"Tracks in the Sea captures a rich yet little-known chapter in the history of seafaring - the mapping of the oceans by Matthew Fontaine Maury, the father of modern navigation and ocean science.".
"Voyages in the early 1800s were risky endeavors. Navigation was uncertain. Chronometers were a new technology, and only a few navy ships and wealthy merchant vessels carried them. And route planning was a hit-or-miss affair. Knowledge of prevailing winds and currents had advanced little since Columbus. What lore existed was mostly anecdotal. There were no "highways" on the seas, and hundreds of ships were lost each year. The cost in property and lives was enormous.".
"Maury changed all that. In a brilliant eighteen-year effort between 1842 and 1861 - driving himself and his staff with relentless curiosity, ambition, adventurousness, and altruism - he mapped the oceans' great surface currents and wind systems and showed shipmasters how to shave weeks or months from voyages. His career coincided with the ascendance of America as a maritime power and with the culmination of the Great Age of Sail.
In a world interconnected by maritime commerce, Maury's work was critically important not just to America, but to all nations.".
"Tracks in the Sea traces the arc of Maury's remarkable life from his birth in 1806 on a hardscrabble Virginia farm, the seventh of nine children, to a navy career culminating in the superintendency of the newly created U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington. Self-taught and self-made, as passionate in his condemnation of bureaucratic incompetence as he was in his scientific explorations, Maury earned great admirers who would help his career and great enemies who would strive to sabotage it.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, he abandoned his life's work to offer his services to his native South. Though despised by Southern leaders (including Jefferson Davis), Maury contributed the pilot and track charts that played a critical role in the Confederate raiders' destruction of Union shipping."--BOOK JACKET.

Chester G. Hearn, Chester Hearn

Matthew Fontaine Maury

McGraw-Hill School Education Group

International Marine/McGraw-Hill

New York ; London: McGraw-Hill

Irwin Professional Publishing

Oracle Press

McGraw Hill

United States, United States of America

1 edition, August 15, 2003

New York, NY, 2002

New York, 2003

Includes bibliographical references (p. 249-273) and index.

Maritime navigation remained largely a matter of guesswork until well into the 19th century, and making a voyage meant following a series of all-too-often disastrous hunches. Changing that became the lifelong obsession of the brilliant, irascible geographer Matthew Fontaine Maury, whose career both aided and mirrored America's rise as a maritime power.With his controversial appointment as the first superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory in 1840, he at last found his life's work. While others built railroads across the trackless interior, Maury mapped the highways of wind and current over the previously trackless sea. In Tracks in the Sea, Chester G. Hearn uses Maury's career as a window on the 19th century, including the brief but glorious clipper-ship era of the 1850s, the rise of steam and steel, the Civil War and the destruction of the U.S. merchant fleet, and the points of intersection with some of the most colorful and influential people of the time, including presidents, congressmen, military leaders, scientists, explorers, merchants, and writers.

<p>Navigation at sea was a matter of guesswork until well into the 19th century. Changing that became the obsession of Matthew Fontaine Maury. While others built railroads, Maury mapped highways of wind and current over the seas. Hearn uses Maury's career as a window on America's maritime development in the 19th century, including the clipper-ship era of the 1850s, the rise of steam and steel, and the Civil War.</p>

Voyages in the early 1800s were risky endeavours. Navigation was uncertain. Chronometers were a new technology. This work captures a chapter in the history of seafaring - the mapping of the ocean by Matthew Fontaine Maury, the father of modern navigation and ocean science.

IN 1492, Christopher Columbus commanded three caravels across the uncharted Atlantic from Spain to the Bahamas.

288 pages : 23 cm
Originally published: 2002

2023-06-28