by Diane Fontaine Maury-Corbin

“ In the first place, cotton and the staples of the South are only some of its nobles; and unless human nature be changed, they, without a navy, will be powerless for protection. Unless we have the national ability to put forth navy strength necessary to support the dignity of the nation, its great staples will be a source of weakness, for mere wealth is weakness, and, like unprotected wealth everywhere, our commercial staples will invite to outrage and wrong. ”

“ Now a navy without vessels is like lamps without oil. The Richmond Bill gives $50,000 to buy and build steamers and gunboats for coast defence, and $160,000 for two ironclad gunboats for the defence of the Mississippi River and the City of Memphis.... We may safely infer that $50,000 will neither purchase nor build a great many steamers or gunboats, nor enable us to provide very efficiently for the defence of all the rivers except the Mississippi, and of all the harbours, bays, creeks, and sounds of our coast all the way from Washington on the Potomac to Brownsville on the Rio Grande. ”

“ I wish ardently that your unhappy country may not long be torn by a fratricidal war, that you may take up the course of your useful labours, and from afar you will consider that there is one man at least who esteems you, venerates you, and esteems himself that he has known you. ”

“ It is a very current but mistaken idea to suppose that this is the only country in the world properly adapted to the cultivation of cotton. No such thing. Should even the present paper blockade continue for a few years, and cotton rule at the present New York prices of 22 cents, or even at 15 cents, our political dreamers may wake and find the cotton sceptre, if not entirely lost to our hold, at least divided in our hands.
“Every one can see that in case the supply of American cotton to foreign markets be materially interfered with, the effect will be to enhance the value of other cotton. ”

“ There seems to be a vague idea floating in the public mind of the South that, somehow or other, cotton is to enable us to do, if not entirely, at least to a great degree, what other nations require armies and navies to accomplish for them. Because cotton-wool is essential to the industry of certain people, and because we are chief growers of cotton-wool, therefore, say these political dreamers, we can so treat cotton, in a diplomatic way, as both to enforce obedience to our revenue laws at home and secure respect to our citizens abroad. ”

“ In the first place, cotton becomes, when handled in any other way than the regular commercial way, a two-edged sword, as apt to wound producer as consumer. Every obstacle which we place between it and the channels of commerce here, operates as a bounty for its production elsewhere. ”

“ Now allow me to express to you, at the end of one year that rolls past, and another which approaches in silence, the desire that all your holy vows be fulfilled, the hope that all your family enjoy perfect health, and that they keep constantly in the ways of our Saviour the eternal, our God; because only in these paths can they find peace and light. ”

“ Nor can our citizens, with such a neighbour as we are bound to have, be secure from daily outrage unless we have a navy to protect them in peace as well as in war.
“That the country is in great need of a navy now, is patent to the world; and that it will want one in the future is obvious to every statesman.... ”

“ You have, sir, carried a shining light into the eternal shades, and there in the depths of the abyss you have rendered to the God of our fathers a homage which, for me at least, is worth all that which men may come every day to deposit at His feet. ”

“ We cannot now, as we did then, depend on distance and our faithful old allies, the wind and waves, to protect our citizens from insult and pillage. Moreover, the epoch for ‘big guns and little ships’ is at hand. [2] Our enemy is not prepared for it. We are. Let us be up and doing, and with craft no larger than steam-tugs and pilot-boars, we may send to the bottom, or chase away from our bays and offings, his tall frigates. In the old war, none but stout ships could be sent against us, for we were separated from the enemy by the most stormy ocean in the world. ”

“ What, permit us to ask, are the Southern people doing beyond following the precepts and examples taught and practised by your fathers and theirs, when they withdrew their allegiance from the Mother Country, and asserted their right to establish a Government of their own? ”

“ It is a real discovery, and your modesty should not allow that the publicity of your work should be restricted. You should, my dear and honoured relative, since you are so kind as to authorize me to give you a title which honours me, translate into the most popular languages of Europe, your nautical studies, the magnificent work which you have published in English science, has no frontiers, and its language should be understood throughout the world, because it is proper that all beings here below should aid each other mutually. ”

“ There seems then to be every reason of patriotism and policy why we should set to work ‘right off the reel,’ and with might and main build up a navy at least sufficient to command our rivers, bays, &c, to defend our shores, and protect our inhabitants against the enemy.
“There are a good many citizens among us who say ‘cotton is king;’ they hold that this kind is to do all and more for us than it is possible for a navy to do. ”

“ Two magnificent jets went up; and when the two gentlemen heard the report of a barrel of powder, and saw the water pagodas rising up some hundred feet in the air, they were convinced. The next day $50,000 were placed at the service of Commander Maury (for he now held this rank in the Navy of the Confederate States) for mining the James River.
Still powder was scarce, wire scarcer, and of gutta-percha and india-rubber there was absolutely none, except such as might be collected by calling upon the patriotic women of that noble old State for their india-rubber over-shoes ”

“ Surely there must be many now among you who share with us the conviction that it is utterly impossible to subdue the South, or to restore the American Union, as it was in the past days of the Republic. ”

“ Whatever may be the result of the contest, it must be a source of gratification for you to know, that, although you are not now young, your life has chiefly been spent in the good work of enabling mankind to cross the ocean with less risk from the elements than formerly. I have never met with a scientific man, who did not bear testimony to the great services you have rendered to mankind. ”

“ That surface liquid which covers three-fourths of our planet had been considered by the feebleness of our organs as a mass, awful and inert, where reigned an eternal solitude, such as that which, we believe, to exist in space. ”

“ THEODORE MAURY [a French scientist who worked in the same fields as MFM]
LIVING WITH HIS SON “BRAVE” [Matthew Fontaine Maury Jr.]
The following is an extract from a letter to the Rev. F. W. Tremlett, D.C.L., incumbent of St. Peter’s, Belsize Park, N.W., written while Maury was a Bowdon, England, where he resided at this time to be near his son “Brave”, who was at school there:
“My quiet life here is like the pleasant visions of the night. ”

“ We believe there is not a Christian man or woman amongst us whose heart does not respond affirmatively to this question. With this conviction we wish to speak to you as plain men, using plain language. We have admired your free institutions, and have gladly witnessed your rise as a people to eminence in wealth and political power. ”

“ You will not only stimulate those already engaged in the cultivation of cotton abroad to increased production, but you tempt their neighbours into the fields, and induce others successfully to bring lands under cotton cultivation which, but for such encouragement, would never have been thought of. Our cotton interests cannot be tampered with without danger. ”

“ Whatever might be the individual value of our life, is it not so short and fragile already, that we should seek with care the occasions of being useful to our fellow men? Your rare merit permits you to render great services to humanity. ”

“ The amount appropriated for the Lincoln navy during the current year is upwards of $40,000,000. We cannot, either with cotton or with all the agricultural staples of this Confederacy put together, adopt any course which will make cotton and trade stand us as a nation in the stead of a navy. ”

“ The breadth of our plantations and the value of our staples will be of small advantage if the others may have the mastery in our own waters.”
Although Commodore Maury argued so wisely and so well, the heads of the Government, President Davis and Stephen Mallory were unfriendly to him and had been since they were senators who were both defeated by Maury and partially through the people and the press in political matters in the past regarding the Navy Retirement Board, would not adopt Maury’s suggestions. But by this time the whole South was burning with military ardour. ”

“ After her, the ship Kate will go; so tell all hands to write and keep writing, and to send their letters here to F. & Co. This house is all the time running the blockade. Their vessels generally go by Nassau, and, although by short route, are often a long time in reaching England. Still it is one of the channels of reaching me, and it should not be overlooked. I shall be most anxious to hear about the fighting at Corinth, and to learn how fared my “Davy Jones” (son, Lt. John Herndon Maury) and Dabney. ”

“ Thus, by a single torpedo with its powers of “moral persuasion,” that formidable fleet was paralysed and rendered impotent during the whole time that Richmond was beleaguered by Grant with his armies and the whole Federal host on land.
Admiral Porter confessed that, in his first attack with Butler upon Fort Fisher (at Wilmington) , it was the fear of these electrical torpedoes which kept him from entering the Cape Fear River with his gunboats. He afterwards entered, found no torpedoes, and carried the place.
Every one knows the dread that sailors have of hidden rocks and sunken dangers ”

“ NEED FOR A SOUTHERN NAVY
During the first and second years of the war, M. F. Maury wrote a series of papers, published in the Richmond Enquirer, over the signature of “Ben Bow,” urging upon the Executive the necessity of building a navy without delay, and especially of protecting our bays and rivers with small floating batteries. In the first of these articles he says:
“At the commencement of our independence we not only find ourselves without a navy, but in the midst of war ”

“ There was, at this time, only one electrical torpedo in the whole river, the first planted having been washed away in a flood of unprecedented violence. The Confederates were quick to take advantage of this blunder with the barricade. They immediately mounted a battery above (“the Howlett House Battery”) , which commanded it and prevented its removal after the panic caused by the fate of the Commodore Jones should have subsided. ”

“ In the summer of 1862, Maury proceeded to mine the James River below all the defenses. While engaged on this important work, the success of which was to vindicate the wisdom of his advocacy of this mode of defence, without having been consulted, and strongly against his wishes, Cmdr. Maury received an order to go to Europe as a Confederate Secret Service agent for to purchase torpedo material and various other duties in conjunction with another officer, Captain James D. Bullock. ”

“ Now, why may not such a vessel engage, at long range, with its rifled gun, the Minnesota, for instance. We can shoot as far and hit as hard as the Minnesota.
“We, with our big gun and little ship, could watch our opportunity and always be the attacking party. Head on, we would approach the enemy on her beam.
“The cross-section of a vessel twenty feet broad and two feet out of water, measures forty feet. Forty square feet then would be the measure of the target to be presented on our side ”

“ A little ship intended for the protection of Chesapeake Bay, or elsewhere in Southern waters, need not be more than twenty or twenty-five feet broad, and, with coal, crew, and gun on board, two or three feet above the water. ”

“ When we are done fighting the Yankees, we all, bald pates and gray heads, young and old, have to begin to fight the battle of life over again. Will and Corbin and Dick and my J___ no, he has got his discharge ”