|
|
|
|
|
|
|
At Sea with the Scientifics: The Challenger Letters of Joseph Matkin
|
|
|
|
|
Author
|
|
|
Philip F. Rehbock, ed.
|
|
|
Publisher
|
Hawaii
|
|
Format
|
hardcover
|
|
Product Dimensions
|
9.25
x
6.25
x
1.25
inches
|
|
ISBN
|
9780824814243
|
|
Pages/Publication Date
|
415/1992
|
|
Daedalus Item Code
|
30127
|
|
|
|
|
This item is not available.
|
|
|
|
Description
|
|
|
|
When HMS Challenger sailed from Portsmouth in 1872, Joseph Matkin—a young assistant ship's steward—was among the crew. The Challenger expedition established the foundations of oceanography and is second only to Darwin's voyage aboard the Beagle for its contributions to 19th-century science, and no ocean voyage had ever been so well documented. Yet no account of life "below decks" was known to exist until the early 1980s, when two collections of Matkin's letters surfaced. While the letters included here are certainly interesting for their content—comments on oceanographic operations, reports of shipboard events, discussions of the history, geography, and peoples of the exotic and remote ports at which the ship called during its three-and-a-half-year circumnavigation of the globe—they also bring freshness and immediacy to a great Victorian scientific enterprise, and illuminate Matkin and the middle-class society of which he was a part.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You might also like:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
