Maritime exploration

“ Navigation had been practised, and the art of ship-building had made very considerable progress, long before men dared to lose sight of the shore and venture out upon the mysterious bosom of the great unknown sea.
To the ancients the Mediterranean was the ocean; and among its bays, and creeks, and islands, maritime enterprise sprang into being and rose into celebrity. Among the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, and Hebrews, we find the earliest traces of navigation and commerce. ”

“ Maritime expeditions and circumnavigatory voyages have conferred just celebrity on the names of the naturalists and astronomers who have been appointed by various governments to share the dangers of those undertakings; but though these eminent men have given us precise notions of the external configuration of countries, of the natural history of the ocean, and of the productions of islands and coasts, it must be admitted that maritime expeditions are less fitted to advance the progress of geology and other parts of physical science, than travels into the interior of a continent. ”

“ No part of the world affords finer islands, sounds, or a greater number of harbors than are found within these waters. They are capable of receiving the largest class of vessels, and are without a single hidden danger. From the rise and fall of the tide (18 feet) , every facility is afforded for the erection of works for a great maritime nation. ”

“ The successful use of steam navigation on the ocean has been followed by the introduction of war steamers in great and increasing numbers into the navies of the principal maritime powers of the world. A due regard to our own safety and to an efficient protection to our large and increasing commerce demands a corresponding increase on our part. ”

“ In many ways, in spite of an increasing number of scientific ships sailing over the ocean, we tend not only to care less and less about the sea, but actually in some ways to know less about it. To the great 20,000-ton leviathan going twenty to twenty-five knots, weather conditions, currents, etc., of vital importance to smaller and less powerful craft are of little significance—these monsters race through everything. The thousands of passengers in these ships make a voyage and know no more about the sea over which they have travelled than if they had been staying in a palatial hotel ashore. ”

“ Maritime pursuits had now revived, the improvement of nautical science was progressing rapidly, and the advantages of predatory expeditions, especially when assisted and masked by commerce, led people of family and acquirements to embrace the profession. ”

“ The metallic stores of the earth, the vegetable and animal kingdoms were not transferred to any extent from place to place; the sea brought nothing from lands remotely foreign but drift-sand, cocoa-nuts, floating wood, ice masses, and seaweed, swept by the great currents from shore to shore. But now the seas are no barriers; they do not separate the continents but bind them together, and unite the destinies of nations in the closest manner. The great improvements in ocean navigation have entirely changed the relations of the entire globe. ”

“ Could our public vessels be better employed, than in surveying our north-west coast, and in discovery? Our naval officers would rejoice on seeing opened to their view a new path to fame, independent of the acquisition to their nautical experience. Many of our brave and skilful navigators would be proud of an appointment in such an enterprise; many naturalists and men of science, would cheerfully, at their own expense, if necessary, accompany such an expedition. ”

“ For this seemingly remote contingency preparation will be made, if men then shall be found prepared, by a practical recognition now of existing conditions—such as those mentioned in the opening of this paper—and acting upon that knowledge. Control of the sea, by maritime commerce and naval supremacy, means predominant influence in the world; because, however great the wealth product of the land, nothing facilitates the necessary exchanges as does the sea. The fundamental truth concerning the sea—perhaps we should rather say the water—is that it is Nature's great medium of communication. ”

“ The principal maritime nations, therefore, have done well by agreeing to unite upon one plan of observation, and to co-operate with their ships upon the high seas with the view of finding out all that patient research, systematic, laborious investigation, may reveal to us concerning the winds and the waves; and philosophical travelers, and every sailor that has a ship under his foot, may do even better by joining in this system. ”

“ The United States has also beyond its own territory made valuable additions to hydrographic knowledge in the work of officers of the Navy in a number of oceanic exploring expeditions, and surveys on the coasts of Mexico and in the West Indies, and in the explorations of Fish Commission vessels. ”

“ Intrepid hunters and fishermen, accustomed to a dangerous navigation between the continent and the mass of islands which border it and appear to defend it against the assaults of the ocean, and across the narrow, deep fiords, which seem as though they were cut into the soil itself by some gigantic sword, they set out in those oak vessels, the sight of which made the people tremble who lived on the shores of the North Sea and British Channel. ”

“ Therefore, whenever man has touched it, it has moulded him in much the same way, given the same direction to his activities, dictated the use of the same implements and methods of navigation. As maritime trader or colonist, he has sailed to remote, unknown, yet familiar coasts, and found himself as much at home as on his native shores. He has built up maritime empires, the centre of whose dominion, race and commerce, falls somewhere in the dividing yet uniting sea. ”

“ There were discouragements at that time for mercantile or maritime enterprise, which make us marvel the more at the energy of the men who with such slender vessels and knowledge of navigation, tempted the dangers of unknown seas. ”

“ The contention that the south coast exploration of the French was "entirely a work of discovery,"* (* Freycinet, 2 page 23.) although they were forestalled in it by Flinders and Grant, is neither true nor sensible. If it could be held that the voyage of a vessel sailing without a chart or a pilot along a coast previously unknown to its officers was "entirely a work of discovery," then a ship that should sail under such conditions along any piece of coast--say from Boulogne to La Hague--would accomplish "a work of discovery." Discovery is a matter of priority, or the word is meaningless. ”

“ The navigation of the ocean, which led to the discovery of a passage to the East Indies, and of America, gave a mortal blow to the nations situated on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea, who thus found themselves deprived of the commerce of the East. ”

“ Docking a vessel at a marina on a navigable waterway is a common, if not indispensable, maritime activity. At such a marina, vessels are stored for an extended period, docked to obtain fuel or supplies, and moved into and out of navigation. Indeed, most maritime voyages begin and end with the docking of the craft at a marina. We therefore conclude that, just as navigation, storing and maintaining a vessel at a marina on a navigable waterway is substantially related to traditional maritime activity. ”

“ To prove the paths by which vessels can best traverse the ocean, to test the best methods by which $2,000,000,000 of values shall be carried from the West to the East, from the East across the Atlantic, or from the shores of China and Japan to the Pacific coast, and thence across the country, was the business of the Coast Survey. All the United States is deeply interested in every part of this subject. Every ship that is lost by imperfectly-surveyed harbors is a loss to the whole country. ”

“ The striking fact about the great World Ocean to-day is the manifold relations which it has established between the dwellers on its various coasts. Marine cables, steamer and sailing routes combine to form a network of paths across the vast commons of the deep. Over these the commercial, political, intellectual, or even purely migrant activities of human life move from continent to continent. ”

“ A PEACEFUL SUBMARINE
Under the green sea, in the total darkness of the great depths and the yellowish-green of the shallows of the oceans, with the seaweeds waving their fronds about their barnacle-encrusted timbers and the creatures of the deep playing in and about the decks and rotted rigging, lie hundreds of wrecks. Many a splendid ship with a valuable cargo has gone down off a dangerous coast; many a hoard of gold or silver, gathered with infinite pains from the far corners of the earth, lies intact in decaying strong boxes on the bottom of the sea. ”

“ Commerce and travel and naval warfare concentrate themselves at the spot where a narrow channel connects wide seas, and the strip of land which severs two seas from one another interposes a barrier to water-borne trade and turns it off into other directions. ”

“ THE DEVELOPMENT OF SHIPS Imagine the world without ships. Mighty empires that now exist and have existed in the past would never have developed. Every continent—every island—would be a world alone. Europe, Asia, and Africa could have known each other, it is true, in time. North and South America might ultimately have become acquainted by means of the narrow isthmus that joins them. But without ships, Australia and all the islands of all the seas would still remain unknown to others, each supporting peoples whose limited opportunities for development would have prevented advanced civilization. ”

“ Merchant ships, even sailing vessels, must “make a passage” in order to pay, and, except when unfortunate enough to get becalmed for a long spell, are rarely in a position favourable to close observation of deep-sea fishes and their ways. Men-of-war, especially surveying ships, who spend much time in unfrequented waters, and are often stationary for weeks at a time, are in a much better plight, and give the eager student of marine natural history great facilities for closely watching the sea-folk. ”

“ In proportion, therefore, as the pursuits of the navigator are considered essential to the wealth of the community, every effort to Assist him, in his course through the pathless ocean, must be regarded both as the call of interest and humanity. The most prominent causes of the perfection to which coasting-navigation has been brought, may be ascribed to the accuracy of our charts, and an increase of land-marks, by which the mariner, after braving the dangers of the seas, is enabled to guide his ship with safety into her intended port. ”

“ The British government had ofifered a reward of one hundred thousand dollars to any ship that should discover and report a navigable route for ships from the Atlantic through to the Pacific ocean. This stimulated hundreds of sea captains to look for such a passage, and still believing in the mythical Strait of Anian, the search was kept up for two hundred years, and practically all the voyages to America for the first sixty years after its discovery was to find the short route to Asia across North America. ”

“ The navigation of the ocean is free to all nations by nature itself. Has any Government ever entertained the foolish idea that the broad Atlantic could, for instance, be divided into so many parts as the European, Asiatic, or American continents, over which several States could exercise Sovereign powers? No Chinese Wall can be built on the seas. ”

“ The share of navies in the great movements which have moulded human destiny and shaped the world’s progress, although long obscure and undervalued, has met in our time full recognition. Within a decade the influence of sea power upon history has become the frequent theme of historians and essayists who, in clear and striking form, have shown the cardinal importance, both in war and commerce, of the fleet—the nation’s right arm on the sea. ”

“ Nautical descriptions of the places comprised within the limits of the Survey, and clear directions for the ports and dangers, adapted to all classes of seamen, will obviously be among the essential parts of the survey; but there will also be opportunities of collecting auxiliary information which, when digested, may be made extensively useful to those who may have to visit that coast;—such as places of refuge after any disaster at sea; ports where pilots are requisite; the most advantageous methods of obtaining water, wood, and other supplies ”

“ Not only over Great Britain alone, however, does the ocean cast its spell, for it is the free highway of the world, sailed by the ships of all nations, without other hindrances than those of stormy nature, and navigated without restriction from pole to pole by the seamen of all races. ”

“ The adventurous voyagers of the early times, who, daring as they were, hardly were bold enough to venture in their open boats, propelled only by oars, out of the sight of land, could not be expected to conceive that it could be possible for men, like themselves, to ever become able to construct ships such as modern nations construct, in which, propelled by steam, voyages should be taken across oceans, and out of sight of land, their course over the trackless waters be guided with accuracy and certainty, to any desired point, by the compass and the observations of the motions of the stars. ”