THE MAURY.
After many years honor has been rendered where honor was due in the naming of one of the big destroyers of the United States navy for Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury, "Pathfinder of the Seas." This action was the result of much effort on the part of Miss Susie Gentry, of Franklin, Tenn., an early home of Maury, to secure proper recognition of the service of this great man when an officer of the United States navy; and to her Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels wrote under date of June 26, 1918:
"I received your letter, and you will no doubt be gratified to know that I have named a destroyer which is to be launched soon the Maury, after the distinguished naval officer of whom you wrote. As to the other honors you would like to have for him, they should be taken up with your members of Congress. It was a very great pleasure to be able to name a ship after this great officer."
The other honors referred to are to have a naval hospital named for Commodore Maury and a ship to perpetually bear his name and for Congress to vote that his name be placed in the Hall of Fame in New York in 1920. Every Southern man and woman can help along the effort by writing to their Congressmen about it. Miss Gentry has been appointed President for Tennessee for the Matthew F. Maury Memorial Association by the Virginia Association, whose object is to erect a monument to him in Richmond, to have the two States celebrate Maury Day, January 14, in the public schools, and to get his name in the Hall of Fame. "I have been working for ten years to get the government and Tennessee to in some way recognize Maury's deserved worth, and this is his first honor," writes Miss Gentry.
It is gratifying that the effort which secured this recognition of Commodore Maury's genius emanated from Williamson County. Tenn.. his adopted home in early years and which he left to enter the great naval school which prepared him to be such a benefactor to mankind. In advocating the naming of a ship for Commodore Maury Miss Gentry wrote the Nashville Banner June 18: "The naming of a ship for him at the present time would bind more closely France and America, for in the Marne sector, near Chateau-Thierry, there stands to-day the house in which was born Jean de la Fontaine, the [poet No, different man but same name]and writer, who was the lineal ancestor of Matthew Fontaine Maury. From 1621 the Fontaines and Maurys have been notable in French history. The blood of Protestant martyrs flows in their veins, and the same stanch traits have been exhibited in later generations. One can see in reading of Jean (in English Jean=John])Fontaine and Matthew Fontaine Maury that heredity is something more than a name.
"The Maurys seem to have had a predilection for the sea, as Commodore Maury's eldest brother, John Minor Maury, ran off and joined the navy when only thirteen years old and became one of the most distinguished young officers of his day. He was associated with Capt. David Porter, commander of the Essex. John Maury was ordered to Lake Champlain to be with McDonough and wrote: 'We have won a glorious victory. I hope the first fruits of it will be to confirm the wavering allegiance of New York and Vermont to the Union. They have threatened to secede unless peace is made with England on any terms.' Soon thereafter, Andrew Jackson settled that question at the battle of New Orleans.
"Soon after the close of the war with England the pirates of the West Indies became a terror to all who sailed those seas, and Captain Porter was ordered to fit out a squadron for their destruction. He chose John Maury to be flag captain of the fleet. This officer, like the adjutant general of the army, gives orders for all the movements. The pirates were destroyed, broken up, and scattered 'to the four winds of the earth.' As a special work of meritorious service Capt. John Maury was sent by Commodore Porter to bear to the United States government his report of the complete success of his operations.
"John [Minor] Maury sailed in the store ship Decoy, but died of yellow fever in June, 1824. just outside of the capes of Norfolk, and was buried at sea at the age of thirty-one. He was first a first lieutenant on a frigate, at twenty-six flag captain of a fleet; and he was considered by Tatnall, Buchanan, and other compeers to be the cleverest sailor in the American navy. He was the lodestar which drew his world-famed brother, Matthew Fontaine Maury, to the seas and their science. World-famed, but unknown in his 'own home and his own country,' is not that a sad commentary on American intelligence and patriotism? No memorial of any description, except a tablet in Franklin, tells of these brothers' worth in the entire South."
The following is also taken from another communication by Miss Gentry, which tells something of Maury's service for the Southern Confederacy:
"As is well known, Matthew F. Maury was sent by the Confederate Congress to Europe to enlist her aid in their cause. Without being consulted, and strongly against his wishes, he received an order to purchase from Europe torpedo materials, in conjunction with another officer, a duty which he felt could have been performed by any junior officer in the service.
"The little steamer he used in 1862 vindicated the wisdom and efficiency of his advocacy of the torpedo and sea-mining as a mode of defense, and his electric torpedoes were placed in the hands of Lieutenant Davidson, who continued as commander of these defenses to the end of 1864. Drawings and plans, with charts of torpedoes already planted by Maury, were left in the vessel, which, not long afterwards, in attempting to plant others, grounded during a falling tide and fell into the hands of the Federals; but the torpedo proved what Maury said it would, to the consternation of the enemy. Electric torpedoes. Maury demonstrated, when planted, could be daily tested, 'which can never be done,' he said, 'with mechanical torpedoes.'
"With Maury's arrival in England he made this method of defense the subject of patient investigation and special study. While in England the news came of the surrender of Lee and the fall of the Southern Confederacy. On May 2, 1865, Maury sailed from Southampton under orders from the Secretary of the Confederate Navy. He had sent out in advance a quantity of torpedo material for the defense of the Southern ports, which represented the result of his inventive genius and his studies during his residence in England; but when he arrived at St. Thomas, in the West Indies, he learned of the total collapse of the Confederacy and the assassination of Lincoln. He therefore surrendered his sword by letter forthwith to 'the United States officer commanding the squadron of the Gulf ->and became a prisoner of war.<-[He never was a Prisoner of any war but he could not return home due to price on his head so he went to Mexico and worked under Maximilian as Imperial Commissioner of Immigration and built Carlotta and New Virginia Colonies under Maximilian who was later killed. --William Maury Morris] "During May and June of 1866 Maury was in Paris, France, and was employed by the government of Napoleon III. to instruct a board of French officers in his system of defensive sea-mining. The French authorities were so delighted with his invention and instruction that they invited
[NOTE: Some statements and sequence of events are erroneous. See Wikipedia's article on Matthew Fontaine Maury article. --William Maury Morris [wmm]
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