ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Cruises, Basins, Canal: Finding International Scales in ICES

• In Event: Sea-Work and Modern Science 1900-1939 1

English Abstract

The first decade of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, founded in 1902, established its twin institutional priorities of practical work related to fisheries and commitment to studying the ocean environment in which fish live and migrate. The First World War foreclosed an ambitious plan for naval vessels from the Council’s member nations, and others as well, to use their transits to the opening of the Panama Canal in 1915 to conduct a major synoptic survey of the open Atlantic along the lines of the then well-established quarterly hydrographic cruises in the North Sea. After the war, the Council sought new alternatives for expanding the geographic scope of its investigations, including flying its flag on the Danish Dana expeditions led by Johannes Schmidt from 1920-22 and trying to convince its member governments to buy the scientifically-outfitted yacht Hirondelle II after Prince Albert I of Monaco’s death and pay for a scientific circumnavigation led by the Council. Other 1920s efforts similarly reflected the ambition to conduct ocean-basin scale research, including William Herdman’s failed effort to instigate a Challenger expedition repeat as well as the successful German Meteor expedition of 1925-27. While the Council’s coordinated and shorter synoptic cruises, employing standardized equipment and analytical methods, emerged as a preferred standard for the emerging science of oceanography, that by no means precluded ambitious, opportunistic, and heterogenous ways of pursuing ocean study in the 1920s. Such studies reflected the Council’s commitment to integrating fisheries and hydrographic research, its emphasis on demonstrating scientific excellence – assumed to be reflected in the grand voyage tradition, and its ambition to stretch from its prewar North Sea focus and become a more truly international institution.

Author

• Helen Rozwadowski, University of Connecticut Avery Point