Science at sea: voyages of exploration and the making of marine knowledge, 1837-1843
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Date
03/07/2017Author
Millar, Sarah Louise
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Abstract
This thesis is about the historical geography of scientific knowledge production at sea. It
focuses on three expeditions of exploration and discovery undertaken, respectively, by
France, the United States of America, and Britain, that in the late 1830s sailed into the
southern oceans. These voyages marked the last such expeditions to travel by sail alone and
came before an acknowledged period of specialized interest in investigating the oceans and
the marine environment, exemplified by the sailing of HMS Challenger in 1872. The
expeditions share a commonality of period and of destination: their study together provides a
hitherto overlooked opportunity to analyse practices of experimentation on, and investigation
of, the natural history and physical properties of the marine environment that were integral to
the construction of scientific knowledge about the oceans at that time.
By attention to archival records, personal correspondence, diaries, published travel
narratives and representations of marine phenomena in the form of illustrations, sketches,
preserved specimens and displays of numerical material, this thesis examines quotidian
shipboard practices to show how the production of scientific ‘facts’ was a matter of constant
negotiation between people, weather, instruments and vessels – that occurred as a by-product
of the running of the ship as well as of more defined programmes of study by civilian
naturalists and naval staff. Informed by work in the history of science, Science and
Technology Studies (STS) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT), this thesis highlights how
attending to practice in the ambiguous, heterotopic space that was the expedition vessel can
reveal the origins of a new, specialized, discipline: what I call here a proto-oceanography.
This covers those scientific practices undertaken primarily at sea and from the ship: depth
measurement, sea temperature and chemistry, the height of waves, collection of marine
specimens and coastal topography, but not those primarily land-based activities such as
astronomy, meteorology and terrestrial magnetism. By focusing on work carried out on board
ship rather than on land, this thesis offers new insights into the practices of marine
investigation and experimentation and the complexities of interrogating a space which was
visualised primarily through instruments. This thesis examines how at-sea cultures of
collection, measurement and representation can inform geographically nuanced analyses of
the production of scientific knowledge.