Sir Charles Wyville Thomson
On World Ocean day, we take a moment to honour one of Scotland’s most remarkable contributors to marine science - Sir Charles Wyville Thomson, born at Bonsyde House, Linlithgow, in 1830. His and his team’s groundbreaking work laid the foundations for modern oceanography and opened the deep sea to scientific discovery.
A Scottish Scholar with Global Impact
Sir Charles began life as Wyville Thomas Charles Thomson, the son of a surgeon for the British East India Company. After schooling at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh, he enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to study medicine. It wasn’t long before his passion turned toward the natural sciences, particularly botany and zoology.
By his early twenties, Thomson had already become a lecturer in botany at the University of Aberdeen. Over the next two decades, he held a series of prestigious academic posts in Ireland and Scotland, eventually becoming Professor of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh in 1870. Among his students, none other than Arthur Conan Doyle, future creator of Sherlock Holmes.
Deep Sea Dreams
Thomson’s fascination with the deep sea - especially creatures like crinoids - led him to question prevailing scientific beliefs. Was there life in the deep ocean? Were its temperatures stable, as once thought?
In 1868 and 1860, he led deep-sea dredging missions aboard HMS Lightning and HMS Porcupine, proving that life existed at depths over 1200 metres. His findings, published in The Depths of the Sea (1873), were revolutionary, revealing diverse marine life and deep-sea thermal variability.
These pioneering efforts captured the attention of the British Government and Royal Navy - just as the rise of ocean telegraphy (undersea cables to transmit messages across vast ocean stretches) made understanding of the seabed more urgent than ever.
HMS Challenger: A Scientific Odyssey
In 1872, Thomson was appointed chief scientist of the most ambitious marine expedition the world had ever seen, the Challenger Expedition. A royal Navy vessel, HMS Challenger was refitted into a floating laboratory, stripped of most of its guns to make way for scientific equipment.
Route of HMS Challenger
Crew and Scientist hauling in a deep sea specimen
For three and half years, the ship sailed over 70,000 miles around the globe. The crew conducted countless dredgings, soundings, and temperature readings - and discovered over 4,500 new species of marine life. The expedition was the first to measure the depths of the Mariana Trench including Challenger Deep (the deepest part of the ocean known at the time), collected data on ocean currents, temperatures and water chemistry at 362 oceanographic stations, and mapped the first broad outline of the ocean basin.
A Legacy Etched in Glass and Ocean Floor
Upon his return, Thomson was knighted and began the monumental task of publishing the expedition’s findings but the burden proved immense. Plagued by ill health and stress, he eventually withdrew from public life and died in 1882 at his birthplace, Bonsyde House.
His work lives on. The massive 50-volume report of the Challenger Expedition, completed by his friend, colleague and expedition naturalist, Sir John Murray, remains a cornerstone of oceanographic research. Murray called the findings of the expedition:
“the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.”
Thomson’s memory is honoured in a stained-glass window at St Michael’s Parish Church, Linlithgow, and in the Wyville-Thomson Ridge in the North Atlantic Ocean. Even NASA paid tribute - the Space Shuttle Challenger was named after the ship that carried Sir Charles and his team across the seas.
World Oceans Day
HMS Challenger officer and scientific team
Over 150 years ago, the groundbreaking HMS Challenger expedition set sail, revealing the hidden wonders of our oceans and uncovering just how vital they are to life on Earth. Unfortunately, our oceans are now under threat from pollution, overfishing and climate change - all of which are putting unimaginable pressure of our blue planet. Why not channel the bold spirit of pioneers like Sir Charles Wyville Thomson, Sir John Murray, the scientific team and crew of the HMS Challenger and others - let their legacy inspire you to explore the wonders of our oceans and rise to the challenge of protecting and restoring them for future generations.
Images courtesy of Internet Archive Book Images/Wikipedia
Sources: Wikipedia/Undiscovered Scotland/Britannica/