THE NEW SHIP 



Such observations are somewhat laborious, and in order that 

 they may not hold up other survey w^ork, they must go forward in 

 any weather, day or night. To keep the ship head to wind and 

 the wire vertical the officer in charge needs to be fully alert, and 

 it may take up to five hours to complete all the observations at 

 a station in deep water of 25^00 fathoms or so. It is recorded that 

 on 24th November, 1932, a standard series of temperature and 

 salinity observations was obtained while a strong west-nor'-west 

 wind was blowing, causing the ship to roll up to 2^ degrees, but 

 that the ship lay very well with main try-sail set and her engines 

 turning slow ahead, with an occasional kick of half ahead to 

 straighten her when she tended to fall off the wind. Challenger 

 carried a fore-sail and a try-sail, probably the last naval vessel to 

 carry sail. 



Perhaps it was after such an occasion that a tot of gin found its 

 way into one of the samples before they were despatched for 

 analysis in England, but the chemist was up to his work, for he 

 sent a note back to say that further sampling at this particular 

 station should augment the wardroom wine stocks. 



And so Challenger occupied 'bottling stations' for many long 

 hours during her passages in the Atlantic during the next few years. 



Modifications had been made to the Challenger deep echo 

 sounding set, and on passage across the Atlantic soundings were 

 obtained with ease at depths down to 2^80 fathoms. Even today 

 there are very few vessels fitted with sounding sets recording 

 more than 600 fathoms; so it is upon research vessels, survey 

 vessels and telegraph cable ships that hydrographers rely to obtain 

 data on the topography of the ocean bed, the average depth of 

 which throughout the world is about 2700 fathoms. When 

 obtained, much of this deep sea sounding information is passed 

 by member states to the International Hydrographic Bureau at 

 Monaco, which maintains a world series of bathymetric charts 

 depicting the complex topography of the floor of the world's 

 oceans. It is when looking at the few lines of soundings across the 

 vast areas comprising the oceans that one realises how much there 

 is to be learnt about such a large part of the earth's surface. 



