The Endless Search 

 G. E. R. Deacon 



Matthew Fontaine Maury. 



The scientific exploration of the oceans, even more than the 

 record of geographical exploration, is a history of personal achieve- 

 ments. It is a record of men wanting to find things out for them- 

 selves rather than of any widespread public demand for knowledge. 

 The seas are still not as accessible to science as we would like, 

 partly because ships are very expensive to run, and largely because 

 mariners and other professional men of the sea are not sufficiently 

 convinced of the need to know more about the sea's' forces and 

 motions, in which they are hourly concerned. 



We have never had to wait very long for some enthusiast to give 

 the work a new turn or thrust, but we are still only on the threshold 

 of a real understanding of the inner workings of the ocean. As 

 President Kennedy of the United States said in March 1 961, "knowl- 

 edge of the oceans is no longer a matter of curiosity, our very 

 survival may hinge upon it." It is difficult to urge the need for a 

 new and more intensive approach without risk of minimizing the 

 value of what generations of careful seamen and quite a number of 

 enthusiastic scientists have done, but what is now required is the 

 determined application of theoretical and practical techniques as 

 advanced as those of any other branch of science, and technical 

 exploitation of the ocean on as large a scale as the major operations 

 in the Antarctic and our rush into space. 



An international maritime congress led by the American naval 

 officer Matthew F. Maury in the mid-i8oos resulted in systematic 

 collection of information on winds and currents all over the world, 

 and it was the start of our meteorological offices. The wind and 

 current maps resulting from these observations shortened the ocean 

 passages of sailing ships by as much as one third, and also made 

 them safer. Even though the need to find the quickest and safest 

 routes for ships to follow was widely acknowledged, some mariners 

 were reluctant to help collect data. One of the earliest meteoro- 

 logical registers received in 1855 says: "remarks not so full or 

 complete as I would have wished" . . . "most of my officers being 

 members of what is called the old school cannot or will not see the 

 utility of bothering themselves (as they term it) with these new 

 affairs." 



Oceanographers today, if they are lucky, have their own research 

 ships in which they can stay and work in the same bit of ocean for 

 weeks on end if the work requires it, but often they find it difficult 

 to persuade the sailors that they ought not to be "going some- 

 where." We are now attacking problems more complex than those 

 of a century ago, such as predicting day-to-day changes in wave 

 conditions and currents. Although the practical rewards are neither 

 so obvious or immediate — nor at first sight so spectacular as they 

 were in the days of sailing ships — the results we are obtaining are 

 accurate and reliable enough to be immediately useful to the com- 

 munity. 



The research ship Atlantis, belonging to the Woods Hole Ocean- 

 ographic Institution in Massachusetts, has sailed more than one 

 and a quarter million miles (equal to fifty times around the world) 

 since she was launched in 1931. Built of steel, she is 142 feet overall 

 with a beam of 29 feet, and she is rigged as a ketch with a mainmast 

 of 1 1 2 feet. Powered by a 400 horsepower Diesel engine, she can 

 carry her complement of nineteen officers and men at a speed of 

 nine knots. The Atlantis has been used extensively for studying 



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