Isaac Strain

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Isaac G. Strain was born March 4, 1821, in Roxbury, Pennsylvania, of Scots-Irish origin and died May 14, 1857, in Aspinwall, Colombia. In 1838 he joined the U.S. Navy to apprentice at sea and become a midshipman. His inclination toward exploration culminated in 1853 when as a lieutenant he received orders from Secretary of the Navy James C. Dobbin to command a U.S. Darién Exploring Expedition. Leading a country at peace and in exercise of a manifest destiny to expand, U. S. President Franklin Pierce envisioned a survey and mapping of an Atlantic-to-Pacific ship canal route through the Isthmus of Darién, a region also known as the Darién Gap, located in Panama, Central America.

His expedition was depreciated by malnourishment, footsores, flesh-embedding parasites and infectious tropical diseases resulting in the deaths of six of his party of twenty-seven. Strain's exploration of the topography and geography of the area contributed to the 1914 linking of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Panama Canal.

[edit] Notes

Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury of the United States Naval Observatory pushed hard for this expedition (as he also did with William Lewis Herndon exploring the Valley of the Amazon ) to the Secretary of the Navy. Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury was the man behind these scenes pushing for expeditions, and the many reasons for the expeditions. His nephew, Lieutenant John Minor Maury, (not to be confused with Lieutenant John Minor Maury who was Matthew Fontaine Maury's eldest brother who died of malaria while in the navy) who had been working at the U.S. Naval Observatory (aka National Observatory) with his uncle Matthew was well prepared with both knowledge and equipment. Lieutenant John Minor Maury(nephew of M F Maury) was the expedition's 1st assistant-engineer, whom Strain appointed, as well as assistant-astronomer, and secretary, having obtained sufficient knowledge within the last ten years of his high capacity in each department at the US Naval Observatory. Lieutenant Isaac G. Strain also had worked under the superintendent, Matthew Fontaine Maury, at the US Naval Observatory, taking depth "soundings" of the ocean floor of the Atlantic Ocean that were compiled into sea-floor charts by Commander M F Maury

Naval and National both were used for ten years until an order was finally passed down to use Naval Observatory. This is why many old writings of that time use "National Observatory", since that is what it was originally intended to be and was as U.S. President John Quincy Adams signed the bill for it.

[edit] References

Joel Tyler Headley b.1813"http://www.famousamericans.net/joeltylerheadley/ "

In a series of articles in "Harper's Magazine, J. T. Headley, a well-known author of many works, first described the adventures of Lieutenant Strain's party, which was sent by the United States government to explore a route for a canal across the isthmus of Darien. These three articles were reissued in a volume in 1885. Here is the _original_ transcribed more than a decade ago, "http://home.hot.rr.com/maury/Darien/ "

Todd Balf, The Darkest Jungle: The True Story of The Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect The Seas, 2003, Crown Publishers, New York, ISBN 0-609-60989-0