The Wind and the Clippers
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Hi! I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is The Weather Notebook. Today, we may take for granted that the air and the oceans both have currents, and that they are sometimes at odds with each other, especially when you're on a sea-going vessel.

But that wasn't always understood. In fact, as recently as 150 years ago--when ships were still a mainstay of trans-oceanic transportation, sea captains had no idea about the currents. As one captain put it, we are "traversing the ocean blindfolded."

It took a landlocked naval lieutenant to discover the discrepancy. His name was Matthew Fontaine Maury who, after a broken leg rendered him unfit for sea duty, was sent to the offices of the Department of Charts and Instruments in ???. The assignment turned into a windfall for Maury for in that dungeon of old papers, Maury discovered a treasury of thousands of ships' logs, noting weather and sea conditions from every ocean in the world.

In 1847, Maury and his staff published Wind and Current Charts, which, basically, told sea captains where to go. Many old salts were skeptical that an office-bound researcher could help them manage their vessels, but after a Captain Jackson shaved 18 days off the Virginia to Rio route-- usually a month-long round-trip-- shipowners everywhere suddenly needed Maury's charts. Maury supplied the charts for free, asking captains only to submit their latest logs. By 1854, with all the new observations, Maury published The Physical Geography of the Sea, encompassing all the world's oceans.

The new clipper ships, following Maury's wind maps, produced some of the fastest speeds recorded under canvas. One ship, The Sea Witch, made the trip home to New York from China in just 74 days, slashing the normal time by 3 1/2 months.

Matthew Maury never was promoted beyond lieutenant, but he was honored by royalty, scholarly societies, and captains around the globe.

The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washinton Observatory and is underwritten by Subaru and the National Science Foundation. For more on sea winds and ocean currents, go to the website, www.mountwashington.org.