Free Republic

HMS Challenger spent three-and-a-half years peering into some of the remotest parts of our world’s oceans. Its groundbreaking voyage still has an impact today. It was once a private house, but now the imposing stone structure on Boswall Road, on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth in Edinburgh, is part of a palliative care hospice. The building shares its name with the one of the deepest parts of the ocean and two Nasa spacecraft. One was the command module for the Apollo 17 Moon mission while the other was part of the Space Shuttle fleet, and the first...

How an 1870s marine expedition changed oceanography and drove eight sailors insane When was the first voyage of the Challenger? No, not the Space Shuttle — the original Challenger, a sea ship that sailed in 1872. The HMS Challenger traversed the world's oceans for four years, drove some of its sailors completely insane, caused about a quarter of the crew to jump ship, and forever changed the face of ocean science. Is there a way to scroll past the nature channels without seeing one that describes the richness of the ocean and the life that teems in its depth? In...