250 : The Atlantic 



of chronometers for neither telegraph nor radio had then been used 

 for time signals. 



Naval officers and some skilled navigators would do well with the 

 problems of latitude but many skippers and mates were so uncertain 

 of their longitude results that they would sail until they reached the 

 proper latitude and then close with the shore by sailing along the par- 

 allel of latitude. This was called "running down your easting" or 

 "your westing" as the case might be. 



This device became embedded in the story about an old New Eng- 

 land skipper who was asked how he managed to find his way to 

 Jamaica. His answer was, "South until the butter melts and then turn 

 west." 



There existed handbooks for ship's officers, and these contained di- 

 rections for sailing based on hearsay evidence and some practical expe- 

 rience. Some scientists had worked on problems connected with the 

 sea. A French mathematician named Lagrange had developed a the- 

 ory and formula about ocean waves. Both he and Newton had pre- 

 sented theories of the tides. Hardly anything was known about a sys- 

 tematic organization of the winds or a structure of ocean currents 

 and drifts. These were all interesting beginnings, but however valu- 

 able each might be as a fragment, they were not related. They were 

 parts of a machine that had not yet been invented. 



The man who changed all this was an American named Matthew 

 Fontaine Maury. When his work began he was an obscure midship- 

 man in the United States Navy. In his life work, he laid the founda- 

 tion for two separate sciences — meteorology, the science of the 

 weather, and oceanography, the science of the sea. Since he was an 

 American it was natural that a great part of his researches were con- 

 ducted in the Atlantic Ocean and that his discoveries began to reveal 

 the nature of the Atlantic. 



Maury spent his boyhood in Franklin, Tennessee. His family were 

 fine people but not wealthy and he was one of a large number of 

 children. He went to sea to get an education and this the sea and 

 his own genius provided in a generous measure. His father was 

 opposed to the venture and he had no aid from his family. By teach- 

 ing at the local school he earned enough money to make a down pay- 

 ment on the purchase of a horse to carry him to Washington. 



He went directly to Sam Houston, then a congressman from Ten- 

 nessee, and with his aid secured an appointment in the navy. At the 

 time, there was no naval academy at Annapolis; in fact, years later, it 

 was Maury's writings and arguments that helped to bring about the 



