By the middle of the 19th century, as scientists explored the frontiers of polar regions and the atmosphere, the ocean remained silent and inaccessible. The history of how this changed—of how the depths became a scientific passion and a cultural obsession, an engineering challenge and a political attraction—is the story that unfolds in this book.

Foreword by Sylvia Earle 1. Fathoming the Fathomless 2. The Undiscovered Country 3. Soundings 4. A Sea Breeze 5. Dredging the Moon 6. Small World 7. Epilogue Notes Acknowledgments Index

Helen Rozwadowski is one of the rising generation of American historians of science. Her speciality is the development of marine science on both sides of the Atlantic during the 19th and 20th centuries. In Fathoming the Ocean she goes back to the mid-19th century to tell the fascinating story of how sailors and scientists combined to carry out the first explorations of the ocean depths, showing how these actors and events revolutionized understanding of a hirtherto unknown region. In the process, Rozwadowski greatly expands our own understanding, all while telling a story that is original, wide-ranging, and illuminating. I have greatly enjoyed reading this book.

Helen Rozwadowski is one of the rising generation of American historians of science. Her speciality is the development of marine science on both sides of the Atlantic during the 19th and 20th centuries. In Fathoming the Ocean she goes back to the mid-19th century to tell the fascinating story of how sailors and scientists combined to carry out the first explorations of the ocean depths, showing how these actors and events revolutionized understanding of a hirtherto unknown region. In the process, Rozwadowski greatly expands our own understanding, all while telling a story that is original, wide-ranging, and illuminating. I have greatly enjoyed reading this book. -- Margaret Deacon, Southampton Oceanography Centre, author of Science and the Sea: The Origins of Oceanography Historians think of oceans as sites for trade, warfare, or scientific exploration. On the other hand, poets, painters, and novelists have long stressed the oceans' exotic beauty, remoteness, and danger. In Fathoming the Ocean Helen Rozwadowski unites these two views, showing that oceans have a history in the broadest cultural sense, one that involves human hopes and needs as well as scientific aspirations and ambitions, and that scientists' attempts to fathom the deep originated in wider nineteenth century cultural concerns, what the author calls a 'cultural redefinition of the sea.' This book is required reading for anyone wanting to understand how the oceans have come to play the role that they do in Western knowledge. -- Eric L. Mills, Dalhousie University and author of Biological Oceanography: An Early History, 1870-1960 As the title Fathoming the Ocean suggests, Rozwadowski conceives of the act of measuring the ocean (taking fathoms) as inseparable from the act of imagining it (fathoming). Working from this perspective, she brilliantly places this history of the measurement and imagination of the sea within the context of changing encounters with the ocean as a space of recreation, resources, connections, and personal challenges during the nineteenth century. In short, Rozwadowski uses her history of ocean exploration to produce a comprehensive history of the sea that adds several new dimensions to the literatures on the history of science, the history of the ocean, and the history of social change during the mid-nineteenth century. -- Philip E. Steinberg, Florida State University, author of The Social Construction of the Ocean Most scholars of oceanography begin the story around 1900, but Helen Rozwadowski shows, in this creative and novel interpretation, how marine science arose in the nineteenth century from a new political and cultural fascination with the sea. Yachtsmen, sailors, adventurers, businessmen, fishermen, and whalers all felt the tug of the deep, with its mysteries and myths. By the turn of the century, these diverse interests had come together to form of the basic questions that inspire the ocean science we recognize today. Fathoming the Ocean is a captivating read, brimming with new information and fresh insights into the sea's deep cultural meanings. I am convinced Rozwadowski's book will become a must-read for anyone wishing to understand how we have come to view the oceans as we do. -- Keith R. Benson, Green College