MAURY, MATTHEW FONTAINE Ameri can naval officer and hydrographer, was born in Spottsylvania county, Virginia. He was educated at Harpeth academy, and in 1825 entered the navy as midshipman, circumnavigating the globe in the "Vincennes" during a cruise of four years (1826-30). In 1839 he met with an accident which resulted in permanent lameness, and unfitted him for active service, and in 1841 he was placed in charge of the depot of charts and instruments, out of which grew the U.S. naval observatory and the hydrographic office. He laboured assiduously to obtain observations as to the winds and currents by distributing to captains of vessels specially prepared log-books. One result was to show the necessity for combined action on the part of maritime nations in regard to ocean meteorology. This led to an international conference at Brussels in 1853, which produced the greatest benefit to naviga tion as well as indirectly to meteorology. Maury's oceanographical work received recognition in all parts of the civilized world, and in 1855 he was given the rank of commander. On the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Maury threw in his lot with the South, and became head of coast, harbour and river defences. He invented an electric torpedo for harbour defence, and in 1862 was ordered to England to purchase torpedo material, etc. After the war he
went to Mexico, and as the imperial commissioner of immigration of the emperor Maximilian, attempted to found a Virginian colony there. Incidentally he introduced there the cultivation of cin chona. The scheme of colonization was abandoned by the emperor (1866), and Maury settled for a while in England, where he was presented with a testimonial raised by public subscriptions. In 1868 a tendency toward amnesty admitting of his return to America, he accepted the professorship of meteorology in the Virginia military institute, and settled at Lexington (Va.), where he died on Feb. 1873.
Among works published by Maury are the papers contributed by him to the Astronomical Observations of the U.S. Observatory; Letters on the American and Atlantic Slopes of South America (1853) ; Physical Geography of the Sea (1855) ; Letter concerning Lanes for Steamers crossing the Atlantic (1855) ; Physical Geography (1864) ; Manual of Geography (1871).
See Diana Fontaine Maury Corbin (his daughter), Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury (1888) and C. L. Lewis, Mathew Fontaine Maury, the Pathfinder of the Seas (1927).