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The
History of Oceanography Newsletter
Edited
by Professor Eric Mills,
Dalhousie
University
Canada
In
Association with
The International Union of the History and Philosophy of
Science
Division
of the History of Science
Commission
of Oceanography
________________________________________
No 16
September 2004
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL
3
A
TRIBUTE TO DAVID VAN KEUREN
4
ARTICLES
Centenario de la Base Orcadas (Geoff Swinney)…………………………………….
5
Mr Hodges’ accumulator (Anita
McConnell)………………………………………...
9
The Flye revisited (Paul Hughes, Alan
Wall)………………………………………...
11
A.A.
Aleem: Arab marine botanist/oceanographer, extraordinaire (S.
El-Sayed,
S.Morcos)
14
At
sea with Vøringen 1876-1878. An overview of primary
sources on the history
of
the first Norwegian North Atlantic Expedition (Vera Schwach)
18
CONFERENCE
REPORTS…………………………………………………………………..
21
NEWS
AND
EVENTS…………………………………………………………
23
BOOK
REVIEWS…………………………………
25
BOOK
ANNOUNCEMENT…………………
29
ICHO-VIII
– CALL FOR PROPOSALS………………………………
39
ANNUAL
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND BIOGRAPHIES 2004…………………
39
INTERNATIONAL
UNION OF THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
DIVISION
OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE
COMMISSION
OF OCEANOGRAPHY
President
Eric L. Mills
Department of Oceanography
Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4J1, CANADA
Vice
Presidents
Jacqueline Carpine-Lancre
La Verveine
7, Square Kraemer
06240 Beausoleil, FRANCE
Margaret B. Deacon
Jopes Park Cottage
Luckett
Callington, Cornwall PL17 8LG, UNITED KINGDOM
Walter Lenz
Institut für Klima- und Meeresforschung
Universität Hamburg
D-20146 Hamburg, GERMANY
Helen
Rozwadowski
Maritime Studies Programme
University of Connecticut, Avery Point
Groton, Connecticut 06340, USA
Secretary
Deborah Cozort Day
Archives
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
La Jolla, California 92093-0219, USA
Editor
of Newsletter
Eric L. Mills
Department of Oceanography
Dalhousie
University
Halifax,
Nova Scotia B3H 4J1, CANADA
Phone:
(902) 494 3437 Fax (902) 494 3877
E-mail:
E.Mills@Dal.Ca
Editorial
– Some new
directions
With
this issue of History of Oceanography the Commission of
Oceanography ventures into new waters –
the
publication of its newsletter on the World Wide Web rather than
in hard copy print. This was made
necessary
by the increasing cost of producing the newsletter, but
especially by the regular increase of postal
costs.
Both could not long be covered by the Commission’s sole source
of income, its annual grant (very
gratefully
received, withal) from the Division of History of Science. The
opportunity to go online was made
possible
by a generous offer from Dr Gary Weir, the editor of the
International Journal of Naval History, to
host
History of Oceanography on his web site. And although one
of the proximate stimuli for the move
was
financial stringency, there are great advantages in moving away
from print, including increased flexibility
in
publication such as the inclusion of colour figures, the ability
to edit and correct more easily, the easy
access
that nearly everyone in the world now has to the internet, and
the possibility (once the bugs have
been
worked out of the system) of producing more than one newsletter
a year. Plans are also afoot to
have
past issues archived on the same site. We ask you to comment on
this new venture, with suggestions
for
its improvement – and we ask especially that you contribute
material on the history of marine science to
be
included in future issues.
New
ventures are seldom entirely new. This has been borne out to me
this year not just because of the new direction
taken
by History of Oceanography but also because of the sudden
attention in 2004 to polar oceanography in
both
Antarctic and Antarctic. In particular, two symposia focused
attention on marine studies in polar regions –
the
first A Century of Discovery. Antarctic Exploration
and the Southern Ocean, commemorating the return of
Robert
F. Scott to England after his first Antarctic expedition in
1904, held in Southampton in late June, and the
second
the Maury IV Workshop History of Polar Oceanography held
in Barrow, Alaska in early September.
Both
gave very welcome attention to the scientific side of polar
exploration rather than the more frequent emphasis
on
adventures (and in many cases misadventures) at high latitudes.
We can learn a lot by examining the contribution
of
high latitude oceanography to our modern knowledge – and the
need for knowledge – of the links between
ocean,
atmosphere and climate. We learn too how contingent our current
knowledge is upon the unpredictable.
These
thoughts were certainly not on the mind of George Deacon when he
left his job as a chemistry teacher in
England
to join the fledgling Discovery Investigations in 1927.
The Investigations themselves, dating from the
foundation
of the Discovery Committee in 1923 to investigate the
biological foundations of the burgeoning whale
fishery
centered at South Georgia (and to contribute to Great
Britain’s political interests in the area), first used
Scott’s
ship Discovery (hence the name) and the new research
vessel William Scoresby, on which Deacon spent
his
first years at sea. Transcending his role as a chemist, Deacon
soon began to use the chemical data – particularly s
alinity
and oxygen, along with temperature, to develop a scheme of
meridional deep water circulation in the South
Atlantic
sector of the Southern Ocean.
A
background of knowledge existed about Southern Ocean circulation
dating mainly from German investigations on
a
series of expeditions between 1898 and 1911, associated with the
names of Gerhard Schott, Erich von Drygalski,
Wilhelm
Filchner and Wilhelm Brennecke. Much of this was published late,
largely due to the First World War, so
that
by the time George Deacon’s interests turned to physical
oceanography extensive new monographs, particularly
from
the hands of Brennecke, also the Berlin oceanographers Alfred
Merz and Georg Wüst, were available. All of
them
showed the prevalence of geographically-extensive meridional
deep circulation, now given the names of
Antarctic
Bottom Water, North Atlantic Deep Water, and Antarctic Deep
Water, and a zonal current system now
called
the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. In Deacon’s early days at
sea, details of these current systems were
known
only from the South Atlantic Sector. But were they more
widespread, forming a truly global system of
circulation?
The
answer came from one of the greatest cruises in the history of
oceanographic investigation. Leaving Cape
Town
in April 1932, Discovery and its oceanographers,
including George Deacon, circumnavigated Antarctica,
much
of the first few months at sea the Antarctic winter, completing
the long series of sections in April 1933 before
returning
to England. On the basis of this remarkable achievement,
incorporating all the earlier work, Deacon was
able
to show in his monograph The hydrology of the Southern Ocean,
published in 1937, that the system of
circulation
around Antarctica (with the exception of Antarctic Bottom Water
formation) was a truly global one,
resulting
in all the oceans being filled with deep water almost
exclusively formed originally in the North Atlantic and
in
high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere.
Deacon’s
synthesis was rapidly incorporated into general knowledge
because of the publication in 1942 of the first
general
textbook of oceanography, Sverdrup, Johnson and Fleming’s The
Oceans. Harald Sverdrup, who was
responsible
for the physical oceanography chapters, used Deacon’s work to
create a scheme of Southern Ocean
circulation
– and the resulting global deep ocean circulation - that
became part of the received wisdom of
oceanographers
to this day. And it is this global scheme that lies behind the
idea of a global ocean conveyor of salt
and
especially heat, associated first in the 1980s with the names of
Arnold Gordon and later Wallace Broecker.
George
Deacon certainly did not set out to create a scheme of climate
and climate change dependent on global
patterns
of oceanic circulation, but his new venture into physical
oceanography led, not inevitably, but as the result
of
a series of contingencies – the most important of them being
Sverdrup’s promotion of his work in The Oceans.
In
2004 his great work on the Southern Ocean is as important –
perhaps more important – than it was when it was
published
nearly seventy years ago.
Eric
Mills
A
TRIBUTE TO DAVID VAN KEUREN
(28.X.1950,
Wisconsin – 26.III. 2004, Washington, D.C.)
David van Keuren, a friend to many historians of oceanography,
was killed tragically on 26 March 2004.
He
lived in Washington, DC, where he served for many years as an
historian at the Naval Research Laboratory
(NRL).
The accident occurred as David was riding his bicycle to work,
his usual mode of transportation not just
during
his working week but when he vacationed and attended
conferences.
David
completed his graduate training at the University of
Pennsylvania in 1982. Most of his early work and his
early
interests involved the history of anthropology, especially
investigating cultural anthropology. But after moving to
D.C. and taking his position at NRL, his focus shifted to the
history of oceanography, especially aspects of oceanography
that
involved deep-sea drilling. David was best-known, however,
not so much for his scholarship as for his mentoring
and
encouraging of younger scholars. There
are dozens of young historians of science who recall David as
the first person
who sought them out at a
History
of Science Society meeting or who suggested ideas of areas to
investigate or who
closely kept track of their
progress
on a dissertation or first book project. While he did not
hold an academic appointment,
he truly was a
mentor
to many historians.
Another
major contribution David made to the history of oceanography was
the formation of the Maury Workshops.
Shortly
after ICHO-V in La Jolla (1993), David began convening small
groups of historians at the History of Science
Society
annual meetings to discuss their common interest in the history
of ocean science. From these annual gatherings,
influenced
also by a series of Naval War College-Yale University workshops
on naval and maritime history, and blessed
by
ONR interest, David and his colleague Gary Weir of the Naval
Historical Center convened
the first Maury
Workshop in 1997 to determine if history of
oceanography represented a viable specialty area
in the history of science
and technology. The results of
that workshop and the three that have followed be a testimony
to
David’s diligence. In fact, the first volume to
emerge from the workshops (Maury III), The Machine in
Neptune’s
Garden, came out in galley proofs to receive
David’s careful attention just before he was killed.
David
will be sorely missed. Colleagues from throughout the
world sent messages of condolences to his family, the
second
volume from the Maury workshops will be dedicated to his memory,
a reading room named after him will
soon
be open in Kaliningrad, and there is a small secondary school
program near Barrow (Alaska) that bears
David’s
name. But all of us would trade any of these wonderful
projects for just one more day with David.
ICHO
members who would like to make a contribution to honor David, we
are still collecting books in the history
of
oceanography for the reading room in Kaliningrad. You may
send your contributions to:
Keith R. Benson
Green College, UBC
6201 Cecil Green Park Rd.
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1, Canada
A
special bookplate honoring David has been designed by his
sister, Marina, and will be placed in each book
indicating
the name of the donor.
Keith
Benson, Green College, University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z1, Canada
CENTENARIO
DE LA BASE ORCADAS – A HISTORIC CELEBRATION
OF
A SCOTLAND-ARGENTINA COLLABORATION IN ANTARCTICA
Geoff
Swinney
National
Museums of Scotland
Chambers
Street
Edinburgh
EH1 1JF, Scotland
‘Scotia
Bay.
…I
took some lemons ashore, and the 25-inch chart of Scotia and
Jessie Bays. The Union Jack and
Argentine
flags were flying. We got anchor up, and started steaming out of
Scotia Bay at 11.30 A.M….’
So
wrote William Speirs Bruce in the log of the Scottish National
Antarctic (Scotia) Expedition on 22 February
1904.
As the Scottish expedition left Scotia Bay on Laurie Island in
the South Orkneys a new phase of Antarctic
scientific
research began. The work of the meteorological station that the
expedition had established was to be
continued
by Argentina.
One
hundred years later, shortly after 11.30 am on 22 February 2004,
we were gathered on the beach separating
Scotia
Bay and Uruguay Bay, to celebrate the centenary of Argentine
involvement in Antarctic research. Following
speeches
by representatives of the various government agencies now
responsible for Antarctic research a monument
was
unveiled overlooking the bay which Bruce named Jessie Bay in
honour of his wife, but which is now known as
Uruguay
Bay. Base Orcadas, established by the Scots, is now the longest
continuously inhabited site in Antarctica
(Figures
1, 2; Figure 3 upper). Argentina had the foresight to recognise
the potential of maintaining a fixed base at a
time
when the British Government was unprepared to entertain the
prospect of funding its continued operation. Thus
a
Scotland-Argentina collaboration initiated the modern means of
studying Antarctica – from permanently-manned
fixed
bases rather than from short-term expeditions.
Actually,
when Scotia left Laurie Island in 1904, she left behind
the expedition’s meteorologist, Robert Mossman,
and
a cook/steward, Bill Smith. They transferred from the expedition
to the staff of the Argentinian Meteorological
Service
and along with three Argentinian meteorologists, Hugo Acuña,
Edgar Szmula and Luciano Valette, were to
operate
the base until they were relieved the following summer.
Thereafter Argentina has operated the base but, in
the
early years, several of the staff were Scots who had received
their meteorological training under the near-polar
conditions
of the Ben Nevis Observatory.
I
felt deeply honoured to have been invited by the Dirección
Nacional del Antárctico of the Ministerio de Relacianes
Exteriores,
Comercio Internacional y Culto, as the representative of the
Royal Scottish Geographical Society, to be
a
guest at the centenary celebrations (my employer, the National
Museums of Scotland, having kindly allowed me to
take
annual leave at short notice to enable me to accept the
invitation). In the event, I found myself also to be the
representative
of the charity Ciencias y Artes Patagonia which had liaised with
the Argentine government authorities
over
my visit. Last year I had assisted the charity in developing its
touring exhibition Perito Moreno – William
Bruce:
two patriots – one world exploring the links between Bruce
and the eminent Argentinian polymath
Francisco
‘Perito’ Moreno, who through President Roca had been
instrumental in arranging for Argentina to
continue
the meteorological work begun in the Antarctic by the Scottish
expedition.
As
well as attending the ceremony I also enjoyed the opportunity to
present a talk on Bruce and the Scotia
expedition’s
role in establishing Base Orcadas to the government
representatives, representatives of the armed
services,
other distinguished guests and members of the press who had been
taken to the base aboard the Argentine
Navy
icebreaker Almirante Irizar (Figure 3, lower).
Regrettably, I was unable to give my talk in Spanish but it was
a
particular thrill that Noemi Acuña kindly agreed to translate
– Noemi is the granddaughter of Hugo Acuña, the only
native-born
Argentinean in the team that operated the base over its first
winter (Szmula was German and Valette
was
born in Uruguay, although he became an Argentinean citizen).
With several teams of journalists aboard the
icebreaker
the celebrations received prominent coverage in the media and
the post office produced special
commemorative
stamps. One of these features a photograph taken in 1904 showing
the Scottish and Argentinian s
cientific
team flying not only the Argentine flag and the Union Jack, but
also the Lion Rampant, outside Omond
House,
the dry-stone hut in which they were to live for a year. The
hut, now a ruin, stands next to the modern
research
station.
We
remained at Orcadas for about 24 hours. Shortly before we sailed
out of Scotia Bay there was a party aboard
the
Almirante Irizar to welcome the aboard the scientific
team who had been at Base Orcadas 2003-2004 and to
say
farewell to the team who were about to leave the ship to man the
base for the year 2004-2005. I could not help
feeling
that Bruce would have been delighted to see a new generation of
scientists going off with such enthusiasm and
passion
to continue the work which he had begun just over a century ago.
Figure
1. Base Orcadas with Mount Ramsay, named for Allan Ramsay, chief
engineer of Scotia who died and is
buried
on the island, in the background (Photo Geoff Swinney).
Figure
2. Base Orcadas viewed from Scotia Bay with icebergs in Uruguay
Bay (Jessie Bay) beyond and the
Mossman
Peninsula to the left. The Scotia expedition established its
base on this beach in 1903 (Photo: Geoff
Swinney).
Figure
3. (Above) S.Y. Scotia overwinteringin Scotia Bay,
South Orkney Islands in (photo with permission of the
Royal
Scottish Geographical Society). (Below) A R A Almirante
Irizar in Scotia Bay with the ruin of Omond
House
in the foreground (photo: Geoff Swinney).
MR
HODGES’ ACCUMULATOR
Anita McConnell
North Cottage, Tannery Road
Combs, Stowmarket IP14 2EL, UK
amac1936@hotmail.com
When
trying for deep soundings during the 1840s and 1850s it was
often practicable to wait for calm
weather
and transfer the sounding reel and gear into a small boat, as
illustrated in James Clark Ross’s
Voyage…
in the Southern and Antarctic regions 1847), 2.355. This
diminished the risk of the ship’s
motion
jerking the line and causing it to break, since a small boat
gave way to passage of waves, and put
less
strain on the line. With the sounder weight detached, the
boat’s crew could easily haul in the thin line
and
sampler tube. But the operation of dredging from a boat was
impossible; time and a powerful motive force
were
necessary for the tow, and a man-powered capstan or donkey
engine was needed to haul in the heavy loaded
dredge
bag.
Accounts of the development of
deep-sea sounding and dredging have described the apparatus
lowered into the
sea, but generally ignore the
device, clearly shown in the famous picture of HMS Porcupine (see
below), referred
to simply as Hodges’ accumulator.
This vital piece of gear made it possible to tow and haul in
deep-sea dredges
from a line fastened on board, with
less risk of the rope breaking if the dredge snagged or the ship
rolled or pitched.
Richard Edward Hodges (1797-1873)
was born in Bromfield, Shropshire and lived for nearly 20 years
in Haiti,
where he was a merchant and British
Vice-Consul at the southern port of Jacmel. Mahogany was a
valuable export
from Haiti, and whereas the
richer timber merchants employed gangs of men to fell and
transport the trunks to the
ports, Hodges observed that
small groups of what he describes as poor Africans manhandled
the great trunks by
employing creepers and the springy
branches of trees to accumulate the power needed to raise them
onto cutting
frames. The widowed Hodges returned
to England with his young son Thomas, where he realised that
vulcanised
rubber could be employed for
exactly the same accumulative power. His UK patent for his
accumulator was filed in
1849.
Vulcanisation - the processing of
rubber to render it stable, involved combining it with sulphur,
then heating it; the
addition of salts of lead
accelerated the process and needed less heat. UK patents were
filed by Thomas Hancock
and the American Charles Goodyear
in 1844, and vulcanised rubber instantly found a multitude of
uses such as
waterproofing garments, in tension
to propel various projectiles and, as discs interleaved with
steel discs,
compression springs for railway
buffers. Unharmed by normal temperatures or immersion in water
(where it floated),
vulcanised rubber was damaged
only by oil and grease, or abrasion while under tension. The
processing factories
were outside central London,
requiring as they did a source of power and considerable space
to accommodate the
raw and processed rubber. But the
manufacture of the vulcanised rubber could be done in towns, and
most of the
manufactories opened
wholesale and retail showrooms in London.
One such was Hodges’ office and
warehouse, situated by 1852 at 44, later 89 Southampton Row,
Holborn, until
1872. His rubber was obtained from
factories elsewhere for assembly into his advertised products.
He exhibited at
the 1851 and 1862 Exhibitions in
London, and in associated pamphlets illustrated and gave
technical details for
accumulators suitable for moving
heavy bodies – such as a stranded or sunken ship – erecting
machinery, propelling
harpoons etc. He also writes ‘The
strain, or rather jerk, on ships’ cables, standing rigging,
and tow-lines, can be
rendered harmless by the insertion
of an accumulator as a spring in any part of the said cable,
rigging, or tow-line, or
by the cable or tow-line being made
fast to an accumulator fixed on the deck or to some part of the
vessel’. The
accumulator shown contained 151
rubber cords, was one foot long at rest, extending to a
working maximum of six
feet. Its total power was equal to
4 tons, 7 cwt, 71 lbs (see figure below). Given Hodges’ 1849
patent and his
subsequent publicity at Exhibitions
and his central warehouse, it seems possible that the British
Army or Navy might
have adopted his accumulators, and
that it was in use at dockyards, but I have been unable to
discover any mention
of it prior to the Hydra
sounding voyage of 1868 and the Porcupine voyages of
1869.
Refs: UK Patent 12,623 of 1849,
Accumulator etc.
Hodges, R.E. R. E. Hodges patent
india-rubber accumulators: new mechanical power, applicable also
to
projectile purposes (London,
1852) BL callmark 8765.c.40 (6).
THE
FLYE REVISITED
Paul
Hughes
106
High Street
Airmyn,
Yorkshire DN14 8LB, UK
kubernaut@btinternet.com
&
Alan
D. Wall
Liverpool
John Moores University
A
sixteenth century piece of hydrography has been lost. The last
recorded existence of the Flye, in 1937, was when
Eustace
Bosanquet brought attention to it.
Nowadays, requesting the British Library for the document
results
in
the explanation that it can not be found. A similar
circumlocution is found in the Short Title Catalogue. Repeated
non
production means that the document is essentially lost.
Fortunately, Bosanquet published a good reproduction.
The
Flye is a beautiful diagram of tidal information for North
West Europe. The Flye was made by Philip Moore in
1569.
The diagram is complex, and requires an interpretation as to its
usage; beyond the title, it is without any
accompanying
text. In the same year, William Bourne published A Regiment
for the Sea.
Bourne sets out
some
of the same material as the Flye and indicates how the
diagram might be used; importantly he showed how to
calculate
the moon’s age.
Both
diagram and text deal with the direction of the syzygy moon to
predict high water. The syzygy moon is when it
is
either new or full. The mariner had to consider a notional or
mean moon. The direction of the syzygy moon was
used
to indicate the moment of high water; this could also be
expressed in time as well as with the reciprocal
direction.
Thus: at the Lizard, high water will come when the full moon
bears west; notionally this will be at six in the
evening.
It will also be high water when bearing east, at six in the
morning. The diagram unusually sets out the
direction
of the moon in the quarters. The title of the Flye indicates
that the tabulation was called by some mariners
–
the flye.
The
Flye does not give an actual rectangular table. What it
does give is a diagram of concentric circles. Tidal
information
is then contained within segments of the diagram. The word Flye
was contemporaneously used to
indicate
a compass card.
The diagram does not have an explicit, direct orientation;
although it is set north-up.
It
also sets out the tides around a rose of thirty-two points. The
places are superficially set around the rose in
geographic
order; but closer inspection reveals they are in an order
representing the advancement of the tide along
the
coasts. The three coasts are: the English east coast from north
to south, the corner of France from Belle Isle
around
Ushant and the English south coast from west to east. Clockwise,
they represent the conventional progress o
f
the flood, and anti-clockwise the ebb. Therefore, the diagram
basically considers the tidal stream. The diagram also
gives
symbols requiring further interpretation.
The
following list is comprised of: an implied direction; the place,
symbol and time from the Flye; and three
instantaneous
states of the strea | 
