navy-yard and forts should be established at Memphis and Pensacola," and wrote:—"Pensacola and some point in Georgia, or on the Eastern Coast of Florida, cannot be too strongly fortified or too well supplied now with all the imperishable articles on the lists of outfits for shipping, with implements and instruments of war. They would be to the Gulf of Mexico and the West Indies what Gibraltar is to the Mediterranean and the Levant.
"There our vessels might rendezvous and thence hold the enemy in check. For them our merchant vessels, when pursued, would shape their course, and find safety in the strength of these two points. . . . In our present unprotected state, and without the above-mentioned defenses, all the immense wealth which is poured into and out of the Gulf of Mexico, as through a funnel, would be at the mercy of an enemy." In the same paper Maury advocated the establishment of a naval school for midshipmen, "that they might there be instructed in the higher duties of their profession," and urged the use of regular textbooks. This paper led to the building of forts at Key West and the Tortugas, and to the establishment of a naval school at Annapolis, Maryland, and the use of his (Maury's) 'Navigation' as a text-book there.
In a paper entitled "The Navy and the West," published in the Southern Literary Messenger of January 1843, Maury insisted upon the advantages which would accrue "from the building of a dock and navy yard and school of instruction for naval engineers at Memphis, so that they might be ready to understand and control the steam power which was beginning to be adopted as a motive power in the Navy."
The Memphis Eagle and Enquirer said of him, on April 9th, 1859:—"If there has been no occasion heretofore to ask the question, it is not out of place now to inquire, To whose exertions are we chiefly indebted for the establishment of the
