Page 92 - Oceans

90

Timeline

Polynesians start French physicist Gustave- The first offshore oil rig is built
c.1500bce to colonize most of 1835 Gaspard de Coriolis publishes 1897 off the coast of California, just
the islands of the Pacific Ocean, crossing it in a paper describing how ocean currents and 295 ft (90 m) from the shore.
large, double-hulled sailing canoes. They reach moving air are affected by the spinning Earth.
Hawaii and New Zealand by 1000 ce. This becomes known as the Coriolis effect. The coastal town of Galveston,
1900 Texas, is destroyed by a
Viking mariners reach the British navigator hurricane. The storm surge and resulting floods
c.985ce coast of Newfoundland in 1839–43 James Clark Ross kill more than 8,000 people.
North America after being driven southwest by commands an expedition to Antarctica,
a storm while sailing to Greenland from Iceland. discovering the Ross Sea and the Ross Ice Shelf. Norwegian explorer Roald
1903 Amundsen leads the first
Chinese admiral Darwin publishes his theory of expedition to traverse the Northwest Passage
1405–33 Zheng He explores 1842 the structure and formation of through the Arctic successfully.
the Indian Ocean with his fleet. coral reefs and atolls. However, he is not proved
right until the 1940s. The steamship Titanic sinks after
Genoese merchant Christopher 1912 colliding with an iceberg that
1492 Columbus uses the trade winds to British naturalist Edward Forbes has drifted 435 miles (700 km) southeast of
cross the Atlantic Ocean in search of a sea route 1843 says that life cannot exist below Newfoundland; 1,500 people die in the mishap.
to China, but discovers the West Indies instead. 1,800 ft (550 m) in the oceans, starting a debate
about the presence of an azoic (lifeless) zone. The Panama Canal between the
Portuguese navigator 1914 Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean
1519–21 Ferdinand Magellan is During dredging is opened after a lengthy construction project.
sent by Spain to find a sea route to the East Indies 1868–69 operations from HMS
via the Pacific. After he is killed in the Philippines Lightning and Porcupine, Scottish naturalist German meteorologist Alfred
his crew sails home across the Indian Ocean, and Wyville Thomson discovers oceanic life as deep 1915 Wegener publishes his theory
completes the first voyage around the world. as 14,403 ft (4,390 m). This disproves Edward of continental drift, suggesting that all the
Forbes’ theory of a deep-ocean lifeless zone. continents were once joined together in a
British physicist George Hadley “supercontinent,” one that he later calls Pangaea.
1735 explains how the Earth’s The Suez Canal between the
rotation affects the oceanic trade winds. His 1869 Mediterranean and the Red Sea British explorer Ernest
name is given to the Hadley cells, which are is completed after 11 years’ work, but at the 1915 Shackleton’s ship Endurance
part of the pattern of global air circulation. cost of at least 125,000 lives. drifts 800 miles (1,300 km) while locked in the
pack ice of the Antarctic Weddell Sea before
British clockmaker John British scientist Sir William being crushed and destroyed.
1759 Harrison perfects an accurate, 1872 Thomson (Lord Kelvin) invents a
reliable marine chronometer that can be used sounding machine that uses wire cable to measure French scientists succeed in
to determine longitude at sea. ocean depths. This is more accurate than older 1919 using an echo sounder (sonar)
sounding methods using weighted hemp rope. device to make the first depth measurements.
British sailor
1768–79 Captain James Cook HMS Challenger Russian biochemist Aleksander
undertakes three voyages of exploration, mainly 1872–76 makes the first 1924 Oparin suggests that life on
in the Pacific and Southern Ocean. thorough scientific exploration of the oceans. Earth could have originated in the oceans, as
The ship travels 68,910 miles (110,900 km) on simple substances linked up to form the first
Captain Cook and his crew its four year voyage. complex molecules essential to life.
1770 discover the Great Barrier Reef
on the eastern coast of Australia when their Charles Sigsbee of German survey ship
ship the Endeavour is almost wrecked on it. 1874–75 the US Navy pioneers 1925–27 Meteor uses sonar
new methods of mapping the ocean floor when to produce a profile of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
American inventor and surveying the Gulf of Mexico.
1770 statesman Benjamin Franklin US naturalist Charles Beebe and
publishes the first map of the Gulf Stream. The first vessel specifically 1934 engineer Otis Barton make a
1882 built as an oceanographic world record descent of 3,028 ft (923 m) in a
British Admiral Francis Beaufort research vessel begins operations—the US Fish simple submersible called a bathysphere.
1805 devises a scale for measuring Commission steamer Albatross.
and describing wind speed at sea. The first self-contained
The volcano Krakatau erupts 1943 underwater breathing apparatus
Swiss chemist Alexander Marcet 1883 between Java and Sumatra, (SCUBA) is developed by French diver Jacques
1819 discovers that the basic chemistry causing tsunamis that kill 36,000 people. Cousteau and engineer Emile Gagnan.
of seawater is the same throughout the world.
Norwegian explorer US oceanographer Henry
British naturalist 1893–96 Fridtjof Nansen’s ship 1948 Melson Stommel publishes
1831–36 Charles Darwin Fram drifts over the central Arctic Ocean while a paper explaining the workings of the
conducts some of the earliest oceanographic locked in pack ice, demonstrating that the Gulf Stream and the ocean circulation that
research during the voyage of the HMS Beagle. polar ice moves. redistributes heat around the world.