More of This Oceanography Feature • Part I Early Oceanography • Part 2 Oceanography and America • Part 3 Oceanography and the World Wars • Part 4 Modern Oceanography

Oceanography on the Web • Other Nautical Inventions • Oceanography Society • The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Oceanography • Tidal Plants

"...it is particularly desirable that information on this subject [hydrography] be collected from all quarters, as well for the Navy as for the commercial marine generally; and there is, no doubt, a great mass of such information locked up in the memories of our whalers and Indiamen. Indeed, it may be safely said, there is scarcely a voyage made to the Indian Ocean or China seas, in which some new shoal or reef is not discovered. How useful the knowledge would be to other navigators! Yet, from the fact that they know not where to send it, perhaps it never passes beyond the immediate crew. The depot of charts and instruments is the proper receptacle of such information..."

With the passing of this Bill, and with Navy Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury at the helm of the new Depot as its first Superintendent, the first formal scientific investigations of the deep ocean environment began. Maury was, "convinced that his chief duty should be the preparation of ocean charts...Charts on naval vessels were found to be over 100 years old and quite useless." A major goal was to assert the United States Navy's independence from the traditional hegemony of the British Admiralty and to make our own national contribution to hydrography - the practice of nautical surveying and charting.

Under Maury's direction, all of the hundreds of ships' logs that were stored in the Navy's warehouses were hauled out and studied. By comparing the logs of ships on a particular route, Maury could pinpoint locations where extremes and differences occurred in ocean conditions, and he was thus able to suggest certain areas of the oceans that should be avoided at different times of the year. The result was Maury's famous Wind and Current Charts, which soon became indispensable to mariners of all nations. Maury also devised an "abstract log" like a template on which to work, which was suppled to all Navy ships. Navy captains were required to complete these logs for each voyage, while merchant and foreign vessels did so on a voluntary basis. In exchange for sending him their completed logs, Maury would send his Wind and Current Charts to participating ships' captains, and they had an immediate effect on ocean commerce. Using Maury's information, for example, clipper ships were able to shave 47 days off the passage from New York to San Francisco, resulting in savings of millions of dollars annually.

The practical benefits which resulted from these efforts drew the direct support of Congress, which authorized three ships, "...for testing new routes and perfecting the discoveries made by Maury in the course of his investigations of winds and currents of the oceans." With the invention of telegraphy and the resulting desire to connect the continents with deep sea cables, ocean surveys of the North Atlantic soon commenced. During these surveys, the first geological specimens were brought up from the ocean floor. Within a few years, the first depth chart of the Atlantic Ocean was published, and in 1858, the first successful transatlantic cable was laid down. Naval Oceanography had come of age.

THE POST-CIVIL WAR YEARS

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©Mary Bellis