It's striking how enthusiastic Carey Wilson is in praising Matthew Fontaine Maury. This film tells the story of a naval officer—identified as Tom Neal—whose life changes when he’s hurt in a stagecoach mishap, leading to a career spent at a desk surrounded by nautical maps and charts. He starts out feeling down about his situation but quickly finds that he's good at understanding tides, currents, and winds, and figuring out how they affect ships. Despite facing doubt from others, he ends up going to Europe during the Civil War, representing the Confederacy—he was a Virginian. After the war, because he wasn’t included in the general pardon, he had to spend quite some time before being allowed back home, where he began lecturing. He played a major role in making sea travel safer and planning better routes for both shipping and underwater cables; however, I imagine even he would be embarrassed by the narration's excessive praise, which nearly attributes the invention of wind to him.

Source on TMDB