Maury issues the Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic
Maury compiled abstracts from thousands of ships' logbooks held at the Depot of Charts and Instruments into charts of prevailing winds and surface currents, distributed to captains in exchange for their own completed logs. The scheme worked because it paid participants in the currency they wanted — shorter passages — and it produced the first large-scale empirical picture of surface circulation.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Matthew Fontaine Maury · person · United States · not located
- Gulf Stream · natural phenomenon · North Atlantic — Florida Straits to the Grand Banks
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
The Physical Geography of the Sea
The first comprehensive treatment of ocean winds and currents as a system, compiled from standardised ships' logbooks; commonly described as the first textbook of modern oceanography. The digitised volume was identified but not read; biographical facts about Maury come from Naval History and Heritage Command and encyclopaedia entries read via search summary.
Harper & Brothers, New York · 1855 · Partly verified
Maury, M. F., The Physical Geography of the Sea (1855); digitised copy at Smithsonian Libraries, library.si.edu/digital-library/book/physicalgeograp00maura
Recorded on Matthew Fontaine Maury
- The Gulf Stream is charted to explain slow mail
- Maury issues the Wind and Current Chart of the North Atlantic
- The Brussels maritime conference standardises ocean observation
- The Physical Geography of the Sea is published
- The Gulf Stream is found not to explain Europe's mild winters
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.