Tracks in the Sea: Matthew Fontaine Maury and the Mapping of the Oceans [Hardcover]

Chester G. Hearn (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0071368264 | ISBN-13: 978-0071368261 | Publication Date: June 28, 2002 | Edition: 1

A great story of discovery and adventure in the tradition of Longitude

Maritime navigation remained largely a matter of guesswork until well into the 19th century, and making a voyage meant following a series of all-too-often disastrous hunches. Changing that became the lifelong obsession of the brilliant, irascible geographer Matthew Fontaine Maury, whose career both aided and mirrored America's rise as a maritime power. With his controversial appointment as the first superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory in 1840, he at last found his life's work. While others built railroads across the trackless interior, Maury mapped the highways of wind and current over the previously trackless sea. In Tracks in the Sea, Chester G. Hearn uses Maury's career as a window on the 19th century, including the brief but glorious clipper-ship era of the 1850s, the rise of steam and steel, the Civil War and the destruction of the U.S. merchant fleet, and the points of intersection with some of the most colorful and influential people of the time, including presidents, congressmen, military leaders, scientists, explorers, merchants, and writers.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Tracks in the Sea captures a rich yet little-known chapter in the history of seafaring--the mapping of the oceans by Matthew Fontaine Maury, the father of modern navigation and ocean science.

Voyages in the early 1800s were risky endeavors. Navigation was uncertain. Chronometers were a new technology, and only a few navy ships and wealthy merchant vessels carried them. And route planning was a hit-or-miss affair. Knowledge of prevailing winds and currents had advanced little since Columbus. What lore existed was mostly anecdotal. There were no "highways" on the seas, and hundreds of ships were lost each year. The cost in property and lives was enormous.

Maury changed all that. In a brilliant eighteen-year effort between 1842 and 1861--driving himself and his staff with relentless curiosity, ambition, adventurousness, and altruism--he mapped the oceans' great surface currents and wind systems and showed shipmasters how to shave weeks or months from voyages. His career coincided with the ascendance of America as a maritime power and with the culmination of the Great Age of Sail. In a world interconnected by maritime commerce, Maury's work was critically important not just to America, but to all nations.

Tracks in the Sea traces the arc of Maury's remarkable life from his birth in 1806 on a hardscrabble Virginia farm, the seventh of nine children, to a navy career culminating in the superintendency of the newly created U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington. Self-taught and self-made, as passionate in his condemnation of bureaucratic incompetence as he was in his scientific explorations, Maury earned great admirers who would help his career and great enemies who would strive to sabotage it. With the outbreak of the Civil War, he abandoned his life's work to offer his services to his native South. Though despised by Southern leaders (including Jefferson Davis), Maury contributed the pilot and track charts that played a critical role in the Confederate raiders' destruction of Union shipping.

In this vivid biography, Chester Hearn rescues a unique and fascinating man from the obscurity to which he was consigned after the Civil War. In Tracks in the Sea, Maury's career is a window both on the history of seafaring just prior to the age of steam and steel, and on a tumultuous century in a young nation.

The Remarkable Story of a Seafaring Pioneer

In eighteen years of sustained and inspired labor, drawing on the logbooks of sailing ships from around the world, Matthew Fontaine Maury transformed the oceans from trackless hazards into a network of highways marked by dependable winds and currents. No less than the invention of the chronometer, the pilot charts and wind and current maps of this self-taught genius from a Tennessee farm revolutionized ocean travel. At the height of his productivity in 1861, he abandoned his career at the U.S. Naval Observatory to join the Confederate war effort.

Now this vividly rendered biography resurrects the life and work of an extraordinary man. In tracing Maury's intellectual odyssey and the dramatic conflicts of his life and career, Chester Hearn shows us a fascinating era in seafaring and in the history of a raw young nation.

About the Author

Chester G. Hearn, retired vice president of a subsidiary of Combustion Engineering, is an avid amateur historian and the author of eleven books about U.S. military history between the American Revolution and the Civil War.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press; 1 edition (June 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071368264
• ISBN-13: 978-0071368261
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,265,335 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars American Hero, January 19, 2004

By 

Donald B. Siano (Westfield, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tracks in the Sea: Matthew Fontaine Maury and the Mapping of the Oceans (Hardcover)

Mr. Hearn's splendid account of the life of the self-taught Matthew Maury is one that should be read by anyone with the remotest interest in sailing or the industrial revolution. He should also be of interest to those who want a concrete account of the benefits of "data-mining" in which miscellaneous, disparate sources of information are aggregated into something which is tremendously useful.

Maury took crates of old ship logs, and extracted the data about weather and currents as a function of date and location, and produced ingenious maps of the sea that could be used to plot voyages that minimized the time of passage. In the age of the American clipper ships, the time saved could be quite substantial, even amounting to as much as factor of two over the haphazard routes used by the intuitive captains of the day.

The reduction of the data and the production of the maps was carried out by only a handful of men at the U.S. Naval Observatory, but produced tremendous economic advantages to those who used them. They were quickly adopted by the merchant marine, and by cleverly requiring the recipients of the latest maps to turn over to him logs taken in a standard format, he was able to gather tons of new data for ever-improving successive maps. Maury also discovered the feasibility for the route of the first transatlantic cable, and fought to establish the first weather bureau in the US.

He also brought about the convening of a Brussels Marine meteorology Conference in 1853 that was attended by nine countries and resulted in the adoption of a uniform method of gathering and disseminating the information among the world. Not bad for a simple Lieutenant! His quarrels with the jealous Joseph Henry (of electromagnetic induction fame) and others of his ilk are instructive to those interested in stories of how pettiness and obstructionism of powerful men can be overcome by men of true ability.

This story is well researched and ably told by Mr. Hearn, and is another exciting adventure of the heroes who made the industrial revolution.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Life Story of a Neglected American Genius, March 1, 2003

By 

Q. Publius (Annandale, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Tracks in the Sea: Matthew Fontaine Maury and the Mapping of the Oceans (Hardcover)

Maury's life, rising from the humble origins of a farming family in Virginia and then Tennessee, to a career as an internationally renowned scientist, is quite interesting, and generally well told by author Chester Hearn. Most scientists would feel their careers were a success if they made a few contributions to their area of science. Maury's genius invented two whole sciences: oceanography and marine astronomy. He significantly improved navigation by finding "tracks in the sea," the patterns which numerous currents and winds follow all over the globe. Perhaps because he sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War, he became a relatively obscure figure. Since he had an enduring influence on the human race's knowledge of the oceans, he deserves to be better known. This book will help, and is well worth reading.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rich historical perspective, November 18, 2002

By 

Ardita (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tracks in the Sea: Matthew Fontaine Maury and the Mapping of the Oceans (Hardcover)

This is a great book for anyone with an interest in or passion for sailing, navigation, mapping and charting or who holds an interest in the challenges of early explorers.