United States Navy use of Hydrometer 1800s

The Brussels Conference of 1853 recommended the systematic use of the hydrometer at sea. Captain John Rodgers, Lieutenant Porter, and Dr. William Ruschenberger, all of the United States Navy did this as did Dr. Raymond, in the American steamer Golden Age, and Captain Toynbee, of the English East Indiaman the Gloriana. All of these men returned valuable observations with the hydrometer. Captain Rodgers afforded the most extended series. Those navigators who used the hydrometer systematically, carefully, and quietly enlarged the bounds of our knowledge and fields of research. Those observations led to the discovery of new relations of the sea. In the physical works of the universe there was no compensation to be found that is more exquisite or beautiful than that which, by means of this little instrument, has been discovered in the sea between its salts, the air, and the sun.

The observations made with it by Captain Rodgers, on board the "Vincennes", (first United States warship to circumnavigate the globe) showed that the specific gravity of sea water varies but little in the trade-wind regions, notwithstanding the change of temperature. The temperature was a little greater in the southeast trade-wind region of the Pacific; less in the Atlantic. But, though the sea at the equatorial borders of the trade-wind belt is some 20° or 25° warmer than it is on the polar edge, yet the specific gravity of its waters at the two places in the Atlantic differs but little. Though the temperature of the water was noted, his observations on its specific gravity have not been corrected for temperature.

The object which the Brussels Organization had in view when the specific gravity column was introduced into the sea-journal was that hydrographers might find in it data for computing the dynamical force which the sea derives for its currents from the difference in the specific gravity of its waters in different climes. The Brussels Conference held, and rightly held, that a given difference as to specific gravity between the water in one part of the sea and the water in another would give rise to certain currents, and that the set and strength of these currents would be the same, whether such difference of specific gravity arose from difference of temperature or difference of saltiness, or both.