Maury went to sea as a midshipman in the American navy in 1825, and in 1831, at twenty-four years of age, he became master of the sloop Falmouth, with orders to go to the Pacific waters, but, though he sought diligently, he found no chart of a track for his vessel, no record of currents or of winds to guide him. The sea was a trackless wilderness, and the winds were things of vagrant caprice. And he began then to grapple with those problems which were to immortalize him. He came back from ocean wanderings in a few years and married an old sweetheart, Miss Ann Herndon, of Fredericksburg, and he lived for a time on Charlotte Street, between Princess Anne and Prince Edward, and wrote his first book, "A Treatise on Navigation;" while from his pen came a series of newspaper and magazine articles that startled the world of scientific thought. For the man had discovered new and unsuspected natural laws! Misfortune--that vastly helped him--came in 1839, when his leg was injured through the overturning of a stage coach. The government put him in charge of a new "Bureau of Charts and Instruments," at Washington, and out of his work here grew the Naval Observatory, the Signal Service and the first Weather Bureau ever established on earth! Every other science was old. His science was utterly new, a field untouched. [Sidenote: _Charting Seas and Winds_] He found a mass of log books of American warships. Over these he pondered. He sent hundreds of bottles and buoys to be dropped into the seven seas by fighting craft and merchantmen. These were picked up now and again and came back to him, and from the information sent to him with them, and soundings in thousands of places, added to what he had gleaned in earlier years, he prepared his greatest work. It took ultimate form in a series of six "charts" and eight large volumes of "sailing directions," that comprehended all the waters and winds in all climes, and on every sea where white sails bend and steamer smoke drifts. The charts exhibit, with wonderful accuracy, the winds and currents, their force and direction at different seasons, the calm belts, the trade winds, the rains and storms--the gulf stream, the Japan current--all the great ocean movements; and the sailing directions are treasure chests for seamen. Paths were marked out on the ocean, and a practical result was, that one of the most difficult sea voyages--from New York to San Francisco, around the Horn--was shortened by forty days. It has been estimated that by shortening the time of many sea voyages, Commander Maury has effected a saving of not less than $40,000,000 each year. Of his own work, Maury wrote: