John Mercer Brooke
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John Mercer Brooke (18 December 1826 – 14 December 1906) was an American sailor, engineer, scientist, and educator.
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[edit] Overview
John Mercer Brooke was born in Florida and died in Virginia. He descends from General Hugh Mercer of the American Revolutionary War.
John's father was an army officer, General George Mercer Brooke, who died in San Antonio, Texas. He was a kinsman of General Dabney Herndon Maury as well as the three men being related to Virginia governor Robert Brooke (Virginia). About 1795, Robert Brooke built his home upon Federal Hill, which looks over Sandy Bottom to Marye's Heights.
Lieutenant Brooke worked for many years with Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury in the United States Naval Observatory (USNO), charting the stars as well as assisting in taking soundings of the ocean's bottom to determine the shape of the bottom. Many believed the sea floor was flat but attempted soundings of the past in blue water (deep sea) as far as eleven miles could not find the ocean bottom. Part of this was due to powerful under currents far below, rivers in the ocean traveling in various directions. In the struggles with soundings, which nobody had done anything of value at great depths it was after Maury's failure with a unique device he invented that gave Brooke an idea of taking deep sea soundings. Brooke perfected a "deep sea sounding device" which was always used afterwards by navies of the world until modern times and modern equipment replaced it. Working together on this project of many trials, Maury wanted to add a sea floor "core sampling device" which Brooke was able to invent.
The outcome was a cannonball with a hollow tube through the center of it -- a tube coated with tallow on the inside and other experimental materials until the right coating was decided so as not to contaminate the samples of the sea floor brought up several miles. Studying this sea floor material with his microscope, Maury saw something that fascinated him. For further examination and a professional opinion (in Maury's own words) ". . . a part was sent for examination to Professor Bailey, Jacob Whitman Bailey , professor of chemistry, mineralogy and geology at the United States Military Academy — eminent microscopist. The latter, in November, 1853, thus responded: "I am greatly obliged to you for the deep soundings you sent me last week, and I have looked at them with great interest. They are exactly what I have wanted to get hold of. The bottom of the ocean at the depth of more than two miles I hardly hoped ever to have a chance of examining; yet, thanks to Brooke’s contrivance, we have it clean and free from grease, so that it can at once be put under the microscope. I was greatly delighted to find that all these deep soundings are filled with microscopic shells; not a particle of sand or gravel exists in them. They are chiefly made up of perfect little calcareous shells Foraminifera and contain, also, a small number of siliceous shells Diatomacæ ..... "
[edit] Telegraph
The inference in all of this is that the area where the samples came from was the "telegraphic plateau" as called by Maury who had sent out ships to sound those depths at two hundred mile intervals from Newfoundland to Ireland. Maury had charted the underwater mountain ridge. The microscopic organisms left the sea floor on this "telegraphic plateau" were deep and soft so that the area was that of a long mountain chain with the top of those underwater mountains having a firm and soft coating of these dead organisms. This meant that the area was deep enough that no ship's anchor nor any fisherman's net would drag the area. The fact that there was no abrasion on these minute organisms meant that there were no strong currents in that area at that depth. Soon after publishing this, Cyrus West Field wrote to Maury of the USNO on the feasibility of laying a transatlantic cable and was given a positive reply and later details explanation face to face. Cyrus Field also contacted Samuel Morse regarding the feasibility of transmitting an electric current a distance of 1600 miles underwater. Again, Field was given an affirmative and soon visited Morse. Cyrus Field continued contacting these two men, Maury and Morse, gathering all possible information and offered them shares in his great adventure that would become a reality in 1858 when the Queen of England spoke to President Buchanan through the transatlantic cable.
Had it not been for Brooke's deep sea and core sampling device, the world would have had to wait on charting the floors of the undersea world and would not have had the undersea trans-atlantic cable for generations to come.
[edit] Confederate States of America
In the film, Gods and Generals, at Mossneck Plantation owned by the Corbin family, Little Janie Corbin's aunt Kate Corbin is introduced. Kate married Alexander Swift "Sandie" Pendleton who is also introduced in that film. During the Civil War, Sandie was kia in 1864. Commander John Mercer Brooke who had joined the CSA married Kate Corbin and they are buried side by side in the Lexington, Virginia cemetery. The tombstone is flat on the top and it has four sides and stands about three feet high with the names and dates. All of this is true. Diana Fontaine Maury-Corbin (daughter of Matthew Fontaine Maury) of "Farley Vale" that was mentioned married Major Spotswood Wellford Corbin, who became a POW but was soon released as the war ended.
[edit] Sources
- John Mercer Brooke Photo of Commander J. M. Brooke #: NH 58902
- 1855 edition of Physical Geography of the Sea by Matthew Fontaine Maury of the United States Naval Observatory
- Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist of the Sea (1969) by Frances Leigh Williams.
- [1] History of the Atlantic Cable and Undersea Communications
- [2] PBS - American Experience - The Great Trans-atlantic Cable.
- [3] Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars by General Dabney Herndon Maury.
