THE EARLY YEARS 



Among the primary concerns of any seafarer are navigation and safe passage. Two thousand 

 years before Christ, the Egyptians on the island of Crete had a war fleet of some 400 ships, but 

 centuries before that Crete was carrying on commerce with Egypt. The Cretan warships in the 

 Mediterranean are the earliest on record, which makes Crete the world's first great Western sea 

 power. As seafarers, they certainly would have been familiar with the vagaries of wind, tide, 

 currents and ocean depth known to their age. This perhaps is sufficient justification for 

 recognizing the Cretans as the first practicing oceanographers (although hydrographers would be a 

 more appropriate title). Leaving the island of Crete and traveling ahead in time approximately 

 4,000 years to the British colonies in North America, interestingly, the credit for the earliest 

 recorded American oceanographic work belongs to the man who has been called "the first civilized 

 American", Benjamin Franklin. 



When Franklin was Postmaster General of the Colonies, complaints were raised that the mail 

 packets coming from England took two weeks longer to make the westward crossing than did the 

 Nantucket whalers. Taking the problem to Timothy Folger, a cousin and a Nantucket sea captain, 

 Franklin discovered that the whalers had learned to use the Gulf Stream currents to their 

 advantage. Folger further advised that the whalers ". . . in crossing it have sometimes met and 

 spoke with those packets who were in the middle of and stemming it. We have informed them that 

 they were stemming a current that was against them to the value of three miles an hour and 

 advised them to cross it, but they were too wise to be counseled by simple American fishermen." 

 Franklin had Folger mark out the Gulf Stream current which was then engraved on an old chart of 

 the Atlantic. In 1769 Franklin sent the chart to Falmouth, England for the captains of the 

 packets, "who slighted it, however." The chart was subsequently published after the American 

 Revolution in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (1786) but was combined in 

 one plate with another chart illustrating a paper by John Gilpin on the "Annual Migrations of the 

 Herring." 



Following the outbreak of the American Revolution, the American merchant marine entered 

 its "golden age" led by the mariners and ships from Salem. The boom came from privateering 

 during the Revolution when Salem ships captured over 400 vessels. With great success these Salem 

 ships engaged in commerce to distant ports, beyond the Cape of Good Hope to India and, 

 particularly, the East Indies, with pepper from Sumatra a specialty. New trade contacts were also 

 opened with ports in the Baltic and the Mediterranean Seas. Recognizing the need to collect and 

 exchange navigational information, a group of Salem ship captains formed, in 1799, the East India 

 Marine Society of Salem (their old granite headquarters building now houses the Peabody 

 Museum). 



Concurrent with this golden age, the fledgling Navy, mainly through the efforts of 

 enterprising individuals, was beginning to make its first entrance into oceanography. (The word 

 "oceanography" actually doesn't appear in English usage until 1883. Prior to that time, the term 

 "hydrography" was commonly applied and still is in many countries.) Thomas Truxtun, who was 

 one of the first U.S. Navy captains appointed by President George Washington in 1794, published, 

 in that same year, his own manual of navigation. During the Revolution, Truxtun was a privateer 

 bringing supplies from France and the West Indies to America. Following the war he engaged in 

 the China trade. He was an early proponent of thermometrical navigation and collected data on sea 

 surface temperatures and other oceanographic variables. His manual of navigation is considered 

 one of the most productive works of the 18th century. Truxtun's place in history was established 

 by his military prowess, particularly as the first commanding officer of the frigate Constellation, 

 rather than his scientific endeavors. An interesting footnote about Truxtun's involvement with the 

 China trade concerns the prosaic sea-letter granted him by the Continental Congress in 1776. 

 Truxtun, commanding the ship Canton which was to be the first vessel from Philadelphia to visit 

 the Orient, received the following sea-letter prescribing the conduct of his mission: 



