Matthew Fontaine Maury — He’s Being Forgiven At Last
By Scott C. Boyd
(September 2008 Civil War News)

“Traitor”: One of the harshest insults to throw at an army or navy officer in wartime. Nonetheless, that is exactly the word used by the Salem Marine Society on May 30, 1861, to condemn a Virginian who resigned from the U.S. Navy rather than take up arms against the Old Dominion.

The condemned man wasn’t an ordinary naval officer, either. He had received worldwide acclaim for his pioneering research into oceanography and was given the sobriquet “Pathfinder of the Seas.” It was none other than Matthew Fontaine Maury.

The log for the society’s monthly meeting on May 30, 1861, shows that not only did the group denounce Maury as a traitor and remove his name from the membership rolls, they voted “that the picture of Comdr Maury be reversed & that it be hung in Our Room head Down” [emphasis in the original].

Now the Salem Marine Society’s 21st century members have voted to accept a Virginia group’s offer for a new portrait of Maury to be displayed facing forward and right side up. Hard feelings dating back to the Civil War may finally be assuaged.

The society was founded in 1766. Membership was strictly reserved for captains of ships that sailed from the port of Salem or their direct descendants. That is, until the society introduced the category of honorary membership in 1859. The first honorary member was Maury.

Matthew Fontaine Maury had a strong connection with the seafarers in Salem, even though he had never visited their thriving seaport town. Every time Maury published a new chart or map (through his oceanographic work at the U.S. Naval Observatory), he would send a copy to the society, according to Allan Vaughan, society clerk (administrator).

When Maury’s charts could save time for Salem captains and allow them, for example, to make three trips to a destination in the time they used to take for just two trips, that was significant. That endeared Maury to the sea captains in Salem.

The Virginia Connection
The Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (APVA) is a private, non-profit historic preservation group. Rebecca Starling, member of the APVA’s Mary Washington Branch in Maury’s hometown of Fredericksburg, Va., enjoys leading the local group on annual out-of-town trips.

She carefully scouts and plans the group tours by making exploratory trips beforehand with her husband, Mike. They visited Salem in 2005, where someone gave her a small book on the town’s history.

“I sat in the bed my first night and there was a chapter with only three or four paragraphs titled, ‘Lieutenant Maury’s Fall from Grace.’ It told the story,” she said in a recent interview. “I thought that was absolutely fascinating.”

Starling decided to take the group to Salem in 2006. The Maury portrait was just one of many sights to possibly see there in the historic seaport. However, viewing the portrait would be quite a feat, since the society’s special room, on the top floor of Salem’s Hawthorne Hotel, is off-limits to the general public.

The “cabin,” as it is called, is modeled after the captain’s quarters in a 19th-century sailing ship.

“Becky Starling,” Vaughan recalled with a chuckle,” is very hard to say no to.” He gave special permission for a Hawthorne Hotel worker to let Starling and her traveling companions see the cabin during their visit.

The APVA members from Maury’s hometown saw for themselves that his portrait was still reversed and upside down.

Back in Fredericksburg, they pondered their next step.

“We decided the first thing we needed to do was to learn more about Maury,” Starling commented. “Nobody knew a whole lot about the man.”

A call for volunteers for the APVA branch’s new Maury project earned member Scott Walker the title of “lead researcher.” Walker operates Hallowed Ground Tours in Fredericksburg.

“The key is that we realized that we didn’t know anything other than the name and maybe the phrase, ‘Pathfinder of the Seas,’” Walker said.

The Fredericksburg group decided against simply asking the people in Salem to let bygones be bygones and turn Maury’s portrait around. Instead, they decided to offer a new portrait of Maury to the Marine Society.
“We came up with the idea that it was such a great story” that they decided not to ask the Salem group to turn the portrait around, said Walker.

It’s just as well the Virginians didn’t ask. More than one society member informed this reporter that if the proposal had been made, they would have opposed it.

The last time anyone proposed that Maury’s portrait be turned around was in 1966, on the society’s 200th anniversary.

A member “made a resolution to make [Maury] a member again and that got hooted down,” said Vaughan. People shouted out, “’No! Never! Absolutely not!’ It never even got seconded. And that was the last the picture had ever been seen,” according to Vaughan.

He put the portrait back on the wall in 2000, at a member’s suggestion, placing it upside down and backwards as before.

In September 2007 the Fredericksburg APVA offered the Salem Marine Society a new portrait of Maury, to be displayed facing forward and right side up, along with a small sign describing Maury’s many achievements as a scientist of the sea.

It is a framed color photo of a painting of Maury currently in the U.S. Naval Observatory.

“We voted to say that would be fine, to go alongside the picture that we have upside down and face to the wall,” Vaughan said. The two will be side by side.

 “I thought it was a great idea,” said George Remon, current master (leader) of the society. “I believe Scott Walker has done a marvelous job in researching Maury and bringing to light all of his achievements during his lifetime.”

Remon shares Walker’s take on the saga of Maury’s relationship with the society. “It’s just another part of history, a good story.”

The society furthered its new relationship when Remon and Vaughan and their wives visited Fredericksburg this past April. At a reception at the Starlings’ home, the Salem visitors gave a framed photo of the Salem Marine Society’s cabin to the APVA.

They also saw the new Maury portrait that they will officially receive from Fredericksburg APVA representatives in October at their annual meeting in Salem.

After this new portrait is placed on the wall, the man once honored, then vilified, will end up being the only person with two portraits on the wall in the society’s cabin.