Challenger Expedition

 The HMS Challenger was a fairly typical steam-assisted Royal Navy corvette when it was launched in 1858.  For the first fourteen years of its life, it served a routine existence.  It was initially assigned to the North America and West Indies Station, taking part in operations against Mexico in 1862.  From 1866 until 1870, it served as the flagship of the Australia Station, leading a punitive operation against Fijian natives in 1868 for the murder of a missionary.  In 1871, the ship returned to Britain for the first time since its launching.  Meanwhile, the Scottish naturalist Charles Wyville Thomson had been engaged in pioneering oceanographic work, showing that animal life existed in depths of up to 650 fathoms.  Thomson persuaded the British Government and the Royal Navy to make the now-idle Challenger available for an unprecedented oceanographic voyage.  All but two of hers guns were removed and her spars were reduced.  Laboratories were installed and a special dredging platform was constructed.  Scientific equipment and supplies were loaded, including trawls, dredges, sounding leads, thermometers, and water sampling bottles.  She carried 181 miles of Italian hemp.  The reconfigured HMS Challenger departed Portsmouth on December 21, 1872, returning to Spithead on May 24, 1876.  During her 41-month voyage, the Challenger sailed 68,890 nautical miles.  It conducted 492 deep sea soundings, in the process discovering what is now called the Challenger Depth – the deepest known point in the oceans.  She also conducted 133 bottom dredges, 263 serial water temperature observations, and 151 open water trawls – in the process discovering over 4,000 new species of marine life.  The voyage was the first major marine expedition with no interest or involvement in claiming or exploring new lands or life ashore.  The report of the expedition triggered popular interest in the sea and its life forms, resulting in the scientific discipline of oceanography.  The ship itself was pretty much used up when it got back to port.  It was commissioned as a training ship for a few years and then converted into a receiving hulk.  The Challenger was broken up in 1921.  The figurehead, though, was preserved and is now on display at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton.