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HMS Porcupine (1844)
HMS ''Porcupine'' was a Royal Navy 3-gun wooden paddle steamer. It was built in Deptford Dockyard in 1844 and served as a survey ship. It was first employed in the survey of the Thames Estuary by Captain Frederick Bullock. In 1847, in common with other paddle-steamers used in surveying, ''Porcupine'' was diverted to famine relief work in Ireland and western Scotland. She then spent some time in the Mediterranean, returining to England in 1851. In the Crimean war she was commanded by Henry Charles Otter, and returned to surveying work in Scotland, still under Otter, in 1854. In 1858 she crossed the Atlantic in support of the laying of the first Atlantic cable. In 1862 ''Porcupine'' surveyed off the west coast of Ireland under the command of Richard Hoskyn in preparation for the laying of the replacement transatlantic telegraph cable. Previous surveys had shown very steep descents at the edge of the continental shelf, but Hoskyn's work identified a suitable route to the west of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Continental Shelf
A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea. Much of these shelves were exposed by drops in sea level during glacial periods. The shelf surrounding an island is known as an ''insular shelf''. The continental margin, between the continental shelf and the abyssal plain, comprises a steep continental slope, surrounded by the flatter continental rise, in which sediment from the continent above cascades down the slope and accumulates as a pile of sediment at the base of the slope. Extending as far as 500 km (310 mi) from the slope, it consists of thick sediments deposited by turbidity currents from the shelf and slope. The continental rise's gradient is intermediate between the gradients of the slope and the shelf. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the name continental shelf was given a legal definition as the stretch of the seabed adjacent to the shores of a par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1844 Ships
In the Philippines, it was the only leap year with 365 days, as December 31 was skipped when 1845 began after December 30. Events January–March * January 15 – The University of Notre Dame, based in the city of the same name, receives its charter from Indiana. * February 27 – The Dominican Republic gains independence from Haiti. * February 28 – A gun on the USS ''Princeton'' explodes while the boat is on a Potomac River cruise, killing two United States Cabinet members and several others. * March 8 ** King Oscar I ascends to the throne of Sweden–Norway upon the death of his father, Charles XIV/III John. ** The Althing, the parliament of Iceland, is reopened after 45 years of closure. * March 9 – Giuseppe Verdi's opera ''Ernani'' debuts at Teatro La Fenice, Venice. * March 12 – The Columbus and Xenia Railroad, the first railroad planned to be built in Ohio, is chartered. * March 13 – The dictator Carlos Antonio López becomes first President of Paraguay ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Porcupine Bank
Porcupine Bank is an area of the Irish shelf, on the fringes of the Atlantic Ocean approximately west of Ireland. The relatively raised area of seabed, 200 m below sea level at its highest, lies between the deep-water Porcupine Seabight and Rockall Trough. The name comes from the bank's discovery in 1862 by HMS ''Porcupine'', a British sail and paddle-wheel ship used mainly for surveying. The northern and western slopes of the bank feature species of cold-water corals. According to Dr. Anthony Grehan of the National University of Ireland, Galway, the virtually untouched site could benefit dwindling fish stocks and possibly aid medical research. In an 1870 paper presented to the Geological Society of Ireland, Mr W Fraser suggested that these reefs mark the site of the sunken island of Hy-Brasil Brasil, also known as Hy-Brasil and several other variants, is a phantom island said to lie in the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland. Irish myths described it as cloaked in mis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Challenger Expedition
The ''Challenger'' expedition of 1872–1876 was a scientific program that made many discoveries to lay the foundation of oceanography. The expedition was named after the naval vessel that undertook the trip, . The expedition, initiated by William Benjamin Carpenter, was placed under the scientific supervision of Sir Charles Wyville Thomson—of the University of Edinburgh and Merchiston Castle School—assisted by five other scientists, including Sir John Murray, a secretary-artist and a photographer. The Royal Society of London obtained the use of ''Challenger'' from the Royal Navy and in 1872 modified the ship for scientific tasks, equipping it with separate laboratories for natural history and chemistry. The expedition, led by Captain George Nares, sailed from Portsmouth, England, on 21 December 1872. Other naval officers included Commander John Maclear. – pages 19 and 20 list the civilian staff and naval officers and crew, along with changes that took place during the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Forbes
Edward Forbes FRS, FGS (12 February 1815 – 18 November 1854) was a Manx naturalist. In 1846, he proposed that the distributions of montane plants and animals had been compressed downslope, and some oceanic islands connected to the mainland, during the recent ice age. This mechanism, which was the first natural explanation to explain the distributions of the same species on now-isolated islands and mountain tops, was discovered independently by Charles Darwin, who credited Forbes with the idea. He also incorrectly deduced the so-called azoic hypothesis, that life under the sea would decline to the point that no life forms could exist below a certain depth. Early years Forbes was born at Douglas on the Isle of Man. His father was a well-to-do banker. As a child, Forbes was very interested in collecting insects, shells, minerals, fossils, and plants. Due to poor health, he was unable to attend school from his 5th through his 11th years. In 1828, he started attending the Ath ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Azoic Hypothesis
The Azoic hypothesis (sometimes referred to as the Abyssus theory) is a superseded scientific theory proposed by Edward Forbes in 1843, stating that the abundance and variety of marine life decreased with increasing depth and, by extrapolation of his own measurements, Forbes calculated that marine life would cease to exist below . Overview The theory was based upon Forbes' findings aboard , a survey ship to which he had been appointed naturalist by the ship's commander Captain Thomas Graves. With Forbes aboard, HMS ''Beacon'' set sail around the Aegean Sea on 17 April 1841, from Malta. It was at this point that Forbes began to take dredging samples at various depths of the ocean, he observed that samples from greater depths displayed a narrower diversity of creatures which were generally smaller in size. Forbes reported his findings from the Aegean Sea in his 1843 report to the British Association entitled ''Report on the Mollusca and Radiata of the Aegean Sea''. His findings w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, recognising excellence in science, supporting outstanding science, providing scientific advice for policy, education and public engagement and fostering international and global co-operation. Founded on 28 November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II as The Royal Society and is the oldest continuously existing scientific academy in the world. The society is governed by its Council, which is chaired by the Society's President, according to a set of statutes and standing orders. The members of Council and the President are elected from and by its Fellows, the basic members of the society, who are themselves elected by existing Fellows. , there are about 1,700 fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS (Fellow of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Killwick Calver
Edward Killwick Calver (6 December 1813 – 28 October 1892) was a Captain in the Royal Navy, and hydrographic surveyor. He is particularly noted for his surveying work in the east of Britain, and as the captain of , in oceanographic voyages in 1869 and 1870. Calver was born in Southwold in Suffolk. He entered the Navy in July 1828 on board ''HMS Crocodile'' on foreign service in the East Indies, where he was active in the search for pirates. In 1832 he joined , under the command of Robert Smart, being involved in the blockade of the Dutch Coast during the Belgian Revolution, Belgian war of independence, and then cruising for slavers off the coast of Brazil. He passed his examination for Second-Master in October 1834, and carried out many surveys, both in ''Crocodile'' and ''Satellite''. His surveying work was sufficiently appreciated at home that when he returned to England in April 1836 he was appointed Assistant-Surveyor to Michael Atwell Slater who was in charge of the survey ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HMS Porcupine (1844)
HMS ''Porcupine'' was a Royal Navy 3-gun wooden paddle steamer. It was built in Deptford Dockyard in 1844 and served as a survey ship. It was first employed in the survey of the Thames Estuary by Captain Frederick Bullock. In 1847, in common with other paddle-steamers used in surveying, ''Porcupine'' was diverted to famine relief work in Ireland and western Scotland. She then spent some time in the Mediterranean, returining to England in 1851. In the Crimean war she was commanded by Henry Charles Otter, and returned to surveying work in Scotland, still under Otter, in 1854. In 1858 she crossed the Atlantic in support of the laying of the first Atlantic cable. In 1862 ''Porcupine'' surveyed off the west coast of Ireland under the command of Richard Hoskyn in preparation for the laying of the replacement transatlantic telegraph cable. Previous surveys had shown very steep descents at the edge of the continental shelf, but Hoskyn's work identified a suitable route to the west of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brachiopod
Brachiopods (), phylum Brachiopoda, are a phylum of trochozoan animals that have hard "valves" (shells) on the upper and lower surfaces, unlike the left and right arrangement in bivalve molluscs. Brachiopod valves are hinged at the rear end, while the front can be opened for feeding or closed for protection. Two major categories are traditionally recognized, articulate and inarticulate brachiopods. The word "articulate" is used to describe the tooth-and-groove structures of the valve-hinge which is present in the articulate group, and absent from the inarticulate group. This is the leading diagnostic skeletal feature, by which the two main groups can be readily distinguished as fossils. Articulate brachiopods have toothed hinges and simple, vertically-oriented opening and closing muscles. Conversely, inarticulate brachiopods have weak, untoothed hinges and a more complex system of vertical and oblique (diagonal) muscles used to keep the two valves aligned. In many brachiopods, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transatlantic Telegraph Cable
Transatlantic telegraph cables were undersea cables running under the Atlantic Ocean for telegraph communications. Telegraphy is now an obsolete form of communication, and the cables have long since been decommissioned, but telephone and data are still carried on other transatlantic telecommunications cables. The first cable was laid in the 1850s from Valentia Island off the west coast of Ireland to Bay of Bulls, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. The first communications occurred on 16 August 1858, but the line speed was poor, and efforts to improve it caused the cable to fail after three weeks. The Atlantic Telegraph Company led by Cyrus West Field constructed the first transatlantic telegraph cable. The project began in 1854 and was completed in 1858. The cable functioned for only three weeks, but was the first such project to yield practical results. The first official telegram to pass between two continents was a letter of congratulations from Queen Victoria of the United ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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