Neptune's Needle

become a midshipman and did not complete his degree until 1841. From 1824 to 1840 Davis served in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, the West Indies, the South Atlantic, and the Pacific; made warm friends, including Samuel F. Du Pont; searched for mutineers; rounded Cape Horn four times; and nearly perished in a hurricane. In 1829 Davis ranked sixth among the thirty-nine midshipmen who passed their examination that year, and he was commissioned a lieutenant in 1834.

When on leave in Cambridge, Davis studied mathematics with Benjamin Peirce, preparing him for his future scientific pursuits. In 1842, Davis was appointed an assistant in the U.S. Coast Survey and in 1843 was in charge of the hydrography of the coast from Maine to Rhode Island. In trying to discern the laws of tidal action, Davis published two important scientific articles, "A Memoir upon the Geological Action of the Tidal and Other Currents of the Ocean" (Memoirs American Academy 6 [1849]) and "The Law of Deposit of the Flood Tide" (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 3 [1852]). The work of the Coast Survey made apparent the need for a national ephemeris. In July 1849 Davis began work on the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, and its first well-received volume appeared in 1852. Davis's scholarship earned him additional friendships with Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution and Alexander D. Bache of the Coast Survey as well as promotion to commander in 1854.

An assignment from 1856 to 1859 to the Pacific Squadron interrupted Davis's direction of the Nautical Almanac, but even while at sea he continued his scientific work. In 1857 he published his translation from Latin of Karl Friedrich Gauss's Theory of the Motion of the Heavenly Bodies Moving about the Sun in Conic Sections, adding an appendix to that classic work in mathematics and astronomy, originally published in 1809. While in the Pacific waters he translated from French and added his own notes to Charles Marie Philippes de Kerhallet's General Examination of the Pacific Ocean, originally published in 1851. Davis's translation, based on the second edition (1856), was first published in 1861 and became the standard book on navigating the Pacific.

When the Civil War came in 1861, Davis was in Cambridge directing the Nautical Almanac. Ordered to the Navy Department in Washington, he acted as the executive head of the Bureau of Detail, which assigned naval officers and purchased ships. He also served as the secretary of a confidential board of bureau chiefs to advise the secretary of the navy and was the secretary and author of the reports of the Blockade Board that planned naval and military operations on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the Confederacy.

On 18 September 1861 Davis was detached from his Washington duties to equip an expedition to capture Port Royal, South Carolina. He was made fleet captain and chief of staff of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron under the command of his friend Du Pont. Despite a severe storm en route, the 7 November attack on Port Royal was successful, and Davis made a significant contribution with his extensive hydrographic knowledge. Du Pont recognized that, in addition to information, Davis possessed a keen, independent intellect and was unrestrained in expressing his thoughts and convictions. Davis was promoted to captain that same month. On 20 December he was in charge of closing the Charleston Harbor to Confederate traffic by sinking fifteen stone-filled wooden ships.

Returning to Washington in February 1862, Davis assumed command of the Mississippi River Flotilla from 9 May to October 1862. In that capacity, he earned his promotion to commodore on 16 July 1862 and rear admiral on 7 February 1863 by forcing the evacuation of Fort Pillow on 4 June 1862 and two days later destroying the Confederate River Defense Fleet at Memphis and receiving the surrender of that city. Despite Davis's successes, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles replaced him with David Dixon Porter. "Davis," Welles thought, "is more of a scholar than sailor, . . . is an intelligent but not an energetic, driving, fighting officer, . . . is kind and affable, but has not the vim, dash . . . of Porter" (Beale and Brownsword, vol. 1, p. 158).

Welles believed that Davis's intellectual and administrative capabilities could best be utilized in the Navy Department, where from November 1862 to April 1865 Davis headed the Bureau of Navigation. He was largely responsible for the origin of that bureau, which included all the navy's scientific departments and its academy. As part of this new bureau, Davis created an independent Hydrographic Office. During these years he served on numerous boards, including the permanent commission with Henry and Bache that advised the department on all questions concerning science and art and suggested a National Academy of Sciences, which was established in 1863.

At the close of the Civil War, Davis left the Bureau of Navigation to return fully to science as the superintendent of the Naval Observatory. In 1866 he prepared a public document reviewing all the surveys of possible railway and canal routes connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which became the standard reference for early surveys and expeditions. From 1867 until 1869 Davis was ordered to sea as the commander in chief of the Brazil Station, and for three years, beginning in 1870, he was commander of the Norfolk Navy Yard, where as a Yankee in Virginia he felt as isolated as if he had been at sea. In 1874 Davis returned as superintendent of the Naval Observatory, where he prepared both its and the navy's display for the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. His edited Narrative of the North Polar Expedition U.S. Ship "Polaris," Captain Charles Francis Hall was published in 1876. He died in Washington, having worked at the Naval Observatory the previous day.

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Peter Richards