TO PEARL HARBOR - (Cont'd) 



After the war, the Navy resumed its surveying efforts using primarily the Hannibal, the 

 243-foot Nokomis (the former yacht of Horace E. Dodge, which was purchased by the Navy for 

 $510,000 in 1917) and the converted 250-foot steam yacht Niagara, all operating under the 

 direction of the Hydrographic Office. 



In 1921 a major development in oceanographic instrumentation heralded a new dimension 

 of oceanography. Dr. Harvey C. Hayes, a scientist with the U. S. Naval Experimental Station at 

 Fort Trumbull, New London, Connecticut, and later Superintendent of the Sound Division at the 

 Naval Research Laboratory ( a position he held for 25 years), developed the sonic -depth finder. 

 Hayes' depth finder was first. used successfully in 1922 by the destroyer Stewart, which took over 

 900 deep soundings enroute from Newport, Rhode Island to Gibraltar. The following year sonic 

 depth finders were installed on the destroyers Hull and Carry to obtain profiles of the Pacific 

 continental shelf in support of investigations being carried out by the Carnegie Institution in 

 determining the cause of earthquakes. This effort resulted in the publication, in 1923, by the Navy 

 Hydrographic Office of the first bathymetric chart compiled from sonic soundings. In 1925 the 

 Coast and Geodetic Sui-vey ship Lydonia, a 181-foot converted yacht, had installed a sonic-depth 

 finder called "Fathometer" which had been developed by the Submarine Signal Company of 

 Boston and adopted in preference to Hayes' unit. The first bathymetric chart published by the 

 Coast and Geodetic Survey based on sonic soundings was in 1939; it covered the coastal waters 

 between San Diego and Santa Rosa Island, California. It is interesting to note that prior to the 

 development of the sonic depth finder the total recorded soundings greater than 550 fathoms that 

 had been taken from all the ocean basins of the world totaled only about 15,000: an average of 

 only one sounding for each 5,500 square miles in the Atlantic, one for each 10,000 square miles in 

 the Pacific and one for each 10,500 square miles in the Indian Ocean. 



Though progress was being made, the United States' overall efforts in oceanography lagged 

 far behind those of other countries. The 1920s saw a series of extensive government sponsored 

 expeditions being carried out by Germany, Holland, Denmark and England. 



In 1925 the Germans made the first determined effort to extract minerals from the oceans. 

 Fritz Haber, the 1918 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, conceived the idea of extracting enough 

 gold from the sea to pay the German war debt. With optimism running high, the German South 

 Atlantic Expedition was sponsored using the converted 200-foot gunboat Meteor to cross and 

 recross the Atlantic, sampling the water. The venture was abandoned in 1927 when the yield was 

 less than expected and the cost of extraction far greater than the value of the gold obtained. 



In July 1924, at the invitation of the Secretary of the Navy to consider all matters pertaining 

 to a proposed United States Naval expedition for research in oceanography, the first General 

 Conference on Oceanography was held at the Hydrographic Office. Participating in this conference 

 were representatives from the State, Treasury and War Departments and the Carnegie Institution 

 of Washington. Included in the official report of this conference were the following items: 



"It is recommended that a naval vessel or vessels be permanently assigned 

 to oceanographic work. Such vessels should, if practicable, have twin screws and 

 low freeboard and must have a large cruising range. They should have 

 laboratories and sufficient living quarters and cabins comfortably to 

 accommodate the personnel. 



While the above requirements are preferred, the conference desires to state 

 that any suitable vessel or vessels that the Navy Department can assign for this 

 purpose will be acceptable . . . 



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