FromDiscoveryto discovery: the hydrology of the Southern Ocean, 1885–1937

Abstract

The work at sea of George Deacon on the RRS William Scoresby and RRS Discovery II between 1927 and 1937 resulted in the publication of “The hydrology of the Southern Ocean” (1937) and a description of the Southern Ocean and the names of its water masses that are still in use. Deacon's interpretations were publicized by Sverdrup, Johnson and Fleming in the text The oceans (1942), but their origin is in earlier work, mainly German, between 1898 and 1922, in which Gerhard Schott, Erich von Drygalski, Alfred Merz, and Georg Wüst, and especially Wilhelm Brennecke, added significantly to knowledge of the meridional circulation of the Atlantic Ocean. Deacon's great contribution was to systematize the physical oceanography of the Southern Ocean and to show that it was part of a global system.