H.M.S. Challenger and the Development of Marine Science

Abstract

The existence of marine science is commonly believed to date from the great Challenger Expedition which sailed in 1872. Indeed John Young Buchanan, the Expedition's chemist, held that oceanography started on one particular day in 1873, the day of Challenger's Station I when she first dredged in the depths of the North Atlantic south of Tenerife. In fact, as anyone who has read Margaret Deacon's Scientists and the Sea knows very well, marine science has grown gradually over the centuries, at rates depending on individuals and the environment in which they found themselves.