We live in an amazing world in which new species seem to be discovered every month. Recent reported discoveries include new species of frogs, lemurs, monkeys, spiders, crickets, snakes and many others.
The great age of discovery was that of the Victorians who sent out expeditions to most of the known world and to some of the unknown. And it was on this day in 1872 that one of the most famous expeditions, the Challenger Expedition, set sail from Portsmouth on the first global marine research expedition which, at its conclusion, was said to have contributed ‘the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’.
Promoted and ultimately led by Charles Wyville Thomson of Edinburgh University, the Admiralty loaned the expedition HMS Challenger, a 2,137 ton, 21 gun, steam-assisted corvette. The ship was specially modified for the expedition and had all but two of its guns and some spars removed. Extra cabins, laboratories and a special dredging platform were installed. She was loaded with a variety of equipment including trawls and dredges, sounding leads and devices to collect sediment from the sea bed and a total of 181 miles of hemp rope. Some of her scientific equipment was invented or specially modified for the purpose.
Challenger carried a total of 243 officers, crew and scientists for her 1,606-day voyage on which 713 days were spent at sea and which covered nearly 69,000 nautical miles. In this time, the scientists carried out hundreds of deep sea soundings, bottom dredges, open water trawls and water temperature observations. By the time she returned to the UK, around 4,800 new species of marine life had been discovered.
We may never know how many species there are in the world, but there are close to two million that have been named and recorded. It is to expeditions like the Challenger one that we owe much of our information though, as we know, many more are discovered every month.
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The great age of discovery was that of the Victorians who sent out expeditions to most of the known world and to some of the unknown. And it was on this day in 1872 that one of the most famous expeditions, the Challenger Expedition, set sail from Portsmouth on the first global marine research expedition which, at its conclusion, was said to have contributed ‘the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’.
Promoted and ultimately led by Charles Wyville Thomson of Edinburgh University, the Admiralty loaned the expedition HMS Challenger, a 2,137 ton, 21 gun, steam-assisted corvette. The ship was specially modified for the expedition and had all but two of its guns and some spars removed. Extra cabins, laboratories and a special dredging platform were installed. She was loaded with a variety of equipment including trawls and dredges, sounding leads and devices to collect sediment from the sea bed and a total of 181 miles of hemp rope. Some of her scientific equipment was invented or specially modified for the purpose.
Challenger carried a total of 243 officers, crew and scientists for her 1,606-day voyage on which 713 days were spent at sea and which covered nearly 69,000 nautical miles. In this time, the scientists carried out hundreds of deep sea soundings, bottom dredges, open water trawls and water temperature observations. By the time she returned to the UK, around 4,800 new species of marine life had been discovered.
We may never know how many species there are in the world, but there are close to two million that have been named and recorded. It is to expeditions like the Challenger one that we owe much of our information though, as we know, many more are discovered every month.
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