The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). Frederick Whymper
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 upon.
The story of that cruise is utterly unsensational; it is one simply of calm and unremitting scientific work, almost unaccompanied by peril. To some the treasures acquired will seem valueless. Among the earliest gains, obtained near Cape St. Vincent, with a common trawl, was a beautiful specimen of the Euplectella, “glass-rope sponge,” or “Venus’s flower-basket,” alive. This object of beauty and interest, sometimes seen in working naturalists’ and conchologists’ windows in London, had always previously been obtained from the seas of the Philippine Islands and Japan, to which it was thought to be confined, and its discovery so much nearer home was hailed with delight. It has a most graceful form, consisting of a slightly curved conical tube, eight or ten inches in height, contracted beneath to a blunt point. The walls are of light tracery, resembling opaque spun glass, covered with a lace-work of delicate pattern. The lower end is surrounded by an upturned fringe of lustrous fibres, and the wider end is closed by a lid of open network. These beautiful objects of nature make most charming ornaments for a drawing-room, but have to be kept under a glass case, as they are somewhat frail. In their native element they lie buried in the mud. They were afterwards found to be “the most characteristic inhabitants of the great depths all over the world.” Early in the voyage, no lack of living things were brought up—strange-looking fish, with their eyes blown nearly out of their heads by the expansion of the air in their air-bladders, whilst entangled among the meshes were many star-fish and delicate zoophytes, shining with a vivid phosphorescent light. A rare specimen of the clustered sea-polyp, twelve gigantic polyps, each with eight long fringed arms, terminating in a close cluster on a stalk or stem three feet high, was obtained. “Two specimens of this fine species were brought from the coast of Greenland early in the last century; somehow these were lost, and for a century the animal was never seen.” Two were brought home by one of the Swedish Arctic expeditions, and these are the only specimens ever obtained. One of the lions of the expedition was not “a rare sea-fowl,” but a transparent lobster, while a new crustacean, perfectly blind, which feels its way with most beautifully delicate claws, was one of the greatest curiosities obtained. Of these wonders, and of some geological points determined, more anon. But they did not even sight the sea-serpent, much less attempt to catch it. Jules Verne’s twenty miles of inexhaustible pearl-meadows were evidently missed, nor did they even catch a glimpse of his gigantic oyster, with the pearl as big as a cocoa-nut, and worth 10,000,000 francs. They could not, with Captain Nemo, dive to the bottom and land amid submarine forests, where tigers and cobras have their counterparts in enormous sharks and vicious cephalopods. Victor Hugo’s “devil-fish” did not attack a single sailor, nor did, indeed, any formidable cuttle-fish take even a passing peep at the Challenger, much less attempt to stop its progress. Does the reader remember the story recited both by Figuier and Moquin Tandon,29 concerning one of these gigantic sea-monsters, which should have a strong basis of truth in it, as it was laid before the French Académie des Sciences by a lieutenant of their navy and a French consul?
OBJECTS OF INTEREST BROUGHT HOME BY THE “CHALLENGER.”
Fig. 1.—Shell of Globigerina (highly magnified). Fig. 2.—Ophioglypha bullata (six times the size in nature). Fig. 3.—Euplectella Suberea (popularly “Venus’s Flower-basket”). Fig. 4.—Deidamia leptodactyla (a Blind Lobster).
(From “The Voyage of the Challenger,” by permission of Messrs. Macmillan & Co.)
The steam-corvette Alecton, when between Teneriffe and Madeira, fell in with a gigantic cuttle-fish, fifty feet long in the body, without counting its eight formidable arms covered with suckers. The head was of enormous size, out of all proportion to the body, and had eyes as large as plates. The other extremity terminated in two fleshy lobes or fins of great size. The estimated weight of the whole creature was 4,000 lbs., and the flesh was soft, glutinous, and of a reddish-brick colour. “The commandant, wishing, in the interests of science, to secure the monster, actually engaged it in battle. Numerous shots were aimed at it, but the balls traversed its flaccid and glutinous mass without causing it any vital injury. But after one of these attacks, the waves were observed to be covered with foam and blood, and—singular thing—a strong odour of musk was inhaled by the spectators. … The musket-shots not having produced the desired results, harpoons were employed, but they took no hold on the soft, impalpable flesh of the marine monster. When it escaped from the harpoon, it dived under the ship and came up again at the other side. They succeeded, at last, in getting the harpoon to bite, and in passing a bowling-hitch round the posterior part of the animal. But when they attempted to hoist it out of the water, the rope penetrated deeply into the flesh, and separated it into two parts, the head, with the arms and tentacles, dropping into the sea and making off, while the fins and posterior parts were brought on board; they weighed about forty pounds. The crew were eager to pursue, and would have launched a boat, but the commander refused, fearing that the animal might capsize it. The object was not, in his opinion, one in which he could risk the lives of his crew.” M. Moquin Tandon, commenting on M. Berthelot’s recital, considers “that this colossal mollusc was sick and exhausted at the time by some recent struggle with some other monster of the deep, which would account for its having quitted its native rocks in the depths of the ocean. Otherwise it would have been more active in its movements, or it would have obscured the waves with the inky liquid which all the cephalopods have at command. Judging from its size, it would carry at least a barrel of this black liquid.”
The Challenger afterwards