By Helen Rozwadowski, Natalia Gándara-Chacana, and Samantha Muka Introduction By Helen Rozwadowski, University of Connecticut, Avery Point Scholars working emerging fields, such as ocean history and allied areas like coastal history, oceanic history and the like, benefit from the enthusiasm and momentum that accompanies new questions, new approaches, and new communities. Successful recent PhDs, with… Read More Why Ocean History?
By Killian Taylor (Archives and Records Manager, Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum) (Cover image: William Belanske, curator and artist of the Vanderbilt Museum) Nestled on the shore of Long Island’s historic “Gold Coast”, the place of inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby, lies the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum: a one-of-a-kind institution of history and… Read More Expeditions of Art and Science
Author: Eric L. Mills Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) History of Science and Technology Programme, University of King’s College (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) Abstract After the publication of the last Challenger Report in 1895, deep-sea biology fell out of favor with marine biologists. It was replaced by embryology and physiology in… Read More The Abyss: Resurrecting Deep-Sea Biology in the Mid Twentieth Century
Check out these recently released and upcoming books featuring the history of oceanography, ocean history more broadly, and the blue humanities.
Find these titles and other noteworthy ocean publications in our Zotero Library in the June 2021 Folder.… Read More #HistOcean Recent/Upcoming Books
Check out these recently released and upcoming books featuring the history of oceanography, ocean history more broadly, and the blue humanities.
Find these titles and other noteworthy ocean publications in our Zotero Library in the April 2021 Folder.… Read More #HistOcean Recent/Upcoming Books
By John R. Dolan Sorbonne Université, CNRS UMR 7093 Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche-sur-Mer, 06230 Villefranche-sur-Mer, France Introduction The Carnegie was an unusual ship, a non-magnetic (iron-free) 44 m brigantine yacht designed to conduct surveys of terrestrial magnetism. In 1927 the vessel was overhauled and re-fitted for a 3-year global voyage, Cruise VII, dedicated not only to magnetism but… Read More A Forgotten Aspect of the Famous Last Voyage of the Carnegie: It Entangled Harald Sverdrup, Roger Revelle and Herbert Graham in Oceanography
By John R. Dolan Sorbonne Université, CNRS UMR 7093 Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche-sur-Mer, 06230 Villefranche-sur-Mer, France During the 1860s and 1870s the Darwinian Revolution was in full swing. Darwin’s critics pointed out that the origin of life was not addressed and that there appeared to be many missing links among taxa both existing and fossil.… Read More The famous and lesser-known illustrations of Thomas Huxley’s Bathybius
By Penelope K. Hardy and Helen M. Rozwadowski Among the numerous Confederate statues targeted by protesters around the country, the one of Matthew Fontaine Maury in Richmond, Virginia, inspired only the vague graffiti condemnation, “Fuck this guy too.” Maury, who is familiar to oceanographers, historians of the ocean sciences, generations of naval officers, and… Read More Reckoning with a Racist Legacy in Ocean Science
A few days ago Outside Magazine published an obituary for the Great Barrier Reef. The article soon went viral. Since then, coral reef scientists have condemned the story as “wildly irresponsible.” The Great Barrier Reef they point out, while under threat, is not yet dead. To announce its demise, they argue, is to give up hope. Declarations… Read More The ‘Dying’ Ocean of the Anthropocene
Hemingway’s novel, The Old Man and the Sea, opens with a scene of fishermen preparing their catch for market in a Cuban port. “Those who had caught sharks,” Hemingway writes, “had taken them to the shark factory on the other side of the cove.” Here the sharks were “hoisted on a block and tackle, their… Read More Sharks and Chemists
History of Oceanography 