Dear readers, I would like to introduce myself as the new voice of the HMS Challenger blog. Heather’s last day at RAMM was on Friday and I will keep you up to date from now on. I am Holly, RAMM’s Collections Officer. This will be a very short post just to say that the Challenger … Read more
Hello all! Firstly – sorry it has been so long since I have written a post. It has been manic here! Whilst I am trying to get through a lot of data work and disappearing off to Ireland and Cardiff (for the second time), Holly has been starting to write some website content and disappearing … Read more
Three of NASA’s five space shuttles were named after British exploration ships – the Discovery and the Endeavour after Captain Cook’s ships; while the ill-fated Challenger, which exploded on launch in 1986, was named after our very own HMS Challenger. HMS Challenger and NASA space shuttle Challenger The connections are very appropriate, in fact. Not … Read more
Hello! This is Peter (the Challenger Project’s volunteer) writing. I’m a history student at the University of Exeter, and I’ll be working here until the end of June. As you probably know, the Challenger project is bringing together data from museums all over the country. It’s great that there’s so much information, but it can … Read more
The HMS Challenger voyage was massive. A four year long trip around the world is not going to go without ups and downs. Here are some of the sad and unfortunate deaths of the crew as the years went by. 18th November 1872 – Challenger at Sheerness, Kent [googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d1272228.2725905256!2d-1.6171698629065225!3d51.479802712613164!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x47d8d5fd673a9139%3A0xb08db03282ac83a7!2sSheerness%2C+Kent!5e0!3m2!1sen!2suk!4v1431077465138&w=400&h=300] Let’s start right at the … Read more
April’s anemones! Sea anenomes are in the phylum cnidaria, like jellyfish. Sea anemones attach themselves to rocks with their adhesive foot, attacking prey as they go past with their stinging tentacles. Their tentacles have cells that contain toxins that, when touched, shoot out venom that paralyse the prey. The anemone then uses its tentacles to … Read more
March’s Molluscs! Today I will tell you about some of the molluscs found on the Challenger expedition along the way – more specifically, the octopus (read about January’s jellyfish here). Above are pictures of cuttlefish and octopus found on the expedition. Firstly – what are molluscs? These are a very large phylum of invertebrates with … Read more
Hello and Happy New Year to you all! January’s jellyfish! For this month’s post I am going to tell you about two species of the jellyfish found around the seas from the HMS Challenger expedition. They are named differently now but after a bit of research we found out what their current names/species are. Let’s start with the … Read more
Christmas on HMS Challenger Hello again! Since it is that time of year when the Christmas tree is decorated and soon you will be tucking in to a massive Christmas dinner, I thought you would be interested to know what Christmas was like on board the Challenger. Four Christmas’s were spent out at sea or … Read more
Station recordings from HMS Challenger Here we are again! I told you all last time I would let you see some of the original data from the reports from the HMS Challenger. Let’s look at some recordings from station 256. This was on the journey from Yokohama to the Sandwich Islands on July 21st 1875. … Read more