CHAPTER II.
Men of Peace.
Table of Contents Naval Life in Peace Times-A Grand Exploring Voyage-The Cruise of the Challenger-Its Work-Deep-sea Soundings-Five Miles Down-Apparatus Employed-Ocean Treasures-A Gigantic Sea-monster-Tristan d'Acunha-A Discovery Interesting to the Discovered-The Two Crusoes-The Inaccessible Island-Solitary Life-The Sea-cart-Swimming Pigs-Rescued at Last-The Real Crusoe Island to Let-Down South-The Land of Desolation-Kerguelen-The Sealers' Dreary Life-In the Antarctic-Among the Icebergs.
No form of life presents greater contrasts than that of the sailor. Storm and calm alternate; to-day in the thick of the fight-battling man or the elements-to-morrow we find him tranquilly pursuing some peaceful scheme of discovery or exploration, or calmly cruising from one station to another, protecting by moral influence alone the interests of his country. His deeds may be none the less heroic because his conquests are peaceful, and because Neptune rather than Mars is challenged to cede his treasures. Anson, Cook, and Vancouver, Parry, Franklin, M'Clintock, and M'Clure, among a host of others, stand worthily by the side of our fighting sailors, because made of the same stuff. Let us also, then, for a time, leave behind the smoke and din, the glories and horrors of war, and cool our fevered imaginations by descending, in spirit at least, to the depths of the great sea. The records of the famous voyage of the Challenger24 will afford a capital opportunity of contrasting the deeds of the men of peace with those of men of war.
We may commence by saying that no such voyage has in truth ever been undertaken before.25 Nearly 70,000 miles of the earth's watery surface were traversed, and the Atlantic and Pacific crossed and recrossed several times. It was a veritable voyage en zigzag. Apart from ordinary soundings innumerable, 374 deep-sea soundings, when the progress of the vessel had to be stopped, and which occupied an hour or two apiece, were made, and at least two-thirds as many successful dredgings and trawlings. The greatest depth of ocean reached was 4,575 fathoms (27,450 feet), or over five miles. This was in the Pacific, about 1,400 miles S.E. of Japan. We all know that this ocean derives its name from its generally calmer weather and less tempestuous seas; and the researches of the officers of the Challenger, and of the United States vessel Tuscarora, show that the bottom slopes to its greatest depths very evenly and gradually, little broken by submarine mountain ranges, except off volcanic islands and coasts like those of the Hawaiian (Sandwich) Islands. Off the latter there are mountains in the sea ranging to as high as 12,000 feet. The general evenness of the bottom helps to account for the long, sweeping waves of the Pacific, so distinguishable from the short, cut-up, and "choppy" waves of the Atlantic. In the Atlantic, on the voyage of the Challenger from Teneriffe to St. Thomas, a pretty level bottom off the African coast gradually deepened till it reached 3,125 fathoms (over three and a half miles), at about one-third of the way across to the West Indies. If the Alps, Mont Blanc and all, were submerged at this spot, there would still be more than half a mile of water above them! Five hundred miles further west there is a comparatively shallow part-two miles or so deep-which afterwards deepens to three miles, and continues at the same depth nearly as far as the West Indies.
EXAMINING A "HAUL" ON BOARD THE "CHALLENGER."
A few words as to the work laid out for the Challenger, and how she did it. She is a 2,000-ton corvette, of moderate steam-power, and was put into commission, with a reduced complement of officers and men, Captain (now Sir) George S. Nares, later the commander of the Arctic expedition, having complete charge and control. Her work was to include soundings, thermometric and magnetic observations, dredgings and chemical examinations of sea-water, the surveying of unsurveyed harbours and coasts, and the resurveying, where practicable, of partially surveyed coasts. The (civil) scientific corps, under the charge of Professor Wyville Thomson, comprised three naturalists, a chemist and physicist, and a photographer. The naturalists had their special rooms, the chemist his laboratory, the photographer his "dark-room," and the surveyors their chart-room, to make room for which all the guns were removed except two. On the upper deck was another analysing-room, "devoted to mud, fish, birds, and vertebrates generally;" a donkey-engine for hauling in the sounding, dredging, and other lines, and a broad bridge amidships, from which the officer for the day gave the necessary orders for the performance of the many duties connected with their scientific labours. Thousands of fathoms of rope of all sizes, for dredging and sounding; tons of sounding-weights, from half to a whole hundredweight apiece; dozens of thermometers for deep-sea temperatures, and gallons of methylated spirits for preserving the specimens obtained, were carried on board.
THE "ACCUMULATOR."26
Steam-power is always very essential to deep-sea sounding. No trustworthy results can be obtained from a ship under sail; a perpendicular sounding is the one thing required, and, of course, with steam the vessel can be kept head to the wind, regulating her speed so that she remains nearly stationary. The sounding apparatus used needs some little description. A block was fixed to the main-yard, from which depended the "accumulator," consisting of strong india-rubber bands, each three-fourths of an inch in diameter and three feet long, which ran through circular discs of wood at either end. These are capable of stretching seventeen feet, and their object is to prevent sudden strain on the lead-line from the inevitable jerks and motion of the vessel. The sounding-rod used for great depths is, with its weights,27 so arranged that on touching bottom a spring releases a wire sling, and the weights slip off and are left there. These rods were only employed when the depths were considered to be over 1,500 fathoms; for less depths a long, conical lead weight was used, with a "butterfly valve," or trap, at its basis for securing specimens from the ocean bed. There are several kinds of "slip" water-bottles for securing samples of sea-water (and marine objects of small size floating in it) at great depths. One of the most ingenious is a brass tube, two and a half feet in length, fitted with easily-working stop-cocks at each end, connected by means of a rod, on which is a movable float. As the bottle descends the stop-cocks must remain open, but as it is hauled up again the flat float receives the opposing pressure of the water above it, and, acting by means of the connecting-rod, shuts both cocks simultaneously, thus inclosing a specimen of the water at that particular depth. Self-registering thermometers were employed, sometimes attached at intervals of 100 fathoms to the sounding-line, so as to test the temperatures at various depths. For dredging, bags or nets from three to five feet in depth, and nine to fifteen inches in width, attached to iron frames, were employed, whilst at the bottom of the bags a number of "swabs," similar to those used in cleaning decks, were attached, so as to sweep along the bottom, and bring up small specimens of animal life-coral, sponges, &c. These swabs were, however, always termed "hempen tangles"-so much does science dignify every object it touches! The dredges were afterwards set aside for the ordinary beam-trawls used in shallow water around our own coasts. Their open meshes allowed the mud and sand to filter through easily, and their adoption was a source of satisfaction to some of the officers who looked with horror on the state of their usually immaculate decks, when the dredges were emptied of their contents.
Not so very long ago, our knowledge of anything beneath the ocean's surface was extremely indefinite; for even of the coasts and shallows we knew little, marine zoology and botany being the last, and not the earliest, branches of natural history investigated by men of science. It was asserted that the specific gravity of water at great depths would cause the heaviest weights to remain suspended in mid-sea, and that animal existence was impossible at the bottom. When, some sixteen years ago, a few star-fish were brought up by a line from a depth of 1,200 fathoms, it was seriously considered that they had attached themselves at some midway point, and not at the bottom. In 1868-9-70, the Royal Society borrowed from the Admiralty two of Her Majesty's vessels, the Lightning and Porcupine; and in one of the latter's trips, considerably to the south and west of Ireland, she sounded to a depth of 2,400 fathoms,28 and was very successful in many dredging operations. As a result, it was then suggested that a vessel should be specially fitted out for a more important ocean voyage round the world, to occupy three or more years, and the cruise of the Challenger was then determined...
