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The
Silent Landscape
Chapter
Six. Kelp and Cold Light
Hamilton,
Bermuda, 32o18'N, 64o 48'W, to Edinburgh,
Tristan da Cunha, 37o03'S, 12o18'W
Challenger
left Bermuda in a hurry, driven from there by news that
the disease was spreading across the island. But, as Matkin
could now unhappily testify, they were not completely successful
in avoiding it. The crew complement was further reduced
by the need to leave two particularly severe cases behind
in hospital. This loss, combined with the desertions in
Halifax, had brought the crew complement down to 236. All
the missing men would have to be replaced at the Cape. But
first there was the long haul down the Atlantic via the
Azores, Cape Verde Islands, St. Paul's Rocks, Bahia, and
Tristan da Cunha, a journey that would take almost four
months. Yet on the first leg to the Azores dredging proceeded
apace and successfully, the Scientifics were gleeful, and
Captain Nares regularly issued wine to Challenger's
hardworking crew.
The
Prairie of Kelp
It
was in Bermuda that Wyville Thomson started the first of
the several articles he was to write for the popular magazine
Good Words, despite a correspondence workload that
was already high... As the ship pulled away from Bermuda,
northeast toward the Azores, he explained to his audience
the importance of their new destination; situated on the
northern border of one of the strangest places in the North
Atlantic. For more than 300 years, since the time of Columbus,
its name had struck terror in the hearts of mariners all
over the world and tales were told of ships becalmed for
all eternity in a choking mass of seaweed that matted the
center of the mid-Atlantic. When Challenger finally
made harbor in the Azores, she would have sailed completely
around the Sargasso Sea.
Strangely
enough, legends of “a sea of lost ships” were common centuries
before the Bermuda Triangle became notorious. Since the
Middle Ages, floating derelicts have often been found in
this region of the Atlantic, which broadly extends between
about 20o N and 35oN and 30Wo and 70oW (the large uncertainty
in this estimate is part of the mystery of the Sargasso
Sea). The legend maintains that the Sargasso Sea derelicts
are found shipshape but otherwise bereft of a living soul.
On one occasion a slaver was sighted but when boarded was
found to contain nothing but the skeletal remains of crew
and slaves. In 1840, the ship Rosalie sailed through the
area but, as the London Times later reported, was thereafter
found drifting and derelict. In 1857, only a handful of
years before the Challenger expedition, the bark James B.
Chester was found becalmed in the Sargasso, with the chairs
upended, a putrefying meal still on the mess table, and
no sign of the crew.
Even
after the Challenger voyage, legends about ship disappearances
continued to haunt the area. In 1881, the schooner Ellen
Austin, bound for London, discovered a derelict adrift in
the Sargasso. The captain put a prize crew aboard but then
the two ships became separated by a squall. When Ellen Austin
resighted the derelict, the prize crew was gone. And today,
in the early twenty-first century, more recent legends of
the Sargasso continue to haunt us. As recently as 1955,
the Connemara IV was found deserted and drifting in the
area, only 150 miles from Bermuda.
For
hundreds of years the Sargasso Sea, like the Bermuda Triangle,
has been a magnet for the tabloid press. Lurid nineteenth-century
paintings show sailing vessels being devoured by the weed
that floats on the surface of the sea: Sargassum, so named
by Portuguese sailors who spotted the resemblance of the
weed's air-filled bladders to the grapes of their homeland.
And like the myth of the Bermuda Triangle, the legends of
the Sargasso Sea have some basis in fact. Much of the sea's
peril comes from its location in the almost windless “Horse
Latitudes”; so called because ships en route to the Spanish
Main were often becalmed there and their horses were slaughtered
for fresh meat and to preserve water. Another name for the
Horse Latitudes is the “Doldrums.”
The
Sargasso Sea is surrounded by some of the strongest surface-water
currents in the world: the Florida Current to the southwest,
the Gulf Stream to the northwest and north, the North Atlantic
Current to the north and northeast, the Canaries Current
to the east, and the North Equatorial Drift running along
the entire southern margin of the sea. These currents form
a cordon around the sea, isolating it from the rest of the
Atlantic. This isolation causes two other curious features:
the sea's unique temperature structure and its unique ecology.
The Sargasso Sea is actually a thin lens of warm water perched
on top of much colder water and is home to great floating
beds of the Sargassum kelp that gives the sea its
name.
The
Azores, 38o30'N, 28o 00'W
On July 1, 1873, Challenger
dropped anchor off Horta, capital of the Azorean island
of Pico. “We are pretty close in now and in a few minutes
the pipe will go 'all hands bring ship to anchor'” wrote
Joe Matkin, “and out will come the Portuguese boats with
fish, fruit etc… They soon found though that the town
was in the grip of a smallpox epidemic and that another
raged in Madeira. On the strength of this, Nares decided
that their visits to both islands would be as short as
possible and that they would make all plain sail for the
South Atlantic and the Cape at the earliest opportunity.
Matkin realized sadly that whatever
happened now it would be another three years before they
saw the Azores again. Only then, with a fair wind up-channel,
would they truly be only “five days from home.”
Challenger left San Miguel
on July 9, 1873 under all plain sail for the island of
Madeira, 490 miles to the southeast. The transit would
take a week because of the usual delays of sounding and
dredging. Because of the smallpox outbreak there, none
aboard expected to stay very long in Madeira and indeed,
Nares was so impatient to leave that the ship, which arrived
in the evening of July 16, was in port only 24 hours before
departing again for the Cape Verde Islands, a thousand
miles to the south.
Under the influence of the northeast
trade winds, Challenger made good time despite the frequent
stops required by the Scientifics. Heading south, they
dredged again near the Canaries in an effort to rediscover
the area where they had found the manganese nodules on
their first trans-Atlantic transect. They found the narrow
plateau where they had retrieved the first specimens but
not the exact spot, in spite of having, as George Campbell
put it, “the night before run before the wind under bare
poles so as not to overshoot it.”
Following the 1000-mile run south
to the Cape Verde islands, by July 27th the Challenger
crew was dredging off the island of St. Vincent. There
they were to pick up two new members of the crew, a new
sub-lieutenant and a replacement schoolmaster sent out
from England to take over the care of Captain Nares's
young son, Billy, following the death of Adam Ebbels in
Bermuda. But when they arrived at St. Vincent they found
that the schoolmaster had disappeared. The new lieutenant,
Harston, could shed little light on the matter except
that the schoolmaster had gone out for a walk soon after
their arrival eight days before and had not been seen
since.
St
Paul's Rocks, Equatorial Atlantic Ocean, August 27, 1873,
01o00'N, 29o 23'W
“On
27th August,” wrote Lord Campbell, "…we sighted St.
Paul's Rocks, steamed to leeward of them, and as there
is no anchorage, sent boats with ropes and hawsers to
the rocks, wound a rope round and round a bit of rock,
made a hawser fast to the rope and swung to it with
a length of 75 fathoms of hawser, 104 fathoms of water
under our bows and there we comfortably lay for a day
and two nights, made fast to a pinnacle of rock in the
middle of the Atlantic!—something no other ship has
ever done here before. St. Paul's Rocks are a cluster
of five separate craggy rocks, all lying close together
in a horseshoe shape, the highest being about 60 feet
high, which, as are also two other peaks rather less
high, is colored white from the birds 'boobies' and
'noddies' which were sitting about on the rocks, flying
over the ship and close over the sea, in thousands..."
The
remoteness of their situation was not lost below decks,
either. Joe Matkin wrote of the Rocks, “They are 850
miles from the African, and 650 miles from the American
continent, and are only 90 miles from the equator. The
sea all around them is two miles in depth, they rise
only 60 feet out of the water, and as it breaks all
over them, landing is very difficult… They are out of
the track of any ships, and as nothing is to be obtained,
no vessel ever comes, the last known to call here was
a man of war in 1845.”
On
August 29, 1873, Challenger cast off from the desolate
pinnacles of St. Paul's Rocks and headed for the equator,
only 90 miles distant. Their next stop, the island of
Fernando Noronha, hove into view on September 1st. Brazil
used the island as a penal colony for its worst offenders...
...On
the morning of Wednesday, September 3, Challenger weighed
anchor and left Fernando Noronha. With a heavy heart
Wyville Thomson watched the tiny penal settlement disappear
over the horizon. “Some of us,” he wrote, “had set our
hearts upon preparing a monograph of the natural history
of the isolated little island.” But Campbell, as usual,
was more practical and forthright, “I was mighty glad,”
he wrote, “as it was a stupid little place.”
And
yet, on reflection, Wyville Thomson tended to agree
with Campbell's assessment, “I am inclined to think
that there was a general feeling of relief on leaving
a place which, with all its natural richness and beauty,
is simply a prison, the melancholy habitation of irreclaimable
criminals.”
After
the desolation of St. Paul's Rocks and the remoteness
and hostile reception at Fernando Noronha, Challenger's
crew were only too pleased at the prospect of several
days rest and recuperation in the mainland port of Bahia
on the east coast of Brazil. They arrived there on September
14 after a difficult passage against the southeast trade
winds.
In
all, Challenger spent 10 days at Bahia and in that time
several expeditions were fielded...
...by
noon the next day Moseley was safely back aboard Challenger
after his adventures in the interior. He found the officers
and Scientifics relaxing with new friends. The American
corvette Lancaster lay in harbor, and “we fraternized
greatly with the officers,” wrote Herbert Swire, “who
turned out to be a capital set of fellows.” Indeed,
Swire was having an excellent time, he and several of
the other officers having struck up great friendships
with the members of Bahia Cricket Club with whom they
played the sport of gentlemen.
So
cordial had relations become, in fact, that the Challenger
crew had no fewer than three balls to look forward to.
But then disaster struck. “During the first few days
of our stay a large amount of rain had fallen,” wrote
William Spry, “this, succeeded by a hot sun and again
by rain, formed just the forcing bed for disease.” On
the day of the ball to be given in their honor by the
Bahia Cricket Club, one of the bluejackets went down
with Yellow Jack. He was immediately hospitalized and
Nares put Challenger out to sea, bound under
all plain sail for colder lands ...
...by
mid-October the ship was within sight of one of its
most desolate destinations: the remote forbidding island
of Tristan da Cunha.
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