THE 1800 s -(Cont'd) 



under the command of Lieutenant Commander W. P. McArthur, was making detailed surveys at 

 San Francisco to accommodate the frantic increase in ship traffic because of the gold rush. 

 McArther had difficulty holding his crew against the lure of the gold fields, and desertions were 

 common. On September 13, 1849, the five-man crew of the Swing's gig threw the boat officer 

 overboard and escaped with the boat. The officer. Midshipman William Gibson, was rescued in 

 critical condition, and the men were caught heading for the gold fields. As the men were naval 

 seamen and subject to Navy discipline, they were tried by court martial and convicted of "Mutiny, 

 Desertion, and running away with a boat, the property of the United States." One was convicted 

 also of "Attempt to Kill". He and another were hanged from the yard arm and the rest sentenced 

 to prison for the remainder of their enlistments. 



The first formal scientific investigations of our marine environment are credited to Navy 

 Lieutenant Matthew Fontaine Maury, who in 1842 was appointed Officer-in-Charge of the Depot 

 of Charts and Instruments, and undertook the systematic study of the ocean on a full time basis. 

 Maury gained international fame as "The Pathfinder of the Seas" and the "Founder of the Science 

 of Oceanography" for his research and scientific publications on the seas. In 1834, he published A 

 THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL TREATISE ON NAVIGATION which was later adopted as a 

 textbook in the U.S. Navy and in 1855 published what is frequently referred to as the first 

 textbook on the subject of oceanography, THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. The 

 practical benefits resulting from Maury's efforts drew the direct support of Congress, who 

 authorized the Secretary of the Navy to assign 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, Maury commenced deep ocean surveys of the North 

 Atlantic in support of a commercially sponsored plan to lay a telegraph cable between 

 Newfoundland and Ireland. Using the three U.S. Navy ships assigned, the 85-foot schooner Roger 

 B. Taney, a former revenue cutter built in 1833, the 164-foot sloop-of-war Albany (which was lost 

 at sea without a trace in late 1854), and the 88-foot brig Dolphin. 



In 1854 Maury reported to Navy Secretary James D. Dobbin that there was, at the bottom 

 of the sea between Newfoundland and Ireland, "a plateau which seems to have been placed there 

 especially for the purpose of holding wires of a submarine telegraph, and of keeping them out of 

 harm's way." The significant accomplishments resulting from this North Atlantic survey were the 

 use of the new deep-sea sounding devices, developed by Midshipman John Mercer Brooke, which 

 enabled the Dolphin to bring up "the first specimen that was ever obtained from the bottom of 

 the sea", the publication in 1854 of the first bathymetric chart of the North Atlantic, and finally 

 the laying of the first successful transatlantic cable in 1858. This cable laying effort was 

 accomplished by the 329-foot steam frigate Niagara representing the United States and the British 

 battleship Agamemnon. 



While deep ocean surveys were being conducted in the North Atlantic, the Navy's attention 

 was also being directed to the Pacific. Commodore Matthew Perry's expedition to Japan (1852 - 

 1854), although primarily a diplomatic mission, produced the first definitive study of the 

 Kuroshio, the "Gulf Stream" of the Pacific, through the efforts of Lieutenant Silas Bent. The 

 expedition consisted of the steam frigates Susquehanna (Perry's flagship) and Mississippi (built in 

 1841, she was one of the pioneer steam vessels of the Navy), the ship of the line Vermont, the 

 sloops-of-war Plymouth, Saratoga, and Vandalia. the steamers Powhatan and Alleghany, the 

 corvette Macedonia, and the storeships^Mpp/v. Southampton, and Lexington. Also assigned to the 

 expedition was the steamer Princeton but on her way down the Chesapeake, her new steam boilers 

 developed so much trouble she had to return to Norfolk Navy Yard. Commodore Perry was to 

 survey the coasts of Japan and the adjacent islands provided it could be done without interfering 



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