The Wake of HMS Challenger
How a Legendary Victorian Voyage Tells the Story of Our Oceans' Decline
Gillen D’Arcy Wood’s environmental history The Wake of HMS Challenger explores the state of the oceans through the lens of a groundbreaking Victorian voyage.
In 1872, the British government funded a marine research expedition around the world to study deep sea life. The four-year voyage traversed seventy thousand miles, discovered hundreds of new species, and culminated in fifty volumes of reports. Based on accounts from the Challenger‘s scientists and crew, Wood recounts the ship’s travels and compares Victorian-era oceans to contemporary ones, which are threatened by overfishing, pollution, and rising temperatures.
Each chapter focuses on the discovery and decline of a different sea creature, beginning with the brittle star Ophiomusium lymani, now threatened by microplastics. Seahorses, mollusks, octopi, and the green turtle are included. While the book’s priority is its discussion of marine life, it does an apt job characterizing the Challenger and the naturalists on board who were tasked with studying Earth’s oceans.
Likewise, the reconstructed accounts of the Challenger’s trek are engaging, detailed, and delightful. Days at sea, time ashore, and visits to lands including Australia, Japan, and the Philippines are described with vividness, as is dredging the ocean floor and examining microorganisms under a microscope. The language is accessible yet elevated, befitting the Victorian subject matter: “Time, the ultimate craftsman, labors best in obscurity.”
Some of the book’s chapters fail to engage with its promised compare-and-contrast theme in a thorough or convincing way; rather, these chapters end with an abrupt shift to the present day. The best chapters provide thorough examinations of their chosen sea creatures and balance scientific explanation with reconstructed narrative and a clear understanding of the downfall of today’s oceans.
The Wake of HMS Challenger is an invigorating environmental history chronicling a historic expedition and the deterioration of Earth’s oceans.
Reviewed by
Hannah Pearson
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