The Challenger Expedition

On December 1872, HMS Challenger, especially modified to support a team of civilian scientists, set sail from Portsmouth, England, to begin a round-the-world journey, unique for the scale of its ambition and scope. This book tracks the paths of six objects associated with the Challenger expedition, including the Baillie sounding machine, a starfish, a photographic album and HMS Challenger itself, to reveal the stories of the often hidden work, technologies and international collaboration at the heart of this 19th-century scientific endeavour.