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

In the days before computers there was Matthew Fontaine Maury. Almost unknown today, Maury was a navigation and sailing genius, a Lieutenant in the US Navy, who was the father of modern navigation and ocean science. He was a land lubber. During the age of sail longitude was an uncertain calculation. As a result, it was often impossible for ships to know exactly where they were. After the invention on the chronometer, things improved, but chronometers being expensive, route planning was a hit or miss thing. As a result, for the most part, navigation was anecdotal. There were no highways in the seas, no scientifically determined sailing truisms or protocols, and hundreds of ships were lost each year. Until Maury, knowledge of prevailing winds and currents had advanced little from Columbus. But between 1842 and 1861, he and his staff mapped the ocean's great surface currents and wind systems. They showed ship captains how to shave weeks, even months from voyages. Tracks in the Sea is the biography of this remarkable, self taught, self made man whose remarkable career culminated as head of the U.S. Navel Observatory. In a world interconnected by maritime commerce, Maury's work was critically important, not just to Americans, but to all nations. This is an amazing story. To have compiled the thousands and thousands of ship's logs and sailing observations, drawing trends and systematic sailing instructions, by month, for all the oceans of the world, has to be one of man's most astounding scientific achievements. This is a most remarkable work about a most remarkable American.

This is simply a wonderfully written book about an almost forgotten man, Matthew Fontaine Muray. Maury lived in the golden days of sail, the 1800's. In those days, the ocean was a big, mysterious, and dangerous place. Sailors had decent charts of the continents, and by the middle of the century. they had decent chronometers to help them navigate (find the Longitude). But what they did not have was a set of charts showing where the winds blew when. Sure, they had some knowledge, gained by long experience, but no scientific knowledge. What Maury did was to make a life-long scientific study of the winds and currents around the world, with a view of shortening sailing times, thus reducing expenses and increasing safety. At first glance, this does not sound like much, but it took reading literally hundreds of thousands of logs to collect this information, then making charts showing the direction and strength of the wind and current in every month of the year. Did Maury's efforts work? Would you call shaving a month off a sailing trip from New England to Rio worthwhile? This was the typical result of skippers who followed Maury's charts. He also 'invented', to a large degree, the science of oceanography, and did a lot to standardize and strengthen the science of meteorology. Many think this information has been rendered useless by powered ships. Wrong. People who sail long distances always have a current copy of this type of chart onboard, and plan their itineraries around the winds and tides. Professional seamen, especially of very large ships, also continue to use this information, as the sea can overpower even enormous ships like supertankers. If you enjoy reading books like Dava Sobel's book Longitude, about John Harrison and his clocks, you will equally enjoy Tracks in the Sea. Highly recommended.

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.

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.

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.