WATER BOTTLES AND THERMOMETER FRAMES 



The water bottles used on the Carnegie for the rou- 

 tine collection of water samples were of the Nansen type 

 manufactured by Bergen Nautik. This type of bottle con- 

 sists of a hollow brass cylinder equipped with valves, 

 one in each end. The valves are operated synchronously 

 by means of a connecting rod which is attached to the 

 clamp that secures the bottle to the cable. When the 

 bottle is sent down, this clamp is at the lower end of the 

 bottle, the upper end being held to the cable by a pin. 

 When the bottle is in this position the valves are open. 

 The cable is paid out Until the bottle reaches the level 

 from which a sample is desired. Then a concentric cy- 

 lindrical brass weight called a messenger is placed on 

 the cable and released from the surface. The messen- 

 ger slides down the cable to the bottle where it trips a 

 trigger, pulls the holding pin and thus releases the upper 

 end of the bottle from the cable. The bottle falls over 

 and in so doing closes the valves in either end; the 

 valves are locked in the closed position by a spring, and 

 the desired sample is trapped in the bottle. Figure 1 

 shows a Nansen water bottle. Normally a series of sev- 

 e -al bottles are placed on the cable at intervals along its 

 length for a single cast. In such a case a messenger is 

 placed on the cable just below each bottle (except the 

 lowest) and temporarily held in place by a short chain, 

 the last link of which is attached to the bottle by means 

 of a spring pin. After the surface messenger releases 

 the upper end of the first bottle, it slides on down the 

 cable to the lower end of the bottle where it releases the 

 attached messenger which, in turn, continues down the 

 cable. The process is repeated at each bottle. The bot- 

 tle is also equipped with an air valve, a stopcock, and a 

 removable frame suitable for holding two deep-sea re- 

 versing thermometers. For further description of the 

 Nansen type water bottle see Helland-Hansen and Nan- 

 sen (1926). 



The Nansen bottles used on the Carnegie were tinned 

 and the exterior painted white. Because of the absorp- 

 tion of dissolved oxygen by tinned brass (see Knudsen, 

 1923) the tabulated oxygen values are possibly somewhat 

 too low but are comparable with all but the most recent 

 observations in which silver lined collecting bottles have 

 been used. 



Large water bottles such as the Allen and Meteor 

 types, described respect'vely by Allen (1927) and WOst 

 (1926), were used infrequently at shallow depths for the 

 collection of microplankton. 



An instrument which it was thought would be of 

 great usefulness is a small light reversing water bottle 

 for use on the bottom sampling line to obtain water sam- 

 ples and temperatures from the layers immediately 

 above the bottom. (See fig. 2). Such bottles originally 

 were manufactured by Bergen Nautik for the Carnegie 

 but arrived on board just prior to the disaster and so 

 were not tried out. They operated on the propeller prin- 

 ciple described below in connection with thermometer 

 reversing frames. Their capacity was 300 ccm and their 

 weight 2.32 kg without thermometers. 



Thermometer reversing frames, such as the one 

 shown in figure 3, were used at the end of the bottom 

 sampling piano wire attached to the di'ift line about 20 

 meters from the end. Equipped with a protected and with 

 an unprotected thermometer, the arrangement was used 

 to determine the depth at which bottom samples were 

 taken, and at the same time it gave measurements of the 

 temperature close to the bottom. The frame containing 

 the thermometers was hinged off center and held in posi- 

 tion by a threaded pin which was withdrawn by the action 

 of a small propeller when the line was being hauled in. 

 Experiments near the surface indicated that upward mo- 

 tion through the water over a distance of about 25 meters 

 served to reverse the thermometers. 



LITERATURE CITED 



Allen, W. E. 1927. An improved closing bottle for sub- 

 surface sampling of fluids. Science, 65, pp. 66-67. 



Helland-Hansen, B. and F. Nansen. 1926. The eastern 

 North Atlantic. Geofys. Pub., 4, no. 2, p. 6. 



Knudsen, M. 1923. Some new oceanographical instru- 

 ments. Conseil Perm. Internat. Expl. Mer., Pub. 

 Circ. no. 77, pp. 10-12. 



Wiist, G. 1926. Bericht uber die Ozeanographischen 

 Untersuchungen. 2. Gesellsch. Erdk., Berlin, no. 1, 

 p. 28. 



