3-053-476 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger: St. Paul's Rocks, from the east, 1873. First global marine research expedition. 'Much interest is felt in the Government scientific expedition on board H.M.S. Challenger for deep-sea explorations in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans...Mr. J. J. Wild sends us a sketch "of the windward side of the rocks - the side opposite to that on which we were moored...The first appearance was a delicate serrated outline on the western horizon. These solitary rocks are nearly under the Equator and midway between the coasts of Africa and of South America. They were visited by Captain Fitzroy, accompanied by Mr. Darwin, in the Beagle in 1832, and by Sir James Ross in the Erebus and Terror in 1839...We came in to the west of the rocks...To our right there were three small detached rocks, dark and low; then a rock, about 60 ft. high, almost pure white from being covered with a kind of varnish of a mixture of phosphatic matter produced by the sea-birds and sea salt; next a bay or cove, with a background of lower rock. To the left some peaks 50 ft. to 60 ft. high, white and variously mottled...the whole excessively rugged, with channels and clefts here and there, through which the surf dashes from the weather side".' From "Illustrated London News", 1873.