Hydrography, the Marine Environment, and the Culture of Nautical Charts in the United States Navy, 1838-1903
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
CONTROLLING THE GREAT COMMON: HYDROGRAPHY, THE MARINE ENVIRONMENT, AND THE CULTURE OF NAUTICAL CHARTS IN THE UNITED STATES NAVY, 1838-1903 A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Jason W. Smith August 2012 Examining Committee Members: Gregory J.W. Urwin, Temple University Beth Bailey, Temple University Andrew C. Isenberg, Temple University John B. Hattendorf, United States Naval War College i © Copyright 2012 by Jason W. Smith All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT This dissertation uses hydrography as a lens to examine the way the United States Navy has understood, used, and defined the sea during the nineteenth century. It argues, broadly, that naval officers and the charts and texts they produced framed the sea as a commercial space for much of the nineteenth century, proceeding from a scientific ethos that held that the sea could be known, ordered, represented, and that it obeyed certain natural laws and rules. This proved a powerful alternative to existing maritime understandings, in which mariners combined navigational science with folkloric ideas about how the sea worked. Hydrography was an important aspect of the American maritime commercial predominance in the decades before the Civil War. By the end of the century, however, new strategic ideas, technologies, and the imperatives of empire caused naval officers and hydrographers to think about the sea in new ways. After the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Navy pursued hydrography with increased urgency, faced with defending the waters of a vast new oceanic empire. Surveys, charts, and the language of hydrography became central to the Navy’s war planning and war gaming, to the strategic debate over where to establish naval bases, and, ultimately, it figured significantly in determining the geography of the American empire. Throughout, however, the sea continued to be a dynamic, powerful force in itself that flouted hydrographers’ and naval officers’ attempts to represent and control it. Charts and the cartographic process that produced them are full of meaning. By placing hydrography and the sea environment at the center of the narrative, historians can better understand the role of science, knowledge, and cartographic representations in expanding American commercial and naval power over the ocean. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Expressing gratitude is without a doubt the most satisfying aspect of this work. A mentor once urged me to accept that I would never finish graduate school without the sacrifices of others. Dissertating is often a solitary pursuit, but it is nevertheless impossible without the support, criticism, guidance, friendship, and love of others. That said, any errors of fact or analysis in the following pages are my own. For the last seven years, thank yous have had to suffice, but I hope this work represents the debts I have incurred to many people and the beginning of my professional life paying it forward. I must begin by thanking the faculty, staff, and graduate students in the History Department at Temple University. In particular, I am grateful for the guidance of my dissertation committee, Drs. Gregory J.W. Urwin, Beth Bailey, and Drew Isenberg. Dr. Urwin champions his students, which is perhaps the best thing that could be said of an advisor. He challenged me to hone my thinking and writing and was a constant source of support from the beginning of my graduate studies. Beth Bailey and Drew Isenberg expanded the way I think about history to include the environment and the cultural construction of ideas and meaning. To the extent that this dissertation became both an environmental and a cultural history owes much to their intellectual influence. I also want to thank Dr. Howard Spodek, as good-natured a man and scholar as I have ever met, and Dr. Todd Shepard who first supported this research as an idea in his research seminar. Nothing gets done without secretaries, and, over the years, I have called on them many times. Thank you to Vangeline Campbell, Patricia Williams, and the late Debbie Thomas. Finally, I owe much to my fellow graduate students and, in particular, to Mike Dolski, iv Josh Wolf, and Eric Klinek. Their camraderie, commiseration, and intellectual exchange made all this possible. The United States Navy has been a second source of support in many different ways. First and foremost, I want to thank Dr. John B. Hattendorf, Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the United States Naval War College, for serving as the outside reader of this dissertation. His reputation as a scholar and a person precedes him, and it has been a tremendous honor to work with him. At the Naval War College, I also want to thank Dr. Evelyn Cherpak, archivist of the Naval Historical Collection, and Captain John Odegaard, Executive Director of the Naval War College Foundation, for their support during a research trip funded by the Foundation’s Edward S. Miller Fellowship. I also want to thank the Naval History and Heritage Command for generously supporting my research with a Rear Admiral John D. Hayes Pre-Dissertation Fellowship. At the NHHC, I have benefited from the guidance of Dr. Michael Crawford. Thanks also to Dr. Ed Furgol and to Bob Cressman, Curtis Utz, and the entire staff of the old Naval Warfare Division for an enjoyable and instructive summer internship in 2006. I want to thank Dr. Gary Weir, now at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, for pointing me in the right direction early on and for referencing John Steinbeck’s Log from the Sea of Cortez. Finally, thanks to Dr. Jan Herman, historian at the Bureau of Medicine, for giving me a tour of the old Naval Observatory and for sharing his knowledge of Matthew Fontaine Maury and Vendovi’s skull. The United States Navy has been quite generous to me, and I am indebted to the many wonderful people who preserve its history and heritage. At West Chester University of Pennsylvania, where I was an undergraduate, I want to thank several professors who have influenced me personally and intellectually. Dr. Kevin Dean, Director of the Honors College, is devoted to his students and has been a constant source of inspiration. It was my good fortune to have unknowingly attended a v school whose History Department boasted two naval/maritime historians. Dr. Thomas Heston mentioned Matthew Fontaine Maury once in a lecture, hinted that he would make for a good dissertation, and planted the seed for this work. Finally, I want to thank Dr. Thomas Legg, a wonderful teacher, mentor, and friend. If not for him, I may never have pursued graduate study, and I may never have finished it. The unsung heroes of historical scholarship are librarians and archivists, and I have benefited from the help and knowledge of many. Thanks to the Interlibrary Loan departments at Temple University’s Paley Library and at Hood College’s Beneficial- Hodson Library. I am grateful to Mark Mollan and Charles Johnson, archivists of Naval/Maritime Records at the National Archives and Records Administration. Thanks also to Laura Pereira at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Paul O’Pecko and Maribeth Bielinski at the Collections Research Center of Mystic Seaport, Christopher Raab and Michael Lear at Franklin and Marshall College’s Archives and Special Collections, the staff at the Manuscript Division, Geography and Map Division, and Law Library of the Library of Congress, the staff of the Navy Department Library, and the staff of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University. In addition, I would like to thank Drs. Douglas Jeromilov, Rich King, Randy Papadopoulos, Helen Rozwadowski, Jennifer Speelman, Bill Thiesen, and David Ulbrich, as well as Joel Christianson and Ralph Ehrenberg, Chief of the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress. Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank my family and dedicate this work to them. In particular, I want to acknowledge my grandfathers, John Smith and Edward Wirth, for their military service to the United States and for sparking my interest in military history. Thanks many times over to my parents, Ron and Linda Smith, for their love and support. My mother seized nearly every opportunity to ask about my research. She displayed a degree of curiosity and interest that no other has. My father, English vi teacher and grammarian, read every word of the dissertation, and some twice or three times. Without my parents’ constant support, this would not have been possible. Thanks also to Ron and Pam Pearson and Kara Blair, in particular, for recognizing that a good husband need not first have a good income. Finally, and with great pleasure, I am so grateful to my wife Megan for her love, her very good company, and her many sacrifices. Like everything else in life, we faced this together and accomplished it together. In the timeless words of Sam Cook: don’t know much about history, don’t know much biology, don’t know much about science book, don’t know much about the French I took, but I do know that I love you, and I know that if you love me too, what a wonderful world this would be vii To my family viii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................. iv DEDICATION ...........................................................................................................