52 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



down Upon them, and the commanders of ships were to 

 be requested to lay ojff on them the tracks of their 

 vessels every day, and indicate as well the time of the 

 year, the direction of the winds, the force and set of the 

 currents, and all other phenomena having a bearing on 

 the navigation of the seas on which they sailed. Sailing 

 directions, Maury declared in this address, are now not a 

 written branch of navigation but merely a matter of 

 tradition among seamen. As to his contemplated chart, 

 he boldly asserted that short passages are not due to 

 luck and that ''this chart proposes nothing less than to 

 blaze a way through the winds of the sea by which the 

 navigator may find the best paths at all seasons". 



Not having at that time made a name for himself as a 

 scientist, Maury thought it wise to seek the support of 

 the National Institute, and asked that a committee be 

 appointed from its members to wait upon Secretary of 

 the Navy Upshur and invite his cooperation in author- 

 izing that these charts be kept on all public cruisers. 

 Such cooperation was, after a fashion, granted, and 

 Maury drew up a letter of instructions at the request of 

 the Secretary. But as not much political capital was to 

 be made of it, the matter ended with the issuing of a set 

 of instructions to Commodore Biddle who was on the 

 point of sailing for China in the Columbus. Maury then 

 asked permission of the Bureau of Ordnance and Hydro- 

 graphy to make a chart of the Atlantic American sea- 

 board. He was ashamed, he wrote, of the meagerness 

 of the contributions of the United States to the general 

 fund of nautical science, and called attention to the fact 

 that even the charts used by an American man-of-war in 

 making her way up the Chesapeake Bay toward Wash- 

 ington had to be secured from the English Admiralty, 



