This is Preble Hall. Welcome to Preble Hall, a podcast about naval history from the United States Naval Academy museum and Annapolis.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Preble Hall. I'm Abby Mullen. Today we're talking about naval science with historian Jason Smith. We're going to talk about hydrography what it is and why we should care about it, and about how we should think about people who are complicated. I think we can all relate to that. So here we go. Welcome to Preble Hall, would you please introduce yourself?
Yeah, thanks, Abby. I'm Jason Smith. I'm a newly promoted associate professor at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, Connecticut. I'm a naval and maritime historian, who also dabbles in environmental history, cultural history, history of American imperialism. I did spend two wonderful years as the class of 1957 postdoctoral fellow in naval history at the US Naval Academy, where I taught a number of sections of their introductory course in US naval history. I've also had a number of grants and fellowships from the Navy, including from the the Navy's naval history and heritage command, and also from the Naval War College. So the Navy has certainly done done more than its share in helping to advance my career and to promote my work, which I'm, of course very grateful for.
And so today, I want to talk mostly about things that you have written in your book. So can you tell us the name of your book?
Sure. The name of the book is To Master the Boundless Sea. And the subtitle is "The US Navy, the Marine Environment and the Cartography of Empire," published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2018.
Awesome. So I want to start with a story from your book, where you talk about the SS San Francisco, and the tragedy that befell it, so would you mind telling us about the SS San Francisco?
Sure, the steamer San Francisco, was on its maiden voyage from New York City bound to San Francisco in late 1853, when an encounter in North Atlantic Gale, which overwhelmed the vessel, some two to 300, I believe of its of its passengers were ultimately killed, destroyed, the ship took out its power. The ship sort of drifted for several weeks while rescue attempts were being made to try to save as many of the crew and passengers as possible before the vessel finally sank with I think 200 people dead. It was a vessel that was designed to speedily carry passengers gold miners from the dismiss the western side of the isthmus, in Central America, up to San Francisco in an era of Manifest Destiny, when Americans were moving westward when California was the destination, and when American visions were moving solidly into the Pacific, the ship was built for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, of course, never made it there. But ultimately, the ship drifts, sort of founders into 1854. That's a maritime disaster that's sort of unfolding as various vessels try or encounter it try to save passengers, but ultimately, the seas are too heavy. And there's a lot of challenges to saving everyone aboard of these vessels are returning to the east coast and reporting that there's this foundering steamer out there 300 miles from Sandy Hook. And so an AVI, the Secretary of the Navy summons Matthew Fontaine Maury, who is the superintendent of the hydrographic office and the Naval Observatory located in Washington. And he's been participating in a system of, of environmental data gathering about ocean winds and currents and temperature, all kinds of gathering of scientific data on all aspects of the marine environment. And he's been producing these wind and current charts. From his data gathering, his staff at the observatory has been compiling all this data that's been recorded and reported to the the observatory in Washington from mariners around the world who are participating in mores system. And he's coming to a much more accurate, much more comprehensive view of the way that ocean winds and currents in particular work. And you know, in an age, it's still a predominantly of sail powered maritime activities. And so, of course, the San Francisco is a steamer but it's without its without the use of its engine. So it's sort of at the mercy of the currents and the winds as this as the storm is churning through the North Atlantic. And so the Secretary of the Navy summons Maury, because he has this reputation for scientific precision and knowing more than anybody else about the forces that would be working on San Francisco as it drifted. So he sort of takes a look at his his charts and comes up with a prediction as to where the San Francisco would drift or or two points between which the San Francisco would likely have drifted. And since two, through the Secretary of the Navy, since two revenue cutters out to those points, ultimately, the sad end of the story as the San Francisco sank before those vessels could get to the site. But the last known observation of the last known sighting of the ship was, according to Maury, at least a mere few miles from one of the points that he had indicated. And he used this was the things that's interesting most interesting to me is not just the built in drama of that story. And it's sort of a nice lead into what Maury was doing in the 1850s. But he uses that story in his written works is that he produced this continually revised text to accompany the wind in current charts, which were known as the sailing directions. And then in 1855, he published his most important book from all of this research that he had been doing. It's called the physical geography of the sea. And in both of those texts, he uses the story of the San Francisco I think, to kind of stake a claim to his scientific authority, and just how precise his work was, as he's trying to make arguments to the maritime community, to the scientific community to the general public about what can be understood about the marine environment and the way its natural forces worked. That story was really convenient for him and he liked to, you know, in an era when Americans I think were enthralled with disaster, steamboat explosions and railroad locomotive steam boiler explosions, you know, shipwrecks were in the 19th century, is a source of tremendous literary fascination. And so Mari is sort of this interesting author who's writing both scientific treatises but also filled with the sort of lyricism and and literary qualities of some of the best see writing in mid 19th century America. And in fact, writers like Melville are relying on Maury for some for what he's writing about the ocean when they're conceiving of their kind of fictionalized maritime world. And so one of the interesting things is that he's, you know, he's, he's using the sort of natural drama and a lyrical way and also making these authoritative scientific arguments as well. But it makes for a compelling story. And I think it got him some cachet among mariners in the scientific community and the general public towards greater appreciation of his work acceptance of his work, and was locked in a, in a fairly contentious battle with civilian scientists in Washington, particularly Joseph Henry at the Smithsonian, and others for for funding from the federal government for scientific research. And so he was really adept at using these kinds of stories and the lyricism of his Pam, to be able to garner public attention.
So we're gonna come back to Maury, don't worry, but I wonder if you could first tell us what is hydrography?
hydrography is the study of ocean winds and currents and atmospheric conditions. It is an applied science and practical science primarily for navigational purposes. Within the Navy, you don't hear much about that term anymore, although it was much more pervasive in the 19th century. And it's sort of been sort of adopted into a much broader scientific study of the ocean that we now call oceanography. And in many ways, many oceanographers have looked back to Maury not without a great deal of criticism, but but sort of stubbornly seeing him in some ways as the Father, the father of modern oceanography, and that he was really taking this Applied Science of hydrography. That was primarily for navigational purposes, and beginning to derive larger theoretical conclusions about the workings of winds and currents and such. That was indicative of this evolution and the growing professionalization of science in the mid to late 19th century. Of course, Maury was not necessarily seen as a comfortable figure in that evolution because he was a naval officer. He was not an academically trained scientist. And he was going up, as I said, against some of the major civilian scientific leaders in the United States some authoritative figures in charge of the federal government's national Observatory, which garnered him up a lot of jealousy among the scientific elite in the United States. And so he was not he didn't sit altogether comfortably in this professionalization of science as it was moving away from more self trained kind of practitioners towards more academically trained, asking more theoretical questions, and indeed more he was, in fact wrong about a number of stuff his theoretical conclusions that he offers in the physical geography of the sea. So anyway, hydrography is a practical and Applied Sciences, it's it's absolutely essential to the navigation of merchant vessel whaleship of warship, at sea, particularly in the age of sail, right? When winds and currents are vital to the voyage, the successful and efficient and quick conclusion of the voyage under sail may be less important in some ways, as steam eclipses sail as a motive power in the mid to late 19th century. But nevertheless, you know, as we know, even in the 20th and 21st centuries, ships still collide with with the ocean floor and with the coastline, sometimes, you know, to pretty detrimental consequences environmentally, militarily and strategically. So, of course, hydrography is still fundamental to what sailors of any of any stripe do,
or the Suez Canal, as the case may be. So, um, Maury is sort of the big name, I guess, in this 19th century practice or development of hydrography. But he's not the first one who is interested in these questions. So can you back us up a little bit to where the Navy perhaps first starts getting interested in these questions, or first realizes that they should be interested in them?
Well, I mean, interest in the, you know, sounding the ocean floor goes back millennia, it goes back to the ancient Mediterranean, you know, as long as people have have taken to ships or boats of any kind, and gone out to sea, you know, they're interested in the hydrography of the coastline in the ocean floor. You know, as any navigational treatise will tell you in the 19th century. You know, the most dangerous part of the voyage is the part where you're leaving port and the port part where you're coming back to another port. Just because the hydrography and those harbors and bays and coastlines are so labyrinthine, and dangerous and, and in so many cases, in some cases, constantly evolving and changing because of the dynamics of the marine environment. But in terms of the US Navy, there are precedents from the Continental Navy of the revolution. some work done when by by continental navy vessels taking Benjamin Franklin to France, for example, during the Revolution, the sounding of the Gulf Stream, and inquiries into into the science of the sea and that era. But in terms of the modern US Navy after it's founded in the 1790s. The institutionalization of hydrography really happens in the 1830s with the founding of the depot of charts and instruments, which was a precursor to the Naval Observatory and hydrographic office. And basically it existed in Washington DC as well basically as a storehouse for charts, as the Navy was making them acquiring them. In many cases, the Navy acquired its charts from people like Nathaniel Bowditch, and Edmund March blunt, who were you know, who were instrumental in New England in the New England maritime community in producing and collecting navigational data. So some of these charts were produced by naval officers themselves on their voyages. Some of them were acquired, or many of them were acquired from private producers of charts and navigational manuals and treatises. And these were collected in Washington by the 1830s in the naval depot of charts and instruments, also the storehouse for sextons. And chronometer is which needed to be constantly there for delicate instruments for establishing longitude needed to be stored very delicately, and needed to be constantly checked and, and reconfigured to make sure that they were precise. So that that was that those are the real institutional origins. And the origins of the depot really had a primary focus on astronomy. The depot had a small observatory for some time, it was housed in Charles Wilkes, his own washington dc home he, he got some money to build an observatory on top of his home in Washington. This is before the the Naval Observatory was built in the 1840s. And so his primary job was astronomy over hydrography, although of course, the two were intimately related, but in the 1840s with the actual construction and establishment of the Naval Observatory, one of the great institutions of science in the world at that time, Mari, in particular, when he takes command in 1842, begins to move the the institution, well, he wouldn't he would have qualms with this argument, but his critics certainly suggested that he was less interested in astronomy than he was in hydrography. And I think there's an argument to be made there, although he certainly didn't neglect astronomy, and we see From from the early point, this sort of work as as science professionalize is the work of hydrography. And the work of astronomy continued to sort of move apart professionally, although, of course, they're interrelated. And they always are in navigation. But we we do see a divergence, I think, in Mario's leadership of the observatory. And for people like Joseph Henry at the Smithsonian, later on Spencer Baird, and others base at the coast survey, these people who were tremendously interested in astronomy, looked at Mari his command of the observatory, and so he had this world class Observatory, and here he was, he seemed to be privileged hydrography, maybe at the expense of astronomy.
One of the things that you write in your book is that this, this process of charting the seas of mapping, the oceans, currents, and all that stuff is intimately linked to imperialism. And for myself, one of the places that I see this most strongly is in the explorations of the United States exploring expedition. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how the Navy envisions the purpose of creating these charts, not necessarily exclusively in connection to the US xx but thinking about how, what the goal is for collecting all of this data?
Well, I mean, primarily throughout the 19th century, it is for as I said, primarily for navigational purposes, and particularly as as a as an aid for the American Merchant Marine and wellfleet as it expands in the 1840s 1850s, to be a really a very significant part of the American economy, and a real the vanguard of American expansionism across the ocean, you know, I really, it's really commercial purposes, it's seeking external markets. It's resource extraction in terms of whales, or in the case of the Fiji Islands, which I read about bass de mer, the sea slug, which is sold in China by Salem merchants out of out of ship and ship owners and masters out of Salem, Massachusetts. And so the Navy's primary role throughout the 19th century as a relatively small force, it's not anything really like the modern US Navy that we know in the 20th century. Its primary objectives are commerce, rating and time of warfare, commerce, protection and time of peace and Coast defense. And and so in in that effort to aid American commerce, American naval science really gains and important footing as the American Merchant Marine and whale fleet become really the second most powerful force and economically powerful force in the world behind Great Britain. And so, so these this is really an effort to understand the, you know, the physical geography of the ocean floor and of ports and coastlines around the world, some of which are quite remote in places like the Fiji's experienced a spike in commercial activity in the 1830s and 1840s. But it was still a really remote place from you know, Europe in from the United States. And its, you know, its harbors were not well charted. And these, you know, the Fiji's and many other Pacific Islands as the United States becomes more oriented towards the Pacific are really dangerous for American mariners to navigate ships are grounding ships are sinking cargoes are lost, human lives are lost. And so this is this is tremendously affecting in a negative way American economic growth. And so that fit nicely within the US Navy's traditional 19th century role of support for American maritime commerce. And so most of this, the surveying and shorting activity, including mores in the 1840s, and 50s, was about helping American mariners get to where they were going to trade to extract resources to find whales more safely, more quickly, more efficiently, and more cheaply. And so they were tremendous commercial motivations here. And the Navy's work, although important always existed, as I said, alongside private efforts, then in some cases, communal or community efforts, such as those that are formalized by the sailor marine society, for example, or their marine societies and many of the ports in the United States in the in the early mid 19th century that are in part about sharing, environmental and navigational knowledge. So that charts can constantly be revised. It was a very, it was a process that was fundamentally rooted in revision it was it sure creating new charts of places that were blank spaces on the map, but but it was also about updating existing charts as more information was found. As as erroneous information was erased, you might imagine, you know, thinking that you're traveling over overseas where you know, you're nowhere close to grounding. And then all of a sudden find yourself high and dry on a on a shoal. So those errors were gradually corrected. And this by the 1850s represented an international effort. It was not just a sort of private public collaborative effort by the Navy and civilian maritime societies and private chart makers like blunt and outage. But it was also an international effort as well, because some little was known about the the contours of the ocean, and even along, you know, commercially important coastlines, such as the Fiji's now, the the importance of hydrography, I think changes over time, so that by the 19th century, when the Navy undergoes this philosophical, intellectual and technological revolution, to create the modern steel and steam powered Navy that would become a world power during and after the Spanish American War in 1898. The importance of hydrography takes on new new aspects. And then they're particularly military and strategic and it becomes it becomes less about commercial presence, although that's never goes away. And then my argument in the book is that it becomes more of a strategic necessity, as the Navy is now compelled to figure out how to defend a far flung oceanic Empire from Germany and the Caribbean or from Japan, in the western Pacific. It's about knowledge of these coastlines that weren't necessary didn't have necessarily commercial value, but they had strategic value. They were really good, perhaps US naval bases, or staging areas for possible naval battle and, you know, mahogany and kind of terms. So I think the value of hydrography for the Navy evolves over the course of the 19th century, you know, generally speaking from commercial interest to strategic and imperial interest, but but we can clearly see, right that there is despite this evolution and change, there is a continuity here, right, that we're talking about different kinds of empire here. All right, that that maritime historians and naval historians have been talking for a long time now about an American commercial Empire in the antebellum era. And that's, in many ways related, but also different from the more formal territorial empire that comes about, really, with 1898. And the acquisition of Guam and the Philippines and Puerto Rico and Hawaii and other places around
the world. One of the things that really struck me in your book is the idea that naming places has a real power. And one of the things that happened with the world's expedition and then subsequent expeditions is that they go and they they chart these places, like the Fiji's, which are very difficult to charge. But one of the things they like to do is stake their claim to those places by slapping names on them. So can you talk a little bit about that process? Or what's going through somebody like Charles Wilkes his mind if you can get into the Mind of Charles Wilks which I know is challenging as they're going as they're doing this work?
Turns out, it's really even challenging to get into his journals because they're so poorly written. Oh, illegible. I mean, to say nothing of his mind, you can't even get into his writing. It's, it's can be a maddening experience. But yeah, I mean, I, you know, I find this act of naming places to be really powerful. This is not my idea, by any means. I'm relying on a lot of, of historiography and literature in the history of cartography, those historians of cartography have been talking about the power of naming places, primarily on land, right? Because the history of cartography and maybe not surprisingly, is dominated by terrestrial maps, and less so by sea charts. And so one of the things that I wanted to think about was, you know, in what ways does some of those methods in those debates in the historiography of cartography, how do they apply if at all, to to hydrographic charts? You know, it turns out that I think naming is really a powerful prerogative of the surveyor and cartographer at sea. And we're, it turns out back in Washington, as Mario is compiling these charts, these charts are not just not just glomer Asians of data, they're not just quantifiable. They are that and the depth soundings and they carry that scientific authority with them, but they also carry with narratives that are embedded in the names in even the sort of visual representations of these charts. One of the interesting things that Mari does is really reconceptualize is how to represent the natural phenomenon. The ocean in his wind and current charts. But But naming is tremendously important. It is a nationalistic in my view. And in many historians of cartographies view, that's a nationalistic exercise. And expeditions like the US exploring expedition from 1838 to 1842 were they're not just scientific, they're not just naval, but they're tremendously nationalistic and Wilks to talk about wilts very much sees his work as sort of part nationalistic rivalry, particularly with the British who are in the Pacific at the same time, who are along with the end of the French as well, along with the Americans down in the polar seas, trying to discern whether there's a new continent that people suspect is there, but nobody really has proven landmass of continental proportion. And so the process of naming becomes, I think, a nationalistic, perhaps even an imperialistic activity. It says, you know, let's replace first of all these indigenous names with American names, they might be, you know, commonly the names of the officers and the surveyors and the chart makers. Sometimes they named islands or bays or coastlines after their ships, sometimes they named them after their girlfriends, you know, and so it fills the sea after a large cartographic effort, like the US xx fills the Pacific Ocean with American names. And that's not inconsequential, I don't think. Right? And many of those names of course, don't ever last, right? That iterative process of revising charts in this international effort means that names are always being obscured and erased and new ones to replace them. But some of those names stick, of course, perhaps none more so than Wilks land, which is the 1500 miles of coastline that the US xx surveys in Antarctica. I mean, what better way to stake a claim to the Americans discovery of Antarctica, especially as it's contested by the British in particular, the French also I saying, we didn't just see it, we named it and it's there on the map. And it's and it's got my name, the leader of the American expedition on it.
I do feel like he won. He won that one. Wilkes Did you know, there's so much contestation about that moment of discovery in Antarctica, but even today in 2021? Yeah, the other few people have like a tiny little thing. And Antarctica named after him. And Wilkes has got this huge swath of the Antarctic coast. I feel like he won that one.
Yeah, I think mostly claim victory on that one from the 21st century. But that was by no means a foregone conclusion, you know, when the expedition returned in the 1840s. And, you know, James Clark Ross, and others were saying, Well, I know, I didn't, you know, and and these were these were polar explorers. In the European case, you know, who had real bona fides, you know, they, you know, they, they had the experience, the Americans were newcomers, largely. And, you know, they went down to the Antarctic, they played this up very much themselves, you know, without any kind of like winter gear, you know, that the British had reinforced the bowels of their ships to collide with the ice and the Americans were like, you know, we're not gonna do that. We're just gonna go and see what happens. You know, and to their credit, they did it successfully, although not without near disaster and a number of cases. But they made it and so yeah, I mean, they were constantly working under this inferiority complex against the British, right. They both love the British model, right, and wanted to be the next James Cook. But they were also in this nationalistic rivalry with the Europeans as well and wanting to best them. And so, yeah, I mean, I think from the 21st century point of view, yeah. Wilkes won that fight. And his his his exploration, and claims have been vindicated by subsequent efforts to explore explorations. But that was by no means the case in the in the 1840s, or even into the mid 19th century. That was still very much up for debate. Even the Wilks tribe as best as he could to stake those claims, you know, through the prerogative of naming through the charts themselves. As soon as he gets back to Australia, when he returns from that second Antarctic voyage, he immediately leaves a chart with that with the Antarctic continent and his name on it, the expeditions name on it for Ross to consult when he gets back to Sydney. Just just you know, leaving this for you, so for you to consult, so that becomes the basis for those claims and names are a part of that when disaster befalls the expedition in Fiji and two American officers are killed at the hands of Fijians. The Americans leave kind of chasing after that, then survey was not entirely successful. But the the the place where the the killings happened was known as murders Bay on the chart, the place where the bodies were laid to rest was named after the men who died, you know. So there's a kind of memorialization there that the islands themselves become memorials and monuments Those names don't don't stick. But on the chart, they're there. And it becomes a way of remembering what happened. It becomes a way of, of mapping the kind of wilderness that many Americans thought the Fiji's were in the 1840s. And, you know, we can talk about the Americans charting a Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest after that, in the ways in which in the in the boundary diplomatic boundary discussions between the United States and Great Britain in the 1840s, the ways in which the Americans charts and maps of that area were helpful in staking a diplomatic claim to the Oregon country, the boundary between British Columbia and what would become Washington State. So that these names I think, are really important, and they tell stories. And they help, they help to remember what happened there they serve as they serve as signposts for the Mariners who would use those charts to follow in the expedition's week. So I think that, to me, it's fascinating. And I think it's a really useful way of thinking about scientific authority and power as a as an instrument of Empire, in this in this era.
So even though these charts are, in a lot of ways, little history books themselves, they tell us what people were thinking about when they were doing the charting, right. But there's also a sense in which these charts sometimes work against the goal that they're going for. And the chart that comes to mind is the I think it's a Mori chart, where he like draws out the little whales on it. And they're like, color coded to tell you where the whales are. And that strikes me as a very terrestrial way, in some ways of thinking about land, because whales move right. So is there a moment? Or is there a sense in which the the reification of these boundaries between land and sea, or about where the natural resources are in the sea becomes problematic for people who are trying to use these charts?
Yeah, I mean, I think so you're you're right, that you're, you know, we're traditional, basically, imposing terrestrial cartographic conventions, right, on an environment that's very different from terrestrial environments. And is dynamic is full of I mean, how do you how do you chart moving water shifting coastlines to say nothing of the migrations of whales and other secret seals and other sea creatures that are commodified by American economic activity? So yeah, I mean, I think part of the story here is that cartography at sea is, is always a kind of exercise in futility in some ways that, as I said, the Americans left the Fiji's, you know, pretty chasten, not just by the Fijians who contested American power in those islands and scientific authority and knowledge in those islands, but also by the marine environment itself. And here, I'm you know, I'm drawing on a long history, geography and methods from environmental history that try to see agency in the environment itself. And so that, you know, the truth is that the sea was always undermining scientific authority, trying to trying to measure precise angles, while the while the boat is pitching and rolling. Makes makes scientific precision and accuracy awfully difficult. And so the reality is that the chart looks like it's presenting a static environment. And looks like it's, it's it's sort of it sort of fools you with its quantitative soundings, the depth measurements and the, the linearity of the survey, the triangulations and such. But the reality is that, you know, on the water, it's a lot more complicated and always changing. And so I think these charts suggest a degree of precision, that often is not the case and works against the very authority that the charts are trying to claim. So that it's not as if Americans don't shipwreck in the Fiji's with a much more accurate, of course, the chart is much more accurate than it had been before. But you know, ships are still running aground. And so yeah, I mean, you look at Mario's whale chart series F of his wind and current charts, which was aimed primarily at directly at helping the American whale fishery find whales as whale populations are declining because of overfishing and whale grounds. I mean, to your point about whales moving Yes, that's true whales are migrating and they're always moving. It is also true that that there are whaling grounds where whales feed and breed, where they can be found in great numbers with great regularity and with some, you know, with some predictability, but nevertheless, those numbers are always changing, particularly as as overfishing decimates sperm and Right Whale populations. In the 1850s, and into the post Civil War era, and more, he also found you know that in his efforts to try to win over the American Merchant Marine to his charts to move them away from more folkloric understandings about how the marine environment worked, and from their own sort of intrinsic passed down knowledge through experience, moving them away from that kind of knowledge system to a more professionalized, institutionalized scientific, knowledge based system that was that was working out of his Observatory, and in his name and the name of the Navy, he had convinced some mariners too much so that you know that he would he would, he would indicate he keep, they had tremendous frustration, from indicating what the best routes were in any time of the year to get to Rio de Janeiro, for example, that that route would change across the year, according to the seasons, according to changes in wind and current ocean temperatures and things. But the mariner would, he found that many mariners sent him nasty letters saying, well, I tried to route and, you know, I know that it works in some cases. But in this case, it didn't really work. This correspondence shows tremendous frustration at the fact that those lines were on the chart, were never supposed to be hard and fast, they were only supposed to be suggestive. And if you perhaps came across a headwind where you weren't supposed to find one at the time, his chart indicated, then you were supposed to, you know, you were supposed to have some sort of flexibility and changing your route. And he never claimed to complete scientific authority or that the natural world existed always in the ways that he suggested. So it was a tough battle for him to fight because he needed he was very much interested in conjuring this marine environment that could be rationalized and predicted. But at the same time, that just fundamentally wasn't the way the natural world worked. And so yes, these charts in many different kinds of contexts, portray or exemplify or suggest the kind of accuracy and precision that really wasn't the reality on the water itself.
So speaking of that, can you actually explain how the process of making one of these charts happens? You mentioned triangulation and the movement of the sea. So what are they actually doing to draw these lines on the map?
Yeah, it's a it's a long and arduous process, you know, and it stays relatively similar through the entire basically century that I write about, despite tremendous technological changes in the maritime world. The ways that the triangulation surveys, the trigonometric surveys were working. In the surveys, the strategic surveys of places like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or Subic Bay and lazada. In the Philippines after the Spanish American War, were very similar to the methods that will be used in the Fiji's in 1840. Sure, they were using steam launches instead of or driven or sail driven small boats, but the the actual practice remain largely the same. And that was basically to establish a baseline by astronomical observation on a fixed point on land. Because most of this hydrographic work was being done coastlines because as I said that the coastal navigation was often the most dangerous navigation and the deep sea that looked a little bit different and involved taking astronomical observations of latitude and longitude for some of these deep sea surveys when you're laying submarine telegraph cable, for example, which I talked about later in the book. But in terms of offshore or shallow water surveying, it really involved basically a sort of mothership with a bunch of small boats that would spend the day in the area around the larger vessel. a baseline as I said, would be established on lands and fixed points through this knowing the speed of sound by the shot of a cannon fire, the distance from that that baseline or those six points was established. And then and then through observation via sextants of various angles on those fixed points, a triangle could be established and it could be checked with mathematical precision, based on knowing the angle to the angles and and then the the survey proceeded in a series of triangulation so that the land could be fixed in person with precision could be sketched in with precision on a draft board or a draft chart. And then the men would not only take the observations and the angles, but then they would also drop a lead line, a measured waited line over the side of the boat, wait until it hit the bottom, took the measurement and then moved on to the next one. So that some of these some of these surveys are made up of 10s of 1000s of individual soundings in fathoms in shallow waters and this process will be repeated over and over and over again all day long under the hot sun, you know, the washing see is of these many cases tropical places. So you can imagine that this is really difficult work. These guys, you know emerge at the end of the day, tired mentally exhausted, mosquito bitten sunburned a full of salt, then then it would repeat it the next day. So this was not glorious or romanticized work in any way. It was difficult work. It was work that, you know, was very much beloved by men who thought themselves explorers and scientists who believe deeply in empiricism believe deeply in quantification, as I said, with Mari, you know, believe that the natural world could be rationalized. And so so those those depth soundings, the draft chart was taken aboard the ship at the end of the day, the air you know, the new area surveyed was filled in on the on the sort of centralized chart that they were working with. And then that's how the survey would fill in this space. So that when those draft charts were returned to Washington to the Observatory, or the hydrographic office, the institutional work of the Navy would begin to take those draft charts, working with lithographers to produce the professionalized charts that then are disseminated to naval vessels and merchant vessels and even an international right in mores system. If you if you're, you know, you're a Russian Mariner, then you're contributing your data to his system, you get free his wind and current charts the most up to date series. And so it's really an international effort and it moves from you know, the South Sea to Washington involves technologies like lithography printing technologies, that Mari and trying to portray all of these dynamics of the marine environment is pushing the, the print instruments to their, to their, their, their utmost to be able to represent all the stuff and all of the colors and shadings that he wants. He writes a lot of nasty letters to frustrated letters to lithographers saying, No, you're not giving me exactly what I want. This is, you know, your your lithography can't, can't handle what I want it to. And then very quickly, when it comes to deep sea serving later in the 19th century, of course,
all sorts of challenges there and the Navy pioneers through the work of, of john Mercer Brooke, one of Mary's associates in the antebellum era, and then later in the 19th century through Charles 60s work as a hydrographer seems to be better known as the captain of the USS Maine that exploded in Havana in 1898. But before that, he had been the head of the hydrographic office and had pioneered a new, newly designed deep sea sounder that was a basically, a machine that that worked on the on the mid ships on the side of a vessel would drop a weighted measurement sometimes in Brooks case of literally a cannonball to the bottom of the ocean floor. Six B had designed it with certain tensioners. So that one of the problems with this machine was when it got very deep depths, subsurface currents would would take the would not take it at a right angle with the sea floor, but would take it sort of laterally. And so you you know you think you're in a much deeper sea than you are, but seems to be pioneered a number of innovations that would allow for a more accurate, deep sea sounding when the Navy's interested in doing things like connecting its Imperial possessions with a submarine telegraph cable, for example.
You mentioned that this is an international effort, at least in mauris era. But I can imagine that as the Navy's interest in hydrography becomes more strategic, these charts become more proprietary. Is there a sense that as they map Guantanamo Bay or as their mapping parts of the Philippines, that information becomes something that the Navy wants to hold on to for strategic purposes?
Yeah, yeah, certainly. I mean, the Navy is, is producing commercial charts that are distributed, you know, around the world, and shared because the part because the Americans, mariners want to benefit from other international efforts to chart and bring greater precision to navigate, you know, commercially important coastlines and harbors and seas and such. But you're right that that there is a distinction increasingly made by the late 19th century when the Navy is, is surveying some of these new strategically important places like the windward passage between Cuba and Puerto Rico, which sort of guards the approaches to what what at that time was proposed. Still, it wasn't an existence but a proposed canal. The Americans wanted to control the sea approaches to that canal and didn't want the Germans or anyone else to be in control of those areas. And so looking for harbors that were large enough for a battleship fleet that had multiple sources of ingress and egress If so, if some, you know, an enemy fleet was coming in, in one channel, that that The your fleet could escape out another looking for a sort of depth and the approaches to any harbor that could be easily mined for defense whose topographical features could easily boast artillery for coastal defense. These sorts of places up completely apart from their commercial viability were important now for strategic reasons. And so the Navy goes to work after the Spanish American War, after what had been really a failure of hydrography, the Navy and steaming into Manila Bay and the Philippines but really mostly in its blockade operations around Cuba during the Spanish American War, in which there was a lot of literal operations that that often get obscured by the that the naval battles that we know more about and celebrate the Battle of Manila Bay, Santiago, at the end of the war, with the Navy is doing in between is establishing a blockade of Cuba later in Puerto Rico. And there, they've got shallow draft naval vessels who are working in shallow waters that have not been well charted, and they're relying on Spanish charts that are tremendously inaccurate. In fact, a naval officer named royal Bradford who's the chief of the Bureau of equipment, the administrative head of what is the hydrographic office as a subsidiary institution underneath that bureau remarks that, you know, he's got this suspicion that the Spanish are actually making errors on their charts so that with the Americans use them to try to, to to take, you know, a port on on the coast of Cuba, that they're going to run aground. Now, that's not true. As far as I can tell, you know, it's just that those charts were there. They're bad charts. But the Americans go to work in the years after the Spanish American War, and a really an unprecedented effort to try to chart these places more accurately. And yes, to your original question, there is a there is a debate about keeping these these charts secret, because of their strategic value. And so those charts are not disseminated to the international community, you don't want to, you know, you don't want to give the Germans or the Japanese, you know, a really accurate chart of the approaches of your naval base. That That makes sense. But it but it is indicative of again, this changing value of hydrography less now for commercial purposes, at least as far as the Navy is concerned, and more for strategic their their strategic value.
So this book was your dissertation, right? It started out as your dissertation. Yes. So when you were in the weeds, writing your dissertation, what part of this topic kept you going? Why did you keep coming back?
I think there were a lot of interesting stories to tell. You know, I like the challenge of taking you asked the question, why is hydro what is hydro hydrography? Or why does the geography matter? I think that there's an answer to that, that I think is compelling that my book tries to make, but it but it's not immediately discernible. I think to a lot of people why hydrography matters all that much other than, you know, yeah, you need you need a chart to get you where you want to go. But of course, it's much more complicated than that, I think, and especially important than that. And so I was continually inspired by the sense that I was taking a subject that you would look at on, you know, you might look at in the title of a conference paper or something, and you say, Oh, hydrography, I don't want to, you know, your eyes sort of glaze over. But then, you know, presenting it in a way that that helps people think maybe newly about its historical significance. I was, you know, refreshed and enthusiastic about that prospect, have always been fascinated with the natural world and the environment. And it was something that I think naval and maritime historians have not really, or at least history of graphically until quite recently have not really reckoned with. And it seemed like such a fundamental relationship to me, right, the relationship between people, ships, and the ocean. But that relation, the sets of relationships had not really been interrogated historic historically, or history graphically. And so it turned out that, you know, charts and surveying was the way that I would get at under understanding that relationship a little bit better. And so, you know, I saw this as a different way to look at a familiar story, right. I mean, there's a lot you know, the the whelks expedition Maariv, and the Spanish American War, you know, that naval and maritime historians are pretty well aware of, but but it existed in you know, in sort of, in spotty ways that biography here, you know, the history of a expedition there, there's virtually been nothing about hydrography and American Empire at the end of the 19th century, in the early 20th century, nothing had been written on it. And so I saw some real avenues for contributing to an increased awareness and bringing some of this disparate stuff together in a more a little bit more of a synthetic way. Although my book is very episodic, it's not a comprehensive history of hydrography and the US Navy by any means. You know, as I think many historians who have looked at the the US xx have realized it's a very rich story and a rich source or set of sources, the narratives are can be very compelling. As I said, you know, in reading Mari, or reading, not Wilkes so much, but his officers, you know, there's a lyrical quality to their writing, that's very much a part of the literary tradition of see fiction and nonfiction in 19th century America, even the ham, you know, not always the easiest to get through. But some of some of his conceptualizations are very lyrical, you know, this, this notion of sea power, right, or commanded the sea to drive an enemy's flag from the sea, you know, those phrases really conjure a certain lexicographical Is that even a word as sort of power and authority. And, and so it's those writings that really, that really kept me going and kept me interested in the richness of the kind of textual descriptions that they were offering right words, words matter, to the cultural historian and just the way that these naval officers frame the sea, was really compelling to me and kept me kept returning me to that, that original question of well, what is the Navy's historical relationship to the ocean? I'm not going to say that I was continually inspired every day. But, but that was enough to keep me going.
That deadline. So we started by talking about the San Francisco and Matthew mores use of this story. And as we've gotten more distance from mores, actual life, there are parts of his life that have become problematic, particularly his acceptance of the Confederacy and his strongly pro slavery views. So how can we, as we finished up here, how can we situate Mori? In today's understanding of how we think about historical figures?
Well, you know, I mean, we've got to contextualize them. And we have to understand the whole breadth of his work, when it comes to commemorating Mari as he had been, has had been done really from, you know, the the emergence of the last cause in the late 19th century through the 20th century and into the 21st century, commemoration of him largely rested on his scientific contributions. Father of Oceanography, the Pathfinder Of The Seas was probably one of the attributes that was often associated with him, it was it was part of his monument on monument Avenue in Richmond, which was as of last summer dismantled. And so, you know, often commemoration of him is one dimensional and one sided, it's not untrue. It's not an historical, it's just not the entire picture. And so, you know, I think when we think about Mari, and we think about complicated figures, as, as all human beings are, whether they should be remembered or forgotten. You know, I think what historians do and should continue to do is complexify these individuals and say, let's, this is the full story. And, you know, the, the challenge is that it's really hard to offer that nuance and that complexity and a monument or Memorial, I think, by nature, those kinds of remembrances. They tend to be so powerful because they are so one dimensional. If you look at a monument of a great man on a horse, it shouldn't, it shouldn't be any question to you. It's not like you're standing in an art museum contemplating the meaning of, you know, some great work of modernist art monuments are I mean, there are exceptions. Certainly, there are many monuments for sure that that are meant to cut for you to contemplate or to to derive opinions or arguments of your own from the from the the obscurity or ambiguity of the memorial. But American war memorials are a different kind of subset of memorials. Right. And I think most memorials don't don't peddle an ambiguity or complexity, all that well. So some sort of contextualization, I think is I've been thinking about this for a long time, as have many historians, some sort of contextualization needs to happen, whether that's the dismantling of a monument and the replacing of it somewhere else, or the addition of a kind of counter narrative or a more comprehensive narrative that tells the whole story that's next to the monument, or, or, or contextual peace talks about the origins of the monument itself and the interests of the people who created and design that monument. As a historian. I think all of that is necessary and you know, I The firm belief that, you know that that our history is best discussed in the classroom, and in books, and then to your work and did in sophisticated digital forms, you know that that can get to those nuances and complexities. And so as a form of history, I don't think memorials and monuments. I don't think they do all that well, in that regard. So I'm in favor of a more of a more of a classroom based, right, or long form based kind of discussion about these monuments that doesn't lend itself very well to an easy, you know, just sort of blink of an eye interpretation. So, yes, tomorry, I don't think that we should take away or obscure his scientific contributions and the book itself, you know, I very much talk about how he was a really important transformational figure. He had a foot in many of these different communities, the Navy, the merchants, phillium, merchant community, the scientific community at a time where all of those communities were moving apart, and he was able somehow to straddle all of them not entirely effectively, and not without problems. But he, I think he should be recognized for that, that sort of that kind of work. And so we shouldn't obscure those achievements, but we need to put them alongside and when we think about him, if not reconcile, at least understand that that people are much more than one dimensional figures, and that Mari as as a pro slavery expansionist, and Mari has scientific pioneer, they can coexist. They can be different parts of his work, and they can also be interrelated. But that's, that's hard. That's hard to memorialize. Right. So that's, that's to do it in the classroom. That's to do it. And in a book or in some sort of digital medium that can adequately, you know, show these sort of various narratives about who these people were and what it was that they did.
And he, I definitely heard him called the father of Oceanography are the father of modern oceanography. When did he get that title or that distinction?
Well, I mean, here, here, I think I would, I would refer listeners to a great piece that just appeared in the magazine oceanography a few months ago by my colleagues, Helen Ross with ASCII, and Penelope Hardy, who are historians of science. And I've written a lot about Mari and I've talked about what we should do with Mary's legacy and how historians can talk to scientists about this. But I think my understanding, largely from their work, really is that there are sort of these two communities that come together to commemorate Mari as the father of Oceanography, one our last causers. These are pro Southern, pro Confederate sympathizers, in many cases, the children or grandchildren of Confederate leaders, in some cases, you know, Marty's own children who write or help to advise biographies written about Mari in the late 19th and early 20th century, many of which downplay they don't they don't erase, but they downplay his role as a pro slavery leader and proponent, and emphasize instead his scientific contributions as a way to memorialize him, but to sort of skirt around some of the more difficult issues of his relationship with slavery. He was not a slave holder himself. But certainly in his scientific work. He sought to expand the southern economy into places like Central and South America, and advised a number of expeditions to places like the Amazon and the 1850s. So it involves those last causers, then, and then it involves also at the same time, or perhaps just a little bit later in emerging profession of Oceanography, who had really I don't think any stake in marri's loss caused legacy, as those pro Confederate sympathizers did, but had a stake in trying to claim legitimacy for their new discipline, and looked to historical precedents like Mari to try to stake a claim to say, you know, we are a legitimate field, we can trace our lineage back to this moment. And so Mari, becomes a sort of founding father that legitimizes the field of Oceanography, within the various debates in the scientific community and the, you know, the academic and intellectual communities that oceanographers were working in in the 20th century. You know, and so, so I think that, my understanding is that those two, those two groups who sought to uplift Marty's legacy were not really related, but for matters of convenience and selfishness grabbed on to a similar narrative. Of what Marty did or what he should be remembered for. That enshrined him as the father of Oceanography and the Pathfinder of the seas and not carved into, you know, the side of a mountain, you know, along with Lee and, and Davis. Although, of course, as I said his monument until recently was on monument Avenue and along with Jeb Stuart and Stonewall Jackson and the like. But the interesting thing is, Arthur Ashe is also on that monument Avenue somewhat incongruously, I think, although he deserves a place there for sure. But if you if you if you looked at Maurice, moneymen Avenue memorial and you put it next to Jeb Stuart's, they look very different. Right, you know, you've got man on horse, clearly a very martial view of Stewart's military service. But, you know, Mari is not militarized in nearly the same way. Right? He's hermits enshrined as a scientific figure. So that, you know, I think most people, especially over last summer, they, you know, they understood Lee and his significance and what he was supposed to stand for, but when they got tomorry, you know, who is this guy? And so, it's not not readily apparent to most most Americans who it was. And so, you know, he like in life in memory, I think he he occupies this sort of ambiguity of not really being a military figure, but also being a military figure. Is he is he a scientific hero or pro slavery expansionist? it's sort of hard to pin down and that's why, you know, doing good history is really important. And that's why I think we need to sort of move away from the monument and into the, into the classroom and into the text.
Preble Hall is in no way intended to reflect the official positions of the Department of the Navy or the Naval Academy.
