"The Hall of Fame in New York City who have left giant footprints on our country's path to glory." "Robert Fulton, the notable inventor is there." "And Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, he of the singing winged words." "And Henry Clay, historic orator and statesman." "But the chances are you've never heard of Matthew Fontaine Maury a United States Naval Officer who was once branded deserter and traitor to his country." "Let's dream back to Matthew Fontaine Maury's day and ride the dark, unknown seas driven by unpredictable winds that one moment fiercely menace us the next, suddenly cease and thus imprison us for long heartbreaking weeks." "But ofttimes safely transport us to our distant destination." "The siren sea, that vast enigma whose call some men can never resist." "Of these is Matthew Fontaine Maury a country boy of Virginia fired with nautical ambition warranted a midshipman in the United States Navy in this year of our Lord, 1825." "With unflagging industry, he studies the science of the sea." "And most of all that fascinates Matt Maury are the age-old, treacherous tricks and unsolved mysteries of the trackless waters." "So in rapid chorus and with almost fabulous facility the sea-struck young Matt passes his examinations and becomes a full-fledged Naval officer at the tender age of 25." "But one day, on shore leave, to visit his family who have been so skeptic, even opposed to his chosen career fate deals a hand." "An overturned coach, only one person injured Matthew Fontaine Maury who had given up his seat in the crowded coach to a woman and hence was an easy victim riding on top when disaster came." "So now a cripple for life." "And despite all his frantic appeals for duty afloat..." ""destined to live out his once-promising career in the routine shore duty of a stuffy bureau." "And thus end your dreams, Matt Maury." "Not for you again to grip the wheel in the teeth of a howling gale with the salt spray whipping your face." "Never again in some unknown sea will you shoot the sun and scan the stars, and magic of all magic place your finger on an untracked chart and say:" ""My ship is here."" "No, books and papers are your lot now." "Books that can only drip acid into the wounds of your landlocked soul." "Logbooks of ships long since deep in Davy Jones's locker." "But take heart, Matt Maury." "These old records may at least unfurl the sails of your mind and bellow them into life with the winds of your imagination." "There's many a dream voyage ahead of you." "Recapturing the glowing surge of ocean wave by reliving these bygone voyages." "But what's this?" "Such a wind and such a current." "In that longitude and latitude." "Recorded untold years ago." "Why, that's a strange coincidence." "Only last year I took observations in the very same spot." "And I remember noting identical conditions of wind and water." "I must look into this." "Wouldn't it be odd of there were natural laws governing the ocean?" "And so Matt Maury sails on a thousand ships to 10,000 different ports..." ""studying, noting, comparing until he is the first man that ever lived who knows the way of the wind and the water." "The first man in all history to comprehend nature's system of storms and doldrums." "No guesswork this, but hitherto unknown laws of ocean behavior." "But the Naval Advisory Board scoffs at the unprecedented idea." "Still, are not these faces the same that Galileo vainly challenged?" "Is it not the old story, the traditional past fighting off the daring young future?" "Undaunted, Matt Maury prepares to conquer the skeptics by proving his facts in actual operation." "But soon realizes that private shipowners are equally hidebound." ""Chart the winds?" "Draw paths across the ocean?" "Poppycock."" "Then comes word of a skipper who has sighted a rudderless vessel fighting in the teeth of a storm out of control and helpless before the gale." "Lost at sea with all onboard by now, no doubt." "For who could hope to locate a speck of wood and canvas in all that million miles of surging water?" "Lost with all onboard." "And again, women and children must weep beneath the toll of the mysterious sea." "Mysterious?" "Not to Matt Maury." "Who alone knows the temper of its waters as the ordinary man knows the feel of his own shoes." "So ascertaining the position of the derelict when last seen Matt swiftly begins to calculate how winds and storm and currents acting on a helpless wreck would all combine to drift her thus and so from there to here." "Now, of course, this is errant heresy." "Treason to every timeworn tradition under which ships have sailed for centuries." "Imagine a man saying, "Send out a ship." "In two days you will find the lost vessel where I have indicated on the chart."" "But human life is at stake." "And on the bare chance that this silly young fool might be right send out a ship to the spot on the map." "A bare chance, indeed." "Can your theories be wrong, Matt Maury?" "Can all your years of study be wrecked by one careless whim of thoughtless nature?" "Where is the crippled part that should be here on the exact spot you so blatantly predicted?" "And it's small satisfaction, Matt, that you added the saving words:" ""If she's still afloat."" "Too bad." "You might have proved your case." "But "sail ho" comes from aloft." ""Sail on the larboard bow."" "And there in the precise spot of longitude and latitude that you predicted, Matt Maury, is the vessel that had been given up for lost." "Safe with its hundreds of human souls that will not see Davy Jones this trip." "And then success." "Matt Maury's ocean charts have proved their worth." "Recognition comes." "And soon all the world profits by the complete acceptance of Maury's laws of winds and currents." "Travel across the Atlantic is for the first time organized in two-lane traffic." "For the whaling industry, Maury charts the year-round course of whales." "And discovers the Northwest Passage." "He is the first to advocate a canal across the Isthmus of Panama." "His discovery of the plateau on the bottom of the Atlantic makes possible the laying of the transatlantic cable." "And then from sea he turns to land." "Becomes the father of the United States Weather Bureau with its thousands of aids to America's priceless farming industry." "The whole world benefits." "And the nations of the world are quick to acknowledge Maury's genius until practically every civilized government on Earth has paid its tribute to him." "From all corners of the globe come honors until Matthew Fontaine Maury is the most decorated person ever born on American soil." "And then a shot is fired." "A shot that tears a nation asunder." "And how shall a naval officer take sides?" "On one hand, loyalty to birth on the other, his pledged allegiance." "Ever a loyal son of Virginia, Matt Maury has wrung from his heart his words of resignation from the United States Navy." ""The line of duty is therefore, to me, clear." "Each one is to follow his own state."" "But such is the bigotry of intersectional hatred... .-.that his resignation is refused." "Thus officially branding him as deserter and traitor." "And because Matthew Fontaine Maury is a man of exceptional fidelity to his personal honor his name, his fame, and his great works for the benefit of mankind at large are consumed in the fires of Civil War." "The end of the dreadful conflict finds Maury in Europe where he has done Trojan service for the South as ambassador for the Confederacy." "But his joy is short-lived for not included in the general amnesty given Southerners, however were all people who had acted as foreign agents against the United States during the war." "His beloved country is forever barred to him now." "And although one of the greatest benefactors of the human race..." ""Matthew Fontaine Maury becomes a homeless wanderer on the face of this graceless and ungrateful Earth." "But with the passing of the years, America's internal wounds heal and to a lonesome expatriate in Paris there comes a full official pardon..." ""through the personal efforts of the Confederacy's greatest hero." "You can go home now in safety, Matt Maury." "Home to your now reunited states." "To your well-loved Virginia across the trackless waters on which you have forever inscribed your name." "And so in comparative obscurity as a professor at the Virginia Military Institute this man, who sounded vast fields of unexplored knowledge a man both great and good, mighty in mind, and noble of heart finishes his benevolent life." "So pay tribute to Matthew Fontaine Maury for no great liner sails the sea today... .-.without benefit of his study of the ocean and its weathers." "Today Annapolis stands as a monument to his long-sighted dreams." "The Panama Canal is a reality, not merely his vision." "Our coastal defenses are tribute silent tribute today, thank God to Maury, who saw their need." "And with the aid of the government's Weathermen and their predictions the bread we eat grows more readily from the ground because of a naval officer with a crippled leg." "And Cyrus Field himself gave Maury credit for the Atlantic cable long before either of them suspected its ultimate and intimate possibilities." "The very planes that sail the skies of 1939 still roar aloft by virtue of Matt Maury's invention of weather reports." "Now flung into space with the speed of light." "So, Matthew Fontaine Maury long unsung genius you are an honor to Virginia an honor to America, an honor to civilization and in gratefully recognizing you, we can but honor ourselves." "Honor them to whom honor is due." "Matthew Fontaine Maury, the pathfinder of the seas."