Theater of the World
Page 26
The role of aircraft as the spies of the skies was reduced when the Soviet Union shot down the American U-2 spy plane in 1960. But in any case, three years earlier, an entirely new technology had taken the world by storm–when the first satellite was shot into space.
A map of a part of east Greenland from 1932. It was drawn during the two years in which Norway occupied the area, naming it Erik the Red’s Land after the Icelander who established a settlement on Greenland in the 980s. The map is a highly detailed work, signed by both the Geographical Survey of Norway and Norges Svalbard- og Ishavsundersøkelser (Norway’s Svalbard and Arctic Ocean Surveys), and shows how seriously the occupation was taken.
The floor of the Atlantic Ocean, drawn as a physiographic diagram–a map drawn to have the appearance of an aerial photograph–and signed by geologists Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen in 1956. At the time, nobody had ever seen such a map before. Parts of the north-east coast of America can be seen at the top left.
BLUE PLANET
Lamont Geological Observatory, USA
41° 00′ 14″ N
73° 54′ 25″ W
On 1 February 1957, the front page of the New York Times featured a map that troubled many of the newspaper’s readers–a world map on which thick, black and unfamiliar lines divided up the oceans, some of them moving inland. ‘A Huge Crack in the Floor of the Oceans Is Traced by Geologists’, stated the headline; the accompanying article described how the Earth was ‘ripping at the seams’. The Lamont Geological Observatory–the institution responsible for the findings–received letters from worried readers who feared the end of the world was nigh. In a response to one such letter, one of the observatory’s geologists wrote: ‘I do not believe that you have any immediate worry. The earth seems to have been “ripping at the seams” for a long time now (millions of years). Movements of inches a century are considered very fast. Thank you for your interest.’
The map featured on the newspaper’s front page was a simplified version of a large nautical chart one of the observatory’s researchers had been working on for the past four years. ‘Miss Marie Tharp,’ stated the New York Times, ‘cartographer at the Lamont Observatory, had noticed that the locus of a great number of earthquakes in the North and South Atlantic in the past 40 years coincided exactly with the great trench there.’ But the newspaper didn’t credit Tharp as the map’s creator–they had only interviewed two of her male colleagues, and it was not mentioned that it was Marie Tharp who had discovered the trench, shaken the discipline of geology to its foundations and made the most accurate map of the North Atlantic ocean floor ever to have been created.
Tharp had started work on the map one day in September 1952, when one of her colleagues, Bruce Heezen, set a huge pile of cardboard boxes on her desk. The boxes were full of rolls of paper. Tharp nudged a roll so that it opened to reveal a black line illustrating the varying depth of the ocean floor. ‘Sonars,’ Heezen said. ‘What do you think?’ His question was sincere–he wasn’t giving Tharp the readings with instructions for what she should do. He was giving her them because he didn’t know how to convert them into what he wanted–a topographical representation of what the Earth looked like under water.
The rolls contained the results of the sonar surveys the observatory had been conducting out in the Atlantic Ocean for many years–a total of 915 metres of paper. The observatory’s oceanographers had sailed from America to Africa and Europe, marking their routes on maps and noting the latitude and longitude values of their positions, so that they would know where every single sounding had been taken. But the survey results were yet to be analysed in any detail. Tharp and Heezen decided to discover the complete pattern of the North Atlantic Ocean by converting the 915 metres of paper into a single drawing.
Tharp started by taping together enough sheets of paper to create a single sheet measuring over two metres across on which to enter all the details. She then drew in the routes sailed by the research vessels as six lines across the Atlantic–the northernmost from Martha’s Vineyard to Gibraltar, the southernmost from Recife in Brazil to Freetown in Sierra Leone–and marked the depth of the ocean floor along these. Six weeks later, she had her first draft.
Oceanographers had long believed there to be a mountain range running from north to south below the Atlantic–the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, of which Iceland is a part. Tharp’s map confirmed this–but also revealed much more. When she looked more closely, Tharp discovered a deep rift, over three miles wide, that split the mountain range in two.
‘Girl talk,’ said Heezen, when Tharp showed him the rift ‘It cannot be. It looks too much like…’
‘Continental drift,’ said Tharp.
Abraham Ortelius is the first person we know of who imagined that the continents might be moving. In the 1500s, like many who came after him, Ortelius noticed that the east coast of South America fits the shape of the west coast of Africa like a jigsaw puzzle, and wrote that it looked as if the two land masses had been ripped from each other. In his doctoral thesis Strandlinje-studier (Shoreline studies) from 1891, pioneering Norwegian geologist Andreas M. Hansen discussed ice ages and changes in the Earth’s climate. Why had fossils of flowers that required a warmer climate than the island’s current one been found in Greenland? Perhaps the continents had moved, Hansen suggested–thereby anticipating the theory Tharp would eventually confirm.
In 1915, German researcher Alfred Wegener published his book Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (The Origin of Continents and Oceans), in which he posited the theory that the Earth’s surface consists of continental plates in a constant state of motion. German books were not particularly popular in many other countries during the First World War, so the work would not be translated into other languages before 1922. But nor was the work especially popular upon its international publication. Geologists simply laughed at Wegener’s theories, and his explanation of how the continents were moving was unfortunately not a particularly good one.
Heezen was therefore not in the least bit interested in hearing about continental drift. All geologists believed it to be impossible–to admit that continental drift might be true was to admit that things underfoot might be somewhat unstable. Heezen asked Tharp to check the details one more time. The results were the same, but Heezen refused to hear any more about it, and so the scientists agreed to disagree while sticking to their original plan: to draw a map of the ocean floor that everyone could understand. Tharp drew a physiographic diagram–a map that looks like an aerial photograph.
The method had been developed by Armin Lobeck, an American professor of geomorphology, when he had helped the various heads of state to establish the new European borders after the First World War. When he noticed that the men in power only stared blankly at his topographical maps, on which differences in height were marked with lines–Europe’s leaders were ‘unable to tell a mountain from a mole hill or a river from a valley or anything from a shoreline’–he developed the physiographic diagram, on which mountains actually look like mountains. Using Lobeck’s method, Tharp believed, everyone could be made to understand the geography of the ocean floor–the seven-tenths of the Earth’s surface that remained mostly a mystery.
IMMEASURABLE DEPTHS | Over the centuries, nautical charts have been created in an attempt to familiarise us with the parts of the ocean geography that surround us–islands, cliffs, sandbanks, reefs and rocks both above and under water. For many years, plumbing the depths was the only way to obtain information about that which was hidden below the surface–this is described in the Bible’s New Testament, Acts xxvii, 27–29, when Paul is out at sea in a storm: ‘It was the fourteenth night, and we were drifting through the Adriatic Sea, when about midnight the sailors suspected that land was near. After taking soundings, they found the depth to be twenty fathoms. A little later, they took soundings again and found it was fifteen fathoms. Fearing that we might run aground on the rocks, they dropped four anchors from the stern and began praying for daylight to come.’
Nor is measuring the depth of the ocean as simple as casting a plumb line overboard. In the open ocean the depths are so great that the weight of the line itself is enough to make it continue over the gunwale after the plumb has reached the bottom, and this can make it seem as if the ocean is deeper than it actually is. Another problem is that the drifting of the boat means the line rarely remains vertical. In the 1830s and 1840s, when mariners began sounding the ocean in their free time, unbelievable depths of over 15,000 metres were reported–quite erroneously.
In the wake of the mapping of the coast of northern Norway by the Geographical Survey, Lieutenant Henrik Hagerup, who had become familiar with the circumstances of the fishermen during his work on the survey from 1828 to 1832, suggested that the sea banks off the coast should be surveyed as this would provide a useful supplement to the nautical charts. Hagerup’s suggestion was ignored until in 1840, Norwegian fishermen in East Finnmark complained that Russian fishing vessels were operating in their waters. The local governor submitted a proposal to perform soundings to create a map of the fishing grounds, but the Geographical Survey of Norway’s land surveyors believed this to be a waste of time–since the fishermen reporting any illegal fishing activities would be unable to understand the map. The Norwegian Ministry of Finance disagreed, however–and found funding for the soundings under the budget item ‘incidental expenses’. In 1841, the sea floor from Tanahorn to the Russian border was mapped, along with hazardous areas around the island of Karlsøy in Troms. The results were not particularly accurate, since the cartographer had only a rough idea of where and how the fishermen operated, but a report from 1843 stated that the results ‘will most likely lead to not insignificant expectations regarding the usefulness of a future accurate sounding.’ Good maps would make the fishing grounds ‘of greater importance due to their being able to be utilised during a greater period of the year.’
Oversigts-Kart over det af Nordhavsexpeditionen i 1878 bereiste Havströg (General map of the seas explored by the North Sea Expedition in 1878), a map of the waters between Norway, Svalbard, Jan Mayen and Greenland, hand-drawn by oceanographer Georg O. Sars. The map shows ‘Loddestimernes Træk’ and ‘Lofot-Torskens Sig’–the migration routes of Capelin and Cod from Lofoten–in addition to the ‘Nordhavs-Barrieren’ (North Sea barrier), ‘Polar Ström’ (Polar currents) and a ‘Dyb Havdal indtil 2000 F’ (Deep sea valley of up to 2,000 fathoms).
Norway became a leading country within the genre of fishing maps. ‘Proper fishing maps such as ours have never before been published,’ wrote Skilling-Magazin in a news report about the sounding vessel DS Hansteen in 1870. ‘Finally, a steamship has been constructed and equipped exclusively for the sounding of the sea floor and the publication of fishing maps, which provide an accurate and clear overview of the conditions of the landscape inhabited by the fish.’ The magazine provided readers with an insight into the work:
As soon as the depth of the line is checked, the reel is started by a small steam engine, and the line pulled up at an average speed of 100 fathoms per minute. In the meantime, the necessary angles required for determining the current position are measured using a sextant, between the trigonometric points at the tops of the mountains wherever these can be seen, or other observations are made. Everything must be completed and the details noted before the line has been pulled up, as the ship must then make for the next sounding location at full speed. Calculations are then performed and the sounding is marked on the map, and after 5, 6 or 7 minutes the ship stops, and starts from the beginning again.
DS Hansteen started south of Færder in the south-east of Norway, working its way west around the coast to Mandal, Jæren, Stad and the Trøndelag and Nordland coasts, paying special attention to Hitra, Frøya, Lofoten, Vesterålen and Senja. Through the mapping project, the myths and legends about Ut-Røst and other unknown landforms out at sea, which were often used to provide an explanation for incomprehensible shipwrecks, were debunked once and for all. DS Hansteen discovered new fishing grounds and established where the border between Norway and Russia was located out at sea, and in 1875 the Geographical Survey of Norway was awarded a gold medal and diploma for its outstanding nautical charts at the International Geographical Congress in Paris.
ATLANTIS | Two differing views of the ocean floor dominated the thinking of the late 1800s. On one side were the dreamers, geologists and evolutionists who imagined the lost city of Atlantis or a sunken continent that might explain why the same types of rock and fossils were found on both sides of the ocean; on the other were those who were more conservative, and who believed that land masses were unable to rise and sink–that land was land and sea was sea, and had been since the Earth was created.
Both camps were represented among the researchers aboard the British ship HMS Challenger, which in December 1872 set out on a voyage across the world’s oceans. The vessel crossed the Atlantic five times and the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean once each, and discovered the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the deepest part of the world’s oceans, the Mariana Trench between Japan and New Guinea. When making their way from Tristan da Cunha, a group of islands in the South Atlantic, to Ascension Island 30 degrees further north, they noticed that they often found themselves in shallow waters, but never took enough measurements to realise that they were sailing along the length of an underwater mountain range. The researchers therefore marked the area as a plateau.
Back home, the researchers’ findings were first hailed as the discovery of a lost continent–and despite geological and biological samples taken from the ocean floor indicating otherwise, the idea lived on. The crew aboard HMS Challenger had travelled 125,000 kilometres, but taken no more than 492 soundings during their 713 days at sea, which meant that knowledge of the ocean floor remained so sketchy that it was perfectly possible to locate lost continents there.
THE NORTH SEA | The Norwegians were inspired by the British expedition. Two professors, meteorologist Henrik Mohn and oceanographer Georg Sars, pointed out that the waters between Norway, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Jan Mayen and Svalbard were as good as unknown territory, and that the exploration of these waters was now ‘more incumbent upon us Norwegians than on any other nation.’ A scientific survey ‘of the sea off the west coast of Norway is a task which, from the Norwegian perspective, should surely be able to be performed with the same fortune as the British expeditions of the same nature,’ it was said. The Norwegians had also learned that ‘the British Government will not let the Challenger take on this survey of our Arctic waters, which we have in mind.’ The survey was named Den norske Nordhavs-Expedition–The Norwegian North Sea Expedition.
The professors felt that there were both scientific and practical reasons for setting out on the expedition. First, it would help to shed light on why Norway was blessed with a warm ocean current just off the coast, which made the country inhabitable and enabled agriculture. Second, the expedition would provide important information about fishing conditions–‘so that the many questions relating to our most important fisheries will hereby be answered. This is especially true for our highly important herring fisheries.’ By surveying the sea’s depths, floor and geological formations, they would become wiser about ‘our migrating fish species’ biological conditions.’
The steamship DS Vøringen set out from Bergen on the morning of 1 June 1876, and after mapping the bottom of the Sognefjord sailed west to survey ‘the deep “Sloping Canyon” that runs alongside the
coast towards the Arctic Ocean,’ known today as the Norwegian Trench, before setting out on a long voyage from Kristiansund. The weather posed a significant challenge–storms raged from 1 July to 15 August, with howling winds of up to twenty metres per second and six-metre-high waves: ‘The motion of the sea hindered our work on the depths.’ A breaker did so much damage to the ship that the crew was forced to put into a port of refuge on the Faroe Islands, but after the necessary repairs had been made they forged out onto the waves again, measuring a depth of 1,215 fathoms north-east of the Faroe Islands between two storms, and seeking shelter by some islands off Iceland a few days later before resuming their work. ‘Regardless of gale-force winds (wind speed of 10 to 16 metres per second) and rough seas,’ they performed the soundings and surveys of the seabed with the calculated loss of equipment that had to be cut loose. ‘After having endured eight storms in six weeks,’ they finally docked at Namsos.
In the summer of 1877, the expedition performed soundings around the areas of Lofoten and Røst before undertaking a long crossing to the West Ice between Greenland and Jan Mayen to map depths and currents; the warm surface current from the Atlantic and ‘the cold Polar current’ in the Greenland Sea. Ashore at Jan Mayen, they ‘determined the locations of the various visible peaks and glaciers using bearings and angular measurements using a sextant.’ The result was a beautiful map of the island, on which glaciers, peaks and streams were named after the expedition’s members.