254 * 'The Atlantic 



ited Maury with contributing to the success of the new clippers. In the 

 case of already existing ships the time savings were almost entirely 

 due to Maury methods. 



It was soon evident that a saving in days and hours of passage time 

 due to a better knowledge of the sea translated themselves into dol- 

 lars and cents in the account books of shipowners and merchants. 

 The saving to the operators of American ships sailing out of Atlantic 

 and Pacific ports was calculated at $2,250,000 each year. But America 

 was not the only or even the chief nation to benefit. Soon after the 

 charts and directions for the Indian Ocean had been issued, it was cal- 

 culated that the annual savings to British vessels operating in that 

 ocean ran to 1 1,000,000 and the general saving to all British vessels 

 using Maury methods on any ocean $10,000,000 annually. No wonder 

 recognitions, honors and rewards came to Maury from all the civi- 

 lized world. 



So far as the general public was concerned, the practical results of 

 Maury's study of the oceans overshadowed all other considerations. 

 Maury himself was not overcome by the acclaim and honors that 

 now began to crowd upon him. He seems to have regarded them as 

 a fortunate but inevitable result of the pursuit of proper methods 

 and broad interests. It is clear that they never dulled his interest in 

 basic and theoretical studies. He was the leader in organizing the first 

 international conference for the systematic studies of the oceans 

 which took place in Brussels in 1853. 



Also in 1853 he published Physical Geography of the Sea, and in 

 the same year published a "Letter Concerning Lanes for Steamers." 

 This letter proposed the establishment, for reasons of both safety and 

 efficiency, of a sort of double-track railroad across the Atlantic. Each 

 lane was approximately twenty miles in width with a broad area inter- 

 vening between them, the southern lane for those westbound. The 

 lanes he proposed were based on an analysis of the abstracts of logs 

 covering over 46,000 days of observation. With the passage of years 

 there have been some modifications in the lanes that Maury estab- 

 lished but his basic concept, method and principles are still in effect 

 today. 



Maury's interests and capacity for leadership were not confined to 

 the sea. Like other inventive minds, he saw natural connections be- 

 tween his main interest and other phases of knowledge and practice. 

 He was the first to advocate the establishment of a national weather 

 bureau to be operated for the benefit of American farmers. The bill 

 was not passed but after many years, when the Weather Bureau was 



