Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea (Paperback)

~ (Author), Sylvia Earle (Foreword)
Key Phrases: dredging committee, dredging excursions, marine natural history, Royal Society, Coast Survey, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this amiable, in-depth examination of the most critical era for the development of modern oceanography, Rozwadowski devotes her attention to the mid–19th century, when British scientists joined a series of nationally sponsored, years-long, worldwide research cruises to explore the ocean deep. A historian and coordinator of maritime studies at the University of Connecticut, Rozwadowski integrates cultural factors—such as the developing seafaring literary genre, the rise of a moneyed elite with an interest in yachting and the economic and political pressures to develop a transatlantic telegraph cable—with the push to understand the nature of the oceans and convert this unknown environment into a moneymaking center. The two most basic aspects of data collection—calculating how deep the ocean is at various points and determining where various organisms live—presented almost insurmountable technical problems at first. Rozwadowski describes in great detail how sounding and dredging technology evolved so that reasonably accurate data could be acquired. She also discusses how the presence of scientists on British naval vessels helped transform the very nature of the British navy, in part by bringing middle-class sensibilities onboard. With so much technical detail, this book is unlikely to be popular with general readers, but it should do well with maritime buffs. 40 b&w photos. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Helen Rozwadowski is one of the rising generation of American historians of science. Her speciality is the development of marine science on both sides of the Atlantic during the 19th and 20th centuries. In Fathoming the Ocean she goes back to the mid-19th century to tell the fascinating story of how sailors and scientists combined to carry out the first explorations of the ocean depths, showing how these actors and events revolutionized understanding of a hirtherto unknown region. In the process, Rozwadowski greatly expands our own understanding, all while telling a story that is original, wide-ranging, and illuminating. I have greatly enjoyed reading this book.
--Margaret Deacon, Southampton Oceanography Centre, author of Science and the Sea: The Origins of Oceanography (20041215)

Historians think of oceans as sites for trade, warfare, or scientific exploration. On the other hand, poets, painters, and novelists have long stressed the oceans' exotic beauty, remoteness, and danger. In Fathoming the Ocean Helen Rozwadowski unites these two views, showing that oceans have a history in the broadest cultural sense, one that involves human hopes and needs as well as scientific aspirations and ambitions, and that scientists' attempts to fathom the deep originated in wider nineteenth century cultural concerns, what the author calls a 'cultural redefinition of the sea.' This book is required reading for anyone wanting to understand how the oceans have come to play the role that they do in Western knowledge.
--Eric L. Mills, Dalhousie University and author of Biological Oceanography: An Early History, 1870-1960 (20050519)

As the title Fathoming the Ocean suggests, Rozwadowski conceives of the act of measuring the ocean (taking fathoms) as inseparable from the act of imagining it (fathoming). Working from this perspective, she brilliantly places this history of the measurement and imagination of the sea within the context of changing encounters with the ocean as a space of recreation, resources, connections, and personal challenges during the nineteenth century. In short, Rozwadowski uses her history of ocean exploration to produce a comprehensive history of the sea that adds several new dimensions to the literatures on the history of science, the history of the ocean, and the history of social change during the mid-nineteenth century.
--Philip E. Steinberg, Florida State University, author of The Social Construction of the Ocean (20050826)

Most scholars of oceanography begin the story around 1900, but Helen Rozwadowski shows, in this creative and novel interpretation, how marine science arose in the nineteenth century from a new political and cultural fascination with the sea. Yachtsmen, sailors, adventurers, businessmen, fishermen, and whalers all felt the tug of the deep, with its mysteries and myths. By the turn of the century, these diverse interests had come together to form of the basic questions that inspire the ocean science we recognize today. Fathoming the Ocean is a captivating read, brimming with new information and fresh insights into the sea's deep cultural meanings. I am convinced Rozwadowski's book will become a must-read for anyone wishing to understand how we have come to view the oceans as we do.
--Keith R. Benson, Green College (20050715)

During the 19th century, the ocean became something more than just a body of water to be sailed over and began to be studied for itself. In this study of America's and Britain's growing public and scientific fascination with the ocean depths, Rozwadowski covers the beginnings of bathymetry, dredging, temperature and salinity measurements, current mapping, and the move from yachts to fishing vessels to large ships as scientific platforms. But this is not just an oceanographic history: the author also addresses the social, cultural, and political aspects of this newfound interest--from the development of home aquariums to the laying of the transatlantic cable.
--Margaret Rioux (Library Journal 20061001)

In this amiable, in-depth examination of the most critical era for the development of modern oceanography, Rozwadowski devotes her attention to the mid-19th century, when British scientists joined a series of nationally sponsored, years-long, worldwide research cruises to explore the ocean deep. (Publishers Weekly 20080731)

Fathoming the Ocean by Helen Rozwadowski chronicles the birth of deep-sea oceanography, from early observations by Benjamin Franklin to the voyage of HMS Challenger in the 1870s. She weaves a rich narrative from the world of renowned as well as lesser-known oceanographers. While unearthing the foundations of the subject, she reveals some striking parallels with modern research careers.
--Jon Copley (Nature )

Fathoming the Ocean will clearly be welcomed as a serious contribution by historians of science, technology, and maritime culture. And in addition, as the foreword by marine biologist Sylvia Earle underscores, the story is also of immediate relevance to anyone who wonders when and how we came to understand--as we now urgently do--the ocean's importance to our blue planet.
--Alistair Sponsel (Science )

An important academic contribution to the history of one of the most romantic branches of nineteenth-century science and a perceptive commentary on the social and cultural background from which modern observational oceanography sprang.
--Richard Shelton (Times Literary Supplement )

Rozwadowski's account of these amateur oceanographers traveling on working vessels is a tremendous piece of historical retrieval, particularly in the way that the endless practical difficulties they faced while dredging for seafloor samples are used to illustrate the social impact a generation of landlubber naturalists had on the professional world of the sea...Oceanography remains a science of measurement and of arguments about measurement, and Rozwadowski is good at reconstructing the technical debates that so occupied its 19th-century founders.
--Richard Hamblyn (London Review of Books )

Rozwadowski's wonderfully illustrated volume tackles British and American marine science in the mid-nineteenth century. This is a daunting task given the presence of the Challenger Expedition and the United States Exploring Expedition. Both receive fair and just treatment, but to Rozwadowski's credit, these grand exploring expeditions happen within the context of developments in industry, recreation,transportation, and science itself...Clearly, Rozwadowski is out to detail an important period in the nascent discipline of oceanography...Fathoming the Ocean...will be of interest to historians of biology for a variety of reasons.
--Gary Kroll (Journal of the History of Biology )

Rozwadowski creates informative reading in the years before acoustics, electronics, and other sophisticated materials could answer basic questions such as: "how deep is the ocean?" Most scientists refer to the HMS Challenger's global voyage from 1872-1876 as the beginning of modern oceanography. But Rozwadowski gives credit to the early explorers who dropped open-end metal boxes to discover what lay beyond their sight, or mapped out reefs and currents in small sailing ships. Others attempted to determine safe sailing routes and appropriate places to lay transoceanic cables. The book concentrates on the nineteenth century when only 5% of the ocean below a few hundred feet had been explored...Illustrations include dredges, beach combing, yacht sailing, sea animals, deep sea dredging, and early maps made by soundings. The book will satisfy the curiosity of everyone interested in this vast ocean of the world.
--Florence Waszkielewicz-Clowes (Polish American Journal )

This book explores the birth of deep-sea oceanography in the nineteenth century, covering the breakthroughs in gathering data and the social impacts. It explains how the presence of researchers on naval vessels led to cultural shifts for scientists, sailors, and Western society. (Nature )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (March 31, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674027566
• ISBN-13: 978-0674027565
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,532,095 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Probably for Specialists Only, November 2, 2008

By	Roger Sweeny (Norwood, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Years ago in a professional economics journal I read an article with a title something like, "Proof that Monopoly Reduces Quality." What it actually proved was that in a somewhat complicated mathematical model, if you make the right assumptions, monopoly reduces quality. A more accurate title for this book would be, "A Chronicle of Early Deep Ocean Research: Being largely concerned with the efforts of Britons and Americans--and proving by the methodical accumulation of evidence that the celebrated 'Challenger' expedition of 1873-7 was not a beginning but rather a culmination of many decades of research."

Academic fashion has long since moved away from the heroic model of scientific advance--of the disinterested seeker of truth toiling in isolation and coming up with marvelous discoveries. Here motives are mixed and science is a social process. This is, no doubt, more accurate.

Old history of science worked backward: "We now know this important thing; previously we didn't. What led to its discovery?" Rozwadowski is more interested in the entire process, and what is found out is not a focus. At the end of the book, I asked myself, "What important things did people know at the end of the book that they didn't at the beginning?" and little came immediately to mind. Much of the book seemed like Toynbee's insult, "just one damn thing after another."

The book finally comes to life in the final chapter, about life aboard ship. Here the modern concern with the non-elite, with social relations and process, serves her well. We get a more realistic view of what was happening. But there are also a few bits of academic silliness. At one point, she says, "Stealing and desertion were the most powerful forms of protest available to common sailors." As if stealing was a public suicide note, "This is all your fault; you drove me to this; I hope you feel awful." As if slaves fled to "send a message" to their former owners.

I always seem to finish books like this wishing there were more and better diagrams. Here there are only reproductions (sometimes too small) of period illustrations. These give us some sense of how people at the time saw themselves and what they were doing.

With a different focus, and at half the size, this could have been an interesting book for a general audience. I fear that only specialists will find the actual book a satisfying experience.