Detail #2 of Ruth Elder Hydrographic Office Chart

Matthew Fontaine Maury is the father of modern hydrography in the United States Navy. He served as superintendent of the U.S. Naval Observatory from its founding to the start of the Civil War, when he resign to supervise maritime defenses for the Confederacy. This chart pays tribute to his leading role in establishing the charting and scientific studies that were critical to the ascendancy of the United States as a maritime economic and military power in the nineteenth century.