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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 a proposed Atlantic-to-Pacific ship canal route through the Isthmus of Darién, a region also known as the Darién Gap, then located in Colombia (now part of Panama). His expedition was plagued 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.
Notes
- Commander Matthew Fontaine Maury of the United States Naval Observatory pushed hard for this expedition (as he also did with William Lewis Herndon's exploration of the Valley of the Amazon ) to the Secretary of the Navy. His nephew, Lieutenant John Minor Maury, (not to be confused with Lieutenant John Minor Maury, M. F. Maury's eldest brother who died of malaria while in the navy) had been working at the Naval Observatory with his uncle Matthew and was well prepared with both knowledge and equipment. Lieutenant Maury was appointed by Strain as the expedition's 1st assistant-engineer, as well as assistant-astronomer and secretary. Lieutenant Strain later worked on another project for Commander Maury, taking depth "soundings" of the ocean floor of the Atlantic Ocean that were compiled into sea-floor charts.
- The U.S. Naval Observatory was also known as the National Observatory. Both terms 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", the original name given when President John Quincy Adams signed the bill for its creation.
References
- 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
