Share one interesting fact I know.
Hmmm, so many to choose from.
I've decided on the facts I learned about the father of oceanography while researching the life of Matthew Fontaine Maury.
As head of the National Observatory starting in 1844 he started having over a hundred years of naval logs gathering dust evaluated and required all naval and merchant vessels sailing under the U.S. flag to fill out logs on their voyages and give them to the observatory.
At this time the only charts available for use for the shores of the U.S. came from Britain and they charged a high price for them, and they dated from before the Revolutionary War.
In 1848 the observatory released the first wind and currents charts for the Atlantic and afterwards for the Pacific, followed by all the oceans by 1856.
By 1851 at the height of the gold rush to California those charts not only saved hundreds of ships from hitting shoals and reefs saving thousands of lives but shortened the sailing time from New York City from 180 days to an average of 90 days and records by clipper ships down to 81.
Those charts were given by the U.S. out to all maritime nations for free in exchange for them turning in their ships logs both merchant and naval to Washington D.C. By 1856 Maury had 186,000 floating laboratories collecting wind, currents, and other data to keep the charts current.
In 1858 his routs from New York to Rio De Janeiro was cut short by a third. He charted a route using the Antarctic winds and shortened the route from England to Australia by a thousand miles.
His textbook The Geography of the Seas was used as a textbook at Annapolis until 1927.
This is why he is considered as the father of oceanography and meteorology.
10 comments:
I’d never heard of Matthew Fontaine Maury. Very interesting.
This is great. Very interesting.
Okay, excellent choice and really impressive historical figure. The number of scientific advances that essentially boil down to "this one person had kind of an obsession with this particular topic" is sometimes kind of funny to me, but it's also fascinating that so many things seem to happen that way.
Now you know, Lydia. I only learned of him by marrying a Maury.
Thanks George.
Michael, Maury was on a mission to use all the data others were ignoring and make it better for all.
Your book was an eye opener for me. Maury was a man that stick to his purposes.
What got me was that he had a huge blind spot with slavery. I'm reading a Lincoln biography right now and find out that Lincoln took a while to get to anti-slavery. In fact he worked for slaveowners trying to get their slaves back. Also, early on he was concerned about how the country could afford to reimburse slaveowners for their loss if slaves were freed.
Yogi, all the gold in the Central America was supposed to compensate the south for freeing the slaves. It all went down in a hurricane.
This is definitely something I did not know. Thanks for sharing.
You're Welcome.
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