The Challenger Expedition research guide

This research guide provides an overview of items in the collection of Royal Museums Greenwich relating to the history of the Challenger Expedition, which circumnavigated the world between 1872 and 1876.

The Challenger Expedition was the first to explore the deep sea on a global scale. It took its name from the Royal Navy vessel that was specially converted for this scientific work.

The expedition was integral to the advance of oceanography as a modern scientific discipline and is still influencing our understanding of the ocean as a complex ecosystem upon which all life depends today.

You can read our Challenger webpages for more information about the circumnavigation and its oceanographic work. Researchers interested in understanding the Challenger Expedition within the broader history of the Royal Navy in the nineteenth century are also encouraged to consult our Royal Navy research guides.

Explore the guide online below, or download the PDF version.

Published sources (A-Z by author)

The youngest son of the 8th Duke of Argyll, Lord George Campbell served on the Challenger Expedition as Sub-lieutenant. He left the expedition in Chile, having been promoted. His letters “were written home during our cruise with no intention of publication […] Such as they are I hope they will give the reader a general idea of the Challenger’s cruise – a cruise which will rank as famous in the Annals of science”.

Henry Nottidge Moseley served on the Challenger Expedition as a naturalist. He had previously studied medicine. Moseley researched botanical and animal specimens, but was also involved in acquiring Ancestral remains of Indigenous people for ethnographic study. Moseley contributed the Report on Certain Hydroid, Alcyonarian, and Madreporarian Corals to the final Challenger Report.

John Murray served on the Challenger Expedition as a naturalist. Born in Canada in 1841 to Scottish parents, as a young man hemoved to Britain to live with his grandfather and studied at the University of Edinburgh. He gained experience analysing marine specimens and ocean currents as a ship’s surgeon on the whaling ship Jan Mayen and was later selected to work as a naturalist on board Challenger.

Following the death of Charles Wyville Thomson in 1882, Murray was appointed the Director of the Challenger Office and was responsible for the publication of most of the volumes of the Challenger Report. He co-authored the Report on Deep-Sea Depositswith Belgian geologist Alphonse-Françoise Renard.

The Report on Deep-Sea Deposits is the penultimate volume of the multi-authored Challenger Report, whose 50 volumes were published between 1880 and 1895. Murray and Renard’s work on deep-sea deposits contains some of the most significant and enduring findings from the expedition, including a colour-coded chart that visualises the global distribution of deep-sea sediments, which combined the data collected during the Challenger Expedition with those gathered on later voyages. Murray continued his work as a leading international researcher in the fields of oceanography and marine biology until his death in 1914.

William James Joseph Spry served on the Challenger Expedition as the Chief Engineer.

Herbert Swire served on the Challenger Expedition as Navigating Sub-Lieutenant until it reached South America in 1876. Born in Staffordshire in 1850, he entered the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1864. Challenger’s deepest sounding, at just over 8,200m (around 27,000 feet), was originally named the Swire Deep and it was the greatest known ocean depth at the time. Swire was the last remaining survivor of the crew when he died in 1934.  

Charles Wyville Thomson led the scientific crew onboard HMS Challenger. Although he graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in medicine, he also took classes in botany, and later worked as Professor of Botany at both the University of Aberdeen and the Royal College of Science, Dublin. Following the successes of his deep-sea dredging expeditions on HMS Lightning (1868) and HMS Porcupine (1869), which showed that marine life existed as deep as 650 fathoms (1188m), he was appointed the Director of the Scientific Civilian Staff on HMS Challenger.

John James Wild served on the Challenger Expedition as official artist and personal secretary to Charles Wyville Thomson. He was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1824 and was a naturalist, linguist, and scientific illustrator. His illustrations include places and people that the expedition encountered, as well as records of the oceanographic equipment used on board and visual charts created from bathymetric data collected during the voyage.

Archival documents and manuscripts

John Hynes served on the Challenger Expedition as Assistant Paymaster. Royal Museums Greenwich holds a journal and three photograph albums made by Hynes that document the circumnavigation.

John Fiot Lee Pearse Maclear served on the Challenger Expedition as commander under Captain Sir George Nares. He was born in Cape Town in 1838 and entered the Navy. Maclear was promoted to captain after the completion of the expedition in 1876.

Abraham Smith had an active life in the Royal Navy, seeing service both in war (on board the Ratter in the Anglo-Satsuma War (1863), in which he was shipwrecked) and peace time. A large part of his memoir is devoted to his service on the Challenger Expedition.

The Tizard collection

Thomas Henry Tizard served on the Challenger Expedition as Navigating Officer and Assistant Surveyor from 1872, and was promoted to Staff Commander in 1874. He was a surveyor and navigator in the hydrographic service of the Navy. Tizard remained on board HMS Challenger after Nares left from Hong Kong to take command of the Arctic Expedition in 1875. When the Challenger Expedition ended, Tizard, alongside John Murray, was responsible for writing the narrative of the voyage with its hydrographic and oceanographic results.

The Tizard collection consists of logbooks, diaries, official and private letters, and charts.

Charts and Maps

*Sir George Strong Nares served on the Challenger Expedition as its Captain until 1875, when he was summoned to take charge of the British Arctic Expedition. 

Visual and photographic sources

The sketches and photographs in the collections of Royal Museums Greenwich capture harbours, vistas, geological features, flora and fauna that the expedition’s crew encountered and desired to record.

The voyage is considered one of the first global scientific expeditions to embrace photography in an official capacity. In the context of British imperialism, sketching and photography recorded buildings, terrestrial features, fortifications, harbours and roads of interest to the government, its military and commerce.

The photograph albums also include images of coastal communities and Indigenous peoples, including Fiji, O’ahu (Hawai’i), and Tongatapu (Tonga) to name some examples from the Pacific. Some of these photographs were composed as part of ethnographic studies, and used to support now debunked theories of white supremacy. The photographic collection offers little information about the individuals it depicts, but it provides an insight – from the perspective of the white European scientists – into the communities with which the Challenger Expedition came into contact.

The photograph albums also contain images of Challenger’s Sub-Lieutenants, the lowest-ranked commissioned officers on the ship, and groups of sailors, providing glimpses of the contribution of a group of men whose experiences have not been preserved elsewhere.

John Hynes’s photographic albums follow a long tradition of naval album-making and storytelling. After the expedition, Hynes assembled 371 photographs into these three albums, which present the circumnavigation in roughly chronological order and are incorporated into a longer narrative of Hynes’s life.

Challenger ship plans

Royal Museums Greenwich holds a number of Challenger ship plans, which shed light on how the refit of the naval vessel worked to make space for science at sea.

The ship plans collection, held at the Museum’s Brass Foundry site in Woolwich, includes plans for the sails as fitted for the ‘special service’ (NPA8449 and NPD3895), the hold (NPA8448), the main, upper and lower decks, and the profile showing inboard details (NPC7357).

Objects

Secondary sources in the Caird Library

Joseph Matkin served as a ship’s steward’s assistant on the Challenger Expedition for the full duration of the voyage. He was born in Uppingham, Rutland in 1853. He entered the merchant marine in 1867 and the Royal Navy in 1870. Matkin sent home letters which he composed from his journal. He commented on oceanographic activities, life on board the ship and on the history, geography and people of the ports at which the ship called. The original letters are kept at the Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego.

Challenger Expedition materials beyond Royal Museums Greenwich

Edinburgh University Library, Centre for Research Collections - The University’s archive of Challenger materials includes lithographs, engravings, photographs, and statistical and cartographical materials. The collection also contains pencil, ink and watercolour illustrations of marine life, rock and crystal formations, and several small scenic paintings.

Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library, Cambridge, MA - The Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard University cares for 225 zoological specimens from the HMS Challenger voyage. The Museum’s library and archive holds a number of printed published materials from the expedition, as well as annotated copies by important figures in the history of science such as Theodore Lyman and Elizabeth Hodges Clark, assistant to Alexander Agassiz.

National Library of Scotland, Archives and Manuscripts Collection, Edinburgh - As a legal deposit the National Library of Scotland has collected the majority of the published output from the Challenger Expedition including the extensive scientific reports series, books by individual members of the expedition, newspaper articles and letters, and even lectures. They also hold the archive of publisher John Bartholomew & Son who created the maps for the reports. Proof copies of the maps are available. The draft and notes of Erik Linklater’s popular account of the expedition ‘The Voyage of the Challenger’, is available, as well as its numerous published editions.

National Museum of the Royal Navy, UK - The NMRN has a small but important collection relating to Challenger, including an album of 409 photographs taken during the expedition and a commemorative medallion awarded to Engineer Alfred J. Allen.

National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh – National Museums Scotland cares for over 1,000 specimens from the Challenger voyage. These include birds and bird eggs, foraminifera, diatoms, echinoderms, sponges, and even some butterflies. The majority of the specimens from the voyage were sent to the Natural History Museum but Thomson proposed that a duplicate set of specimens should be located in the Edinburgh museum. NMS also holds duplicate and original images from the voyage.

Natural History Museum, Library and Archives, London – The Natural History Museum cares for 10,000 examples of material from the voyage, including birds, worms, fish, molluscs, insects, mammals and foraminifera. The Museum’s Ocean Bottom Deposit collection includes thousands of samples taken during the Challenger Expedition. They also hold a substantial amount of archival material, including letters and photographs from and referring to the Challenger Expedition.

UK Hydrographic Office Archive, Taunton, Somerset - The UKHO holds numerous observations and repots on ocean soundings and temperatures from across the globe, sailing directions, and correspondence from the Challenger voyage. In addition to this are other supporting records, such as letter books, minute books, files, and service records that contain information about the voyage and the Royal Navy personnel involved with it.

Main image: Illustration of the analysing room on the main deck of HMS Challenger (ALB0174)