The South Sandwich Trench is a deep arcuate trench in the South Atlantic Ocean lying 100 kilometres (62 mi) to the east of the South Sandwich Islands. It is the deepest trench of the Southern Atlantic Ocean, and the second-deepest of the Atlantic Ocean after the Puerto Rico Trench. Since the trench extends south of the 60th parallel south, it also contains the deepest point in the Southern Ocean.
USS Bear was a dual steam-powered and sailing ship built with six-inch (15.2 cm)-thick sides which had a long life in various cold-water and ice-filled environments. She was a forerunner of modern icebreakers and had a diverse service life. According to the United States Coast Guard official website, Bear is described as "probably the most famous ship in the history of the Coast Guard."
Effie M. Morrissey is a schooner skippered by Robert Bartlett that made many scientific expeditions to the Arctic, sponsored by American museums, the Explorers Club and the National Geographic Society. She also helped survey the Arctic for the United States Government during World War II. She is currently designated by the United States Department of the Interior as a National Historic Landmark as part of the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. She is the State Ship of Massachusetts.
The research ship had origins in the early voyages of exploration. By the time of James Cook's Endeavour, the essentials of what today we would call a research ship are clearly apparent. In 1766, the Royal Society hired Cook to travel to the Pacific Ocean to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun. The Endeavour was a sturdy boat, well designed and equipped for the ordeals she would face, and fitted out with facilities for her research personnel, Joseph Banks. And, as is common with contemporary research vessels, Endeavour carried out more than one kind of research, including comprehensive hydrographic survey work.
Alfred Merz was an Austrian geographer, oceanographer and director of the Institute of Marine Science in Berlin. He died of pneumonia in Buenos Aires while on an expedition to survey the South Atlantic and is buried in Perchtoldsdorf. Merz Peninsula is named after him.
CSS Acadia is a former hydrographic surveying and oceanographic research ship of the Hydrographic Survey of Canada and its successor the Canadian Hydrographic Service.
Maria Vasilyevna Klenova was a Russian and Soviet marine geologist and one of the founders of Russian marine science and contributor to the first Soviet Antarctic atlas.
The Great Meteor Seamount, also called the Great Meteor Tablemount, is a guyot and the largest seamount in the North Atlantic with a volume of 24,000 km3 (5,800 cu mi). It is one of the Seewarte Seamounts, rooted on a large terrace located south of the Azores Plateau. The crust underlying Great Meteor has an age of 85 million years, deduced from the magnetic anomaly 34 (An34) at this location.
RV Atlantis II is a research vessel formerly operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The ship was built in 1962. She was used as the support vessel for the Alvin submersible for many years, and retired from Woods Hole service in 1996. After a period of inactivity in New Orleans, she was transferred to the travel adventure company Outlander Expeditions in 2006. In 1986 she was used by Dr. Robert Ballard as mother-ship to DSV Alvin when Ballard and team surveyed the RMS Titanic wreck for the first time. The Titanic expedition was sponsored by National Geographic.
The SV Mandalay is a three-masted schooner measuring 163.75 ft (49.91 m) pp, with a wrought iron hull. It was built as the private yacht Hussar (IV), and would later become the research vessel Vema, one of the world's most productive oceanographic research vessels. The ship currently sails as the cruising yacht Mandalay in the Caribbean.
NOAAS Discoverer, originally USC&GS Discoverer, was an American Oceanographer-class oceanographic research vessel in service in the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1966 to 1970 and in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from 1970 to 1996.
RV Horizon, ex Auxiliary Fleet Tug ATA-180, was a Scripps Institution of Oceanography research vessel from 1949 through 1968. During that time she made 267 cruises and logging 610,522 miles (982,540 km) spending 4,207 days at sea.
The German Meteor expedition was an oceanographic expedition that explored the South Atlantic ocean from the equatorial region to Antarctica in 1925–1927. Depth soundings, water temperature studies, water samples, studies of marine life and atmospheric observations were conducted.
German submarine U-593 was a Type VIIC U-boat built for Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine for service during World War II. She was laid down on 17 December 1940 by Blohm & Voss in Hamburg as yard number 569, launched on 3 September 1941 and commissioned on 23 October under Kapitänleutnant Gerd Kelbling.
RRS Discovery II was a British Royal Research Ship which, during her operational lifetime of about 30 years, carried out considerable hydrographical and marine biological survey work in Antarctic waters and the Southern Ocean in the course of the Discovery Investigations research program. Built in Port Glasgow, launched in 1928 and completed in 1929, she was the first purpose-built oceanographic research vessel and was named after Robert Falcon Scott's 1901 ship, RRS Discovery.
SMS Meteor was a Camäleon-class gunboat of the North German Federal Navy that was launched in 1865. A small vessel, armed with only three light guns, Meteor took part in the Battle of Havana in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War. There, she battled the French aviso Bouvet; both vessels were lightly damaged, though Bouvet was compelled to disengage after a shot from Meteor disabled her engine. After the war, Meteor returned to Germany, where her career was limited; she served briefly as a survey vessel. From 1873 to 1877, she was deployed to the Mediterranean Sea as a station ship in Constantinople during a period of tensions in the Ottoman Empire. After returning to Germany in 1877, she was decommissioned, converted into a coal hulk and expended as a target ship some time later.
MV Norsel was a Norwegian sealing ship home ported in Tromsø. Launched during the final weeks of the Second World War as Lyngdalsfjord and only completed in late 1949, the ship sailed in both Arctic and Antarctic waters for more than 53 years until shipwrecking off the coast of Norway in 1992.
RV Cirolana was a fisheries research vessel used by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science and originally built for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. She was initially intended to replace the RV Ernest Holt operating in arctic waters around Bear Island (Norway) and Iceland, but following the Cod Wars spent most of her working life conducting fisheries surveys in the North Sea, Irish Sea and English Channel. For the first part of her career RV Cirolana was based in the fishing port of Grimsby, but after bridge and channel dredging work improved the depth, it was deemed acceptable to bring her to Lowestoft.
SMS Drache was a Camäleon-class gunboat of the Prussian Navy that was launched in 1860. Budgetary problems delayed her completion until 1869, and she first entered service during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, though she saw no significant action against the French Navy. Drache spent most of her career, between 1872 and 1887, conducting survey work in the North Sea, which later proved to be instrumental to the operations of German U-boats and minelayers during World War I. Drache was ultimately decommissioned in 1887, reduced to a coal hulk, and then expended as a target for the torpedo boat D5 in 1889. Her wreck was later raised and broken up.
RV George Bligh (LO309) was a fisheries research vessel that was operated by the Directorate of Fisheries, now known as the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas).
Wilhelmshaven, Germany
