History does not long entrust the care of freedom
to the weak or the timid" - Gen Eisenhower
Near Lexington, Virgina, a road runs through a gorge carved by a river. The river is now called the Maury River. The gorge, known as the Goshen Pass, is a link to millions of years of geological history. But the road also passes a little noticed link to the history of man on the sea.
At a pull-out on that road there is a monument to a one-time Lexington resident for whom the river is now named:
Matthew Fontaine Maury, "The Pathfinder of the Seas."
But Maury's greatest contribution was that he was among the first to recognize the importance of a global way of thinking.
His zeal for oceanographic data from all parts of the world ocean and his ability to synthesize massive data sets into coherent atlases
of ocean properties distinguish his work from others. Clearly, Maury was a big thinker, one who could see the big picture
and appreciate its relevance to understanding ocean processes.
His choice of Confederate side in the Civil War made him unemployable by any federal agency,
so he bounced around a little before landing a position as a professor of physics at the Virginia Military Institute.
His anti-Union choice, however, has not prevented modern federal agencies which owe a debt to his work from paying homage,
such as was done by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):
This is a classic work in oceanography by Matthew Fontaine Maury, often called the "father of naval oceanography."
In this treatise, Maury sought to educate curious 19th century readers about this new science of the seas
by drawing upon the experience of sailors and seamen who enthusiastically shared their knowledge and observations of the ocean.