confederacy . He spent the war in the Southern United States , and Great Britain and France as a Confederate envoy. He helped the Confederacy acquire

12750-506: Was authorized by Congress on 3 March 1825. She was laid down at New York in 1825, launched on 27 April 1826, and commissioned on 27 August 1826, with Master Commandant William Compton Bolton in command. The ship set sail for the first time on 3 September 1826, from New York bound for the Pacific by way of Cape Horn . She cruised extensively in that ocean, visiting the Hawaiian Islands in 1829 and made her way to Macau by 1830, under Commander William B. Finch . Her return voyage

12875-674: Was built in 1882. In 1893, Fridtjof Nansen allowed his ship, Fram , to be frozen in the Arctic ice. This enabled him to obtain oceanographic, meteorological and astronomical data at a stationary spot over an extended period. In 1881 the geographer John Francon Williams published a seminal book, Geography of the Oceans . Between 1907 and 1911 Otto Krümmel published the Handbuch der Ozeanographie , which became influential in awakening public interest in oceanography. The four-month 1910 North Atlantic expedition headed by John Murray and Johan Hjort

13000-586: Was discovered by Maurice Ewing and Bruce Heezen in 1953 and mapped by Heezen and Marie Tharp using bathymetric data; in 1954 a mountain range under the Arctic Ocean was found by the Arctic Institute of the USSR. The theory of seafloor spreading was developed in 1960 by Harry Hammond Hess . The Ocean Drilling Program started in 1966. Deep-sea vents were discovered in 1977 by Jack Corliss and Robert Ballard in

13125-415: Was exhausted from traveling throughout the nation giving speeches promoting land meteorology. His eldest son, Major Richard Launcelot Maury, and son-in-law, Major Spottswood Wellford Corbin, attended him at the time. Maury asked his daughters and wife to leave the room. His last words, recorded verbatim, were "all's well," a nautical expression meaning calm conditions at sea. His body was placed on display in

13250-408: Was five. He wanted to emulate the naval career of his older brother, Flag Lieutenant John Minor Maury , an officer in the U.S. Navy, who caught yellow fever after fighting pirates . As a result of John's painful death, Matthew's father, Richard, forbade him from joining the Navy. Maury strongly considered attending West Point to get a better education than the Navy could offer. Instead, he obtained

13375-540: Was inspired by Psalm 8, "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands... and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas." As officer-in-charge of the United States Navy office in Washington, DC , called the "Depot of Charts and Instruments," the young lieutenant became a librarian of the many unorganized log books and records in 1842. On his initiative, he sought to improve seamanship by organizing

13500-595: Was made by way of China , the Philippines , the Indian Ocean , and the Cape of Good Hope . Ship chaplain Charles Samuel Stewart published a book about the voyage. After nearly four years, Vincennes arrived back in New York on 8 June 1830, becoming the first U.S. Navy ship to circumnavigate the Earth . Two days later the ship was decommissioned. Following repairs and recommissioned, Vincennes then operated in

13625-528: Was neither the freedom of enslaved people nor the amelioration of slavery in Brazil, but rather an absolution for slaveholders of Virginia and other southern states. Maury wrote to his cousin, "Therefore I see in the slave territory of the Amazon the SAFETY VALVE of the Southern States." Maury wanted to open up the Amazon to free navigation in his plan. However, Emperor Pedro II 's government firmly rejected

13750-561: Was next assigned to the Home Squadron and placed under the command of Commander Franklin Buchanan , a distinguished officer destined to become the first Superintendent of the United States Naval Academy . She sailed to the West Indies and cruised off the Mexican coast until the summer of 1844. Though this duty proved relatively uneventful, Vincennes did rescue two grounded English brigs off

13875-483: Was not an enslaver, but he did not actively oppose the institution of slavery. An article tying his legacy in oceanography to the slave trade suggested that Maury was ambivalent about slavery, seeing it as wrong but not intent on forcing others to free enslaved people. However, a recent article explaining the removal of his monument from Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, illustrated a proslavery stance through deep ties to

14000-634: Was offered the position as its first president but turned it down because of his age. He had previously been suggested as president of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia , in 1848 by Benjamin Blake Minor in his publication the Southern Literary Messenger . He considered becoming president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, the University of Alabama , and

14125-490: Was one of the principal advocates for founding a national observatory and he appealed to a science enthusiast and former U.S. president, Representative John Quincy Adams , for the creation of what would eventually become the Naval Observatory. Maury occasionally hosted Adams, who enjoyed astronomy as an avocation, at the Naval Observatory. Concerned that Maury always had a long trek to and from his home on upper Pennsylvania Avenue, Adams introduced an appropriations bill that funded

14250-545: Was ordered abandoned and destroyed to prevent her capture, and her engineer set a slow match to the vessel's magazine while her men took refuge on other ships. However, her engineer cut the burning fuse and threw it overboard before the magazine could explode and, after the Confederate vessels withdrew early in the afternoon, Vincennes was refloated. After the Confederate attack, the Union sloop-of-war continued on blockade duty off

14375-648: Was ordered to assist in the occupation of Head of Passes , Mississippi River , and remain there on blockade duty. Though the Federal warships did successfully deploy, on 12 October 1861 the Confederate metal-sheathed ram Manassas and armed steamers Ivy and James L. Day drove the Union blockaders from Head of Passes in the Battle of the Head of Passes , forcing the Screw sloop-of-war Richmond and Vincennes aground. Vincennes

14500-461: Was ordered to assume command of the blockade off Ship Island, Mississippi , and to guard the pass out of Mississippi Sound. While so deployed, boat crews from the vessel and Clifton captured the barge H. McGuin in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi , on 18 July 1863. Vincennes also reported the capture of two boats laden with food on 24 December. Vincennes remained off Ship Island for the remainder of

14625-491: Was pardoned by the federal government and returned to the US, accepting a teaching position at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, holding the chair of physics. While in Lexington, he completed a physical survey of Virginia, which he documented in the book The Physical Geography of Virginia . He had once been a gold mining superintendent outside Fredericksburg and had studied geology intensely during that time, so he

14750-661: Was proclaimed Emperor of Mexico. At an early stage in the war, the Confederate States Congress assigned Maury and Francis H. Smith, a mathematics professor at the University of Virginia, to develop a system of weights and measures. Maury was in the West Indies on his way back to the Confederacy when he learned of its collapse. The war had brought ruin to many in Fredericksburg, where Maury's immediate family lived. On

14875-719: Was refitted with a light spar deck and declared the flagship of the South Sea Surveying and Exploring Expedition to the Antarctic region. Commanded by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes , the expedition sailed from Hampton Roads in August 1838, and made surveys along the South American coast before making a brief survey of Antarctica in early 1839. Entering into the South Pacific in August and September 1839, her cartographers drafted charts of that area that are still used today. Following survey operations and other scientific work along

15000-676: Was soon after the Brussels conference that Prussia, Spain, Sardinia, the Free City of Hamburg, the Republic of Bremen, Chile, Austria, Brazil, and others agreed to join the enterprise. The Pope established honorary flags of distinction for the ships of the Papal States, which could be awarded only to the vessels that filled out and sent to Maury in Washington, DC, the Maury abstract logs. Maury's stance on

15125-548: Was the Report Of The Scientific Results of the Exploring Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873–76 . Murray, who supervised the publication, described the report as "the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries". He went on to found the academic discipline of oceanography at the University of Edinburgh , which remained

15250-494: Was the first comprehensive work on oceanography to be published. In 1825, at 19, Maury obtained, through U.S. Representative Sam Houston , a midshipman's warrant in the United States Navy. As a midshipman on board the frigate USS  Brandywine , he almost immediately 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 studying navigation, meteorology, winds, and currents. He became Superintendent of

15375-509: Was the most ambitious research oceanographic and marine zoological project ever mounted until then, and led to the classic 1912 book The Depths of the Ocean . The first acoustic measurement of sea depth was made in 1914. Between 1925 and 1927 the "Meteor" expedition gathered 70,000 ocean depth measurements using an echo sounder, surveying the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. In 1934, Easter Ellen Cupp ,

15500-471: Was to overcome this problem and clear the passage to India around Africa as a viable maritime trade route, that a systematic plan of exploration was devised by the Portuguese. The return route from regions south of the Canaries became the ' volta do largo' or 'volta do mar '. The 'rediscovery' of the Azores islands in 1427 is merely a reflection of the heightened strategic importance of the islands, now sitting on

15625-556: Was well-equipped to write such a book. He aimed to assist war-torn Virginia in rebuilding by discovering and extracting minerals, improving farming, etc. He lectured extensively in the United States and abroad. He advocated for creating a state agricultural college as an adjunct to Virginia Military Institute. This led to the establishment at Blacksburg of the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College , later renamed Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, in 1872. Maury

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