A Voyage of Discovery
HMS Challenger’s mission, as laid out by the Royal Society, was four-fold: to investigate the physical conditions of the deep sea in the great ocean basins; to determine the chemical composition of seawater at various depths from the surface to the bottom; to ascertain the physical and chemical character of deep-sea deposits and their sources; and to investigate the distribution of organic life at different depths and on the sea floor. In these endeavors the scientists aboard – with the aid of the Royal Navy’s labor – succeeded admirably, to the limits of their equipment. To this day oceanographic missions continue to expand on the revelations of Challenger, trawling the deep for knowledge of the seas.
Challenger’s voyage took her around the globe, from the modern ports of Europe and Asia to tiny barely charted islands and almost within sight of Antarctica. Along the way her crew took 492 deep sea soundings (dropping a measured rope to determine depth), dredged the bottom in 133 places, sampled water temperature and composition 263 times, and discovered roughly 4,700 new marine species. Perhaps their most famous discovery was the Challenger Deep, an area near Guam at the southern end of the Mariana Trench which is now known as the deepest place on the planet. Challenger’s sounding there was almost 27,000 feet; subsequent missions have confirmed portions of the Deep to be over 35,000 feet below the surface.
Challenger called on many ports that were unusual to Englishmen of the time, and her scientific crew used the opportunities to add to their knowledge. At Hawaii, a team from the ship ascended Kilauea, taking a photograph of the active volcanic crater. During rest and refitting in Australia, several of Challenger’s naturalists took time to observe and sketch local fauna in their native habitats, including koalas and platypuses.
