Among marine geologists, the voyage of HMS Challenger
has become a legend. Launching the first exclusively scientific expedition sponsored by the British Admiralty, from late 1872 to mid-1876, the Challenger
toured the world's oceans, surveying the marine environment, sounding the depths and dredging the ocean floor. Its mission was primarily reconnaissance, because at the time the underwater world was still an unexplored wilderness. Corfield, an Oxford scientist and popular science writer (Architects of Eternity), uses the expedition as a thread for stringing together lessons on oceanography and cannot help commenting on the Challenger's discoveries from his more enlightened, 21st-century perspective. As the ship passes the Bermuda Triangle, he offers modern theories about the mysterious disappearances there and the climatic effects of methane hydrates. When a naturalist wonders about the glowing water along Africa's west coast, Corfield steps in to explain bioluminescence. Regarding Antarctica, he tells about a prehistoric freshwater lake sealed under the ice, discovered in the 1970s. At the volcanic Ring of Fire in the Pacific, he lectures on seafloor spreading. If Challenger
fails to oblige his lecture plans, no matter, Corfield describes what its scientists would have found had they ventured further, a hundred years later, armed with modern technology and current theory. As a result, a mere third of the actually deals with the voyage. This book may delight some readers, but it will disappoint history lovers expecting an account of a sequel to Darwin's voyage on the Beagle. (Sept. 23)
