Читать книгу Matthew Fontaine Maury, the Pathfinder of the Seas онлайн

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With some leisure at his command, Maury determined to become an author, under the encouragement of the recent appearance in the American Journal of Science and Arts of his first scientific article, “On the Navigation of Cape Horn”. This, the first fruit of his sea experience, described forcefully the dangers of the passage of Cape Horn, and gave specific information concerning the winds and the peculiar rising and falling of the barometer in those latitudes. In the same number of this journal there appeared another article describing Maury’s “Plan of an Instrument for Finding the True Lunar Distance”, the instrument in question having been invented by him. With these beginnings, he ambitiously set to work to finish a book on navigation, which he had commenced during the last part of his recent tour of sea duty. He did not expect to receive much direct profit from such a nautical book, but hoped that it might be of a collateral advantage to him in making his name known to the Navy Department and to his brother officers. As it was the first nautical work of science ever to come from the pen of an American naval officer, he expected to base a claim for promotion on the merits of the book, and had hopes of being made a lieutenant of ten years’ rank with the accompanying back pay amounting to $4,000 or $5,000.