FOREWORD XVU 



times did the dredging rope part with loss of gear before the ship 

 reached Lisbon, her first port of call. 



Here the King of Portugal paid a visit to the ship, being the 

 first of many personalities who were to interest themselves in 

 the fascinating work of the Challenger. 



After sailing from Lisbon the expedition's luck changed and 

 soon the sounding, dredging, trawling and the taking of water 

 samples and temperatures became routine work. No fewer than 

 3 6 2 of these stations were made during the course of the world 

 voyage; at each of such stations sail was shortened, for it was 

 necessary to navigate under steam to keep the vessel up to the 

 sounding line so that a true vertical distance to the sea-bed should 

 be measured. 



To avoid sudden jerks on the one-inch Italian hemp line which 

 was used for sounding this was rove from the deck engine through 

 a leading block slung from the foreyard before descending to the 

 depths. The leading block was secured to the foreyard by a so- 

 called accumulator composed of twenty stout india-rubber ropes, 

 each being passed through individual holes in two large wooden 

 discs to keep them separated. These accumulators were capable 

 of considerable stretch and took up the violent motions of the 

 heaving and pitching vessel without transmitting them to the 

 sounding line. 



In the early days of the cruise there would be a great concourse 

 on deck each time the dredge or trawl broke surface to watch the 

 naturalists attacking the formidable task of sorting hundreds of 

 specimens of marine life which scattered the deck, or lay con- 

 cealed in the grey or reddish ooze from the seafloor — fish of 

 strange colours and shapes, deep-sea corals, sponges, starfish, 

 deep-sea worms and sea urchins and many more, some large and 

 obvious, others small and obscure, to be searched for with sieve 

 and niicroscope. But soon this work became boring in the ex- 

 treme to those handling the ship or working the winches during 

 the day-long task of bringing one haul from the depths. Only 

 Wyville Thomson and one or two of his assistants would be there 

 at nightfall to see their treasures tippled from the net, or, as on 

 one or two miserable and notorious occasions, to see the trawl 

 ropes part just as a heavy catch was raised clear of the water, 

 allowing a mass of life to sink back into the ocean before their 



