RICHMOND
Richmond
WHITTET & SHEPPERSON
1915
COPYRIGHTED, 1915, BY
KATHERINE C. STILES
When I took charge of the Georgia Room, inthe Confederate Museum, in Richmond,Virginia in 1897, I found among the DeRenne collection an engraving of thepleasant, intellectual face of CommodoreMatthew Fontaine Maury, so I went to his son, ColonelRichard L. Maury, who had been with his father in allhis work here, and urged him to write the history of it,while memory, papers and books could be referred to;this carefully written, accurate paper was the result.
At one time, when Commodore Maury was very sick,he asked one of his daughters to get the Bible and readto him. She chose Psalm 8, the eighth verse of whichspeaks of "whatsoever walketh through the paths of thesea," he repeated "the paths of the sea, the paths of thesea, if God says the paths of the sea, they are there, andif I ever get out of this bed I will find them."
He did begin his deep sea soundings as soon as hewas strong enough, and found that two ridges extendedfrom the New York coast to England, so he made chartsfor ships to sail over one path to England and returnover the other.
The proceeds from the sale of this little pamphletwill be used as the beginning of a fund for the erectionof a monument to Commodore Maury in Richmond.
KATHERINE C. STILES.
Torpedoes as effective weapons in actualwar were first utilized by the Confederatenavy, and Captain Matthew F. Maury introducedthem into that service, and continuallyimproved and perfected their use untilthey had become the mighty engine of modern warfareand revolutionized the art of coast and harbour defense.He, it was, who in 1861 mined James River, who, in personcommanded the first attack with torpedoes upon theFederal fleet in Hampton Roads, and it was the developmentand improvement of this plan of defense which heldthe enemy's ships throughout the South at bay, andcaused the loss of fifty-eight of the ships, and the Secretaryof the United States Navy to report to Congress in1865 that the Confederates had destroyed with their torpedoesmore vessels than were lost from all other causescombined. Their use was soon extended from JamesRiver to the other Southern waters by eleven youngnaval officers, active and alert, who planted, directed andexploded torpedoes wherever there occurred favorableopportunity, and with a daring and coolness never surpassed;officers whose ability was abundantly shown bythe remarkable inertness of the United States Navy afterthey had left that service in response to the call of theirStates to come and help protect their invasion.
Hardly had Captain Maury arrived in Richmond thanhis active mind was directed to the problem of protectingthe Southern coasts. The South had not a singlevessel of war, and but scanty means of making, equippingor manning one; the North had all the old navyfully armed and equipped, with unlimited means for makingmore.
Penetrated as the country is by innumerable navigablewaters, and save at the entrance of a few of her largestrivers, altogether unfortified, he urged that the onlyavailable defense was to mine the channel ways with torpedoes,floating and fixed, which should be exploded bycontact or by electricity, when the enemy attempted topass. At that ti