Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1924-02-03


away now strongly. now family,
comes the distant boom of hidden
breakers. dashing madly over a shoal
20 plunge headlong against 4 rock
bound line Of coast.
Within the dimly lighted pilot house
mariner bends over his chart,
studying its tiny symbols, IT'S intri-
cate contour lines. A dot on that
chart which lies a fraction of an inch
from where 1t should be, line
which wavers ever SO slightly from it's
correct path, means death for him
and destruction of his ship and crew.
He leans far out of the pilot house,
straining for the voice of his leads
man chanting the depths, and so thick
Is the night that the plunging bow
of his own vessel is lost In the dark
ness ahead. But family he hears.
the toliing OF bell buoy. He turns
quickly to the chart and finds its
location. An order TO the heImsman,
who twirls the spokes If the wheel,
and the vessel changes her course
and plunges forward VITO the thick
blackness of the STORM.
The mariner turns again 10 his
chart. to slowly feel his way through
the storm and into the harbor which
lies beyond the tret,cherous shoals
and the jutting peaks of buried rock.
There's romance there--romance
which. to the men about whom it
centers, is lost by the very constancy
OF its presence, but which to those
OF us ashore retains a never-failing
freshness and vitality.
But the real romance, the real
thrill, the story worth the telling,
lies in the men who sailed ahead of
the mariner with his trusty chart
the men who maize the charts! For
while the marinsr has been the ira
ditionaI hero of 'he sea, the unsung
heroes, the real heroes, are the men
who every day dare what the mariner
dares only under the stress of urgent
necessity; who sailed uncharted seas
that the mariner might come after
them; the men who plot the ever
changing roads of the sea with pen
and ink, who measure the strength
of the oceans currents with mathe-
NAUTICAL eXactness, who comb the bot
tom of the sea for jutting crags of
buried mountains, and write them
down that the mariner who follows
may not strike and pile his ship into
u thousand floating fragments.
Such are the men of the United
States coast and geodetic survey of
the Department of Commerce. They
are real pioneers, who go ahead and
blaze trail for the commerce of a
nation to follow. And though the
coast and geodetic survey now nears
the end OF its 1OSth year of service,
its men have never made an error
which resulted in the loss of human
life. Such men make no mistakes.
1t is their sacred creed to be correct.
Their work guides those who go down
TO the sea in ships, that they may
return to port unframed. Without
them and the charts they make, every
port along the coast would be as
effectively closed to maritime COM
feet of dreadnaughts.
TN the library Of the coast and
geodetic survey in Washington is
a map, made about 1900 by Juan de Ia
casa, Columbus pilot on his second
voyage, who attempted to portray the
newly discovered lands which were
10 bring such wealth and prestige to
his Spanish sovereign. The map is
crude. it is full Of autographed err
rors, and there are symbols which at
tempt to depict the malignant forces
endowed with living attributes which !
inspired terror in the minds of the J
superstitious sailors of that period I
who ventured beyond the limits Of |
known waters. And, though the mis- |
takes and the strange fancies of old |
beliefs shown in that map may bring |!
r. smile. it is a smile tempered with q
wholesome respect and admiration for |
the man who dared what others fear !
ed to undertake.
But while the map drawn by Column |
bus pilot brings a romantic picture, |
compare 1t with chart Of today. The |
modern chart lacks pictures of sea !
monsters and dragons, but in their |.
place are tiny arrows, and numbers, |
and wavering contour lines, and SYM |
Dols Each arrow on this chart desig- |
mates current, its direction and |
speed; the lines and numbers show |
he depth Of the water; the symbols
convey with mathematical precision
the location of menaces to naviga-
tion of every sort, and tho guide
posts by which those menaces may
be avoided.
And behind each little symbol on
this chart there lies a story Of pri-
walton and hardship, of long years Of
study In preparation for a given task,
OF courage and resourcefulness and
patient, scientific observation In car
Sying 1t through.
Which Is the more romantic and
which the most deserving of admira-
ton?
The life Of a nation depends upon
those tiny arrows and those contour
lines. The farmer In the middle west
who relies upon foreign sources for
a.s fsrrIlizer and the exporters in
New York owe their livelihood to the
mon who make the charts
Who are these men and what are
they doing today? The coast and
Eeodetio surveys officers at sea are
nharting the routes OF commerce
wherever the American flag rules.
Taey arc men OF a type and mold.
Refreshments Of their service call for
graduates of engineering colleges
who throughout the course have stood
in the upper half Of their classes.
Thsy arc trained engineers, and ton
to dfteen years at sea furnishes them