This post is coauthored by Morgan Black, librarian at the United States Naval Observatory, and Josh Levy, historian of science and technology at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division.
When Maria Mitchell spotted a telescopic comet from the roof of her Nantucket home in 1847, a historic feat that helped make her a national celebrity, the gap between science and poetry was much smaller than it is today. Raised in an inquisitive Quaker family, Mitchell’s interests ranged from astronomy and the natural world to literature and poetry, the latter fed by her day job as a librarian and documented in the journals she filled with verse. In fact, as scholar Renée Bergland writes, in the early nineteenth century science and the humanities were interdependent in a way that “cannot be overemphasized.” That interdependence helps explain both the poetry of Mitchell’s comet and, Bergland argues, her route into a profession that became much more strongly gendered just a few decades later.
Word of Mitchell’s comet quickly spread, and as it did, admirers and colleagues seemed compelled to celebrate the achievement in verse. Her most prestigious honor, a congratulatory medal from the King of Denmark, was itself inscribed with a poem. On one side was a quotation from Virgil’s Georgics, from a passage in which the poet reflects on stargazing’s value to the common citizen. A longer excerpt reads:
Thus can we forecast weather though the sky
Be doubtful, thus the time to reap or sow,
When best to impel the treacherous sea with oars
And launch armadas, when to fell the pine-tree.
For not in vain we watch the constellations,
Their risings and their settings, not in vain
The fourfold seasons of the balanced year.
That sentiment about astronomy’s practicality might have resonated on Maria Mitchell’s Nantucket, an island populated by often-absent whalers and seafarers who relied on celestial navigation to find their way home. It also described the ambitions of a brand-new scientific institution, the Nautical Almanac Office, and its director, Charles Henry Davis. On the hunt for the nation’s top astronomical talent, Davis reached out to Mitchell in August 1849, exactly 175 years ago this month, and offered her a job.
In those years, American seafarers – including the United States Navy – relied on other countries, mainly England, for essential navigational tools. Data used in the formulation of English, German, and French almanacs, the primary navigational resources of the early 19th century, were based on tables developed decades before. With the creation of the Nautical Almanac Office, Mitchell and her colleagues would start from scratch. Data would be newly collected on American soil and calculated by Americans, with results more accurate than anything that came before.
Mitchell’s main assignment was calculating the positions of the planet Venus, a role Davis assigned to her in verse. This time it was a quote from a tragic play by Friedrich Schiller, The Piccolomini. Borrowing from a conversation between the lovers Max and Thekla, Davis joked that Venus brings “everything that’s fair” and then called Mitchell his “only fair assistant,” as all the Almanac’s other roles were occupied by men. A longer excerpt reads:
MAX:
Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth
With man as with their friend, and to the lover
Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky
Shoot influence down: and even at this day
‘Tis Jupiter who brings whate’er is great,
And Venus who brings everything that’s fair!
THEKLA:
And if this be the science of the stars,
I too, with glad and zealous industry,
Will learn acquaintance with this cheerful faith.
The assignment may have come encased in a literary joke, but knowing the position of Venus really was important. Four planets, along with navigational stars, are commonly used for celestial navigation: Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. In order to be useful, a sailor would have to know where in the sky to look for a particular planet or star at any given time. These locations can be calculated based on a series of astronomical observations, so at any given time sailors can calculate where they are at sea if they have a reliable timepiece. At specific intervals, Venus is brighter than any other object in the sky except the Sun and the Moon and can even be seen during the day. Mitchell’s calculations were included in The American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, published annually as America’s first nationally produced astronomical almanac. The almanac was distributed to every U.S. Navy ship, where it informed every navigational decision made.
In time, Mitchell moved on from the Almanac Office to a role as professor of astronomy at Vassar College and as a powerful advocate for women’s rights and women’s scientific education. Her life continued to be commemorated in verse, including in Herman Melville’s 1891 poem “After the Pleasure Party,” which imagines a Mitchell-like figure positioning a “reaching ranging tube… against yon skies.” Her legacy endures in her contributions to astronomy and navigation, and in the careers of her many students. Also, in a nod to the utility of her astronomical calculations, the United States Navy in the 20th century commemorated her work in a somewhat less poetic way – by naming a hulking military cargo ship after her.
For her toil in helping ensure the safety and success of sailors at sea, in 1943, the United States Maritime Commission christened a World War II Liberty ship in Mitchell’s honor. The SS Maria Mitchell was built by the California Shipbuilding Corporation as part of a broader effort to mass-produce low-cost cargo ships for the war effort to replace the many being sunk by German submarines. An average of three Liberty ships a day were built by eighteen American shipyards between 1941 and 1945, with 2,711 Liberty ships completed by the end of the war. The ships were designed to be built quickly and cheaply, with President Franklin Roosevelt often quoted as saying, “I think this ship will do us very well. She’ll carry a good load. She isn’t much to look at, though, is she? A real ugly duckling.”
The first of these ships was named the SS Patrick Henry, after the American Revolutionary War hero famous for declaring “Give me liberty, or give me death.” This spawned the name “Liberty” ships, though there was no plan for how to name the rest of the nearly 3,000 vessels that would come off the new production line. George Washington Carver and Alexander Graham Bell were the two other scientists, along with Mitchell, whose names would eventually grace ships’ hulls.
Though perhaps not the most beautiful, the Liberty ships were, sometimes hastily, adapted to suit their respective missions, whether they carried cargo or troops, or were kitted out as hospital ships or prisoner of war transport vehicles. Two hundred ships were lost to enemy action during World War II, and others lost to design weaknesses that caused them to break in two. By design, the ships were only meant to last five years, but many remained in service for years after in the Reserve Fleet. The SS Maria Mitchell was one of those ships that continued its service. In 1971, likely due to raising costs to operate, the SS Maria Mitchell was finally sold for scrap after 28 years.
Researchers can find much more about the legacy of Maria Mitchell, the Nautical Almanac Office, and the U.S. Naval Observatory in the collections of the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, and in the holdings of the James M. Gilliss Library at the U.S. Naval Observatory.
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“…Renée Bergland writes,” Renée Bergland, Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer Among the American Romantics. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008), 41.
“A longer excerpt reads…” Virgil, The Georgics, L. P. Wilkinson, trans. (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 65.
“A longer excerpt reads…” Among the translators of Schiller’s play was poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose rendering appears here. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Poetical and Dramatic Works of S.T. Coleridge, vol. III (London: William Pickering, 1844), 75-76.
“The almanac was distributed…” The U.S. Navy still maintains a Nautical Almanac Office. The descendants of its 19th century nautical almanac are The Astronomical Almanac and the Nautical Almanac.
“An average of…” For an online resource on the history of the U.S. Merchant Marine during wartime, see: www.usmm.org.
“quoted as saying…” John G. Bunker, Liberty Ships: The Ugly Ducklings of World War II (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1972), 6.