Abstract
HER Majesty's ship Challenger was despatched towards the close of the year 1872, round the world, on a surveying and discovery expedition of a very special character. Her principal object as laid down in her instructions was to determine, as far as possible, the physical and biological conditions of the great ocean basins, the Atlantic, the Southern Sea, and the Pacific. The voyage was undertaken, as we have already said in our short biographical sketch of Prof. Wyville Thomson, chiefly in consequence of remarkable discoveries made during the four previous years, in short cruises, in H.M. gunboats Lightning and Porcupine, liberally detached by the Admiralty, at the instance of the Royal Society, for scientific research, under the direction of Dr. Carpenter, C.B., F.R.S., Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys, F.R.S., and Prof. Wyville Thomson, F.R.S. These discoveries seemed so important, not merely in a purely scientific point of view, but also in their bearings on ocean-telegraphy, that the Government determined to follow them up by a deep-sea survey on a more extended scale.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
The Cruise of the “Challenger” . Nature 14, 93–105 (1876). https://doi.org/10.1038/014093a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/014093a0
This article is cited by
-
135 years of global ocean warming between the Challenger expedition and the Argo Programme
Nature Climate Change (2012)