Page:Brief Sketch of Work of Matthew Fontaine Maury 1861-65.pdf/32

 Meantime Captain Maury was most diligently employed in London, under the order of the Navy Department in developing and improving his system, afforded by the workshops and laboratories there for experiment and construction. Here he continued during 1863 and 1864, pursuing these researches, perfecting many valuable inventions, and instruments with signal success. He reported to the Secretary of the Navy at home, so far as it was safe to do so, by whom results were passed on to officers in charge for their instruction and guidance and shipping continuously to the department supplies of insulated wire, exploders, and other inventions and devices whose object was to increase the destructiveness of the torpedo and to test it continually without removing it. In the spring of 1865, he sailed for Galveston with the most powerful and perfect equipment of electric torpedo material ever assembled. Great results were confidently expected from this armament, but before he reached Havana news arrived of General Lee's surrender.

But his experience and study and his scientific renown had now made him the leading authority in this new weapon of war mainly perfected by him. He was also now relieved from the seal of secrecy hitherto imposed upon him, so that when a year afterwards he returned to Europe he felt himself at liberty to impart to the sovereign there the secret of his discoveries concerning his new made science. Most of the European powers sent representatives to his school of instruction—and all of them have built built upon his beginnings, the most powerful branch of their naval armaments.

To France he first imparted his secret and the Emperor witnessed the experiment and himself closed the circuit and exploded a torpedo placed in the Seine, near St. Cloud, to the perfect satisfaction of all. Russia,