Often, people announce - with a knowing look in their eye – that Science knows more of the surface of the moon than it does of the deep oceans of our own planet. This platitude is probably vague enough to be considered accurate, but it ignores a salient fact about Earth: a lot more is happening here, especially in the oceans, and even the smallest sample of abyssal mud contains a wealth of life sufficient for years of study. Oceanographic missions are rare because each one produces a superabundance of data and specimens that require decades of work to describe and interpret. The simple problem of man-hours and scarcity of expertise in niche fields is what limits the scope of modern oceanography (and the funding available to it).

Blue-sky thinking

The index case for this problem was that of the Challenger expedition of 1872-76, a sprawling endeavor to “investigate the physical conditions of the deep sea in the great ocean basins” - scarcely has an expedition brief been bolder or more vague – with a navy vessel and a small group of gentleman-scientists headed by Charles Wyville Thomson. Wyville Thomson had headed earlier voyages to chart the waters around the British Isles, discovering life down to depths of 1200 metres; he had become the patriarch of the nascent discipline of oceanography, which – before Challenger – was limited to a hazy understanding that a lot of the oceans were very deep indeed. The vessel set out with a complement of around 250 men of all ranks and stations, weighing anchor in Portsmouth in December 1872 and zigzagging down the Atlantic coast of Europe before striking out towards the Caribbean. She would sail on for almost eighty thousand miles, crossing and re-crossing the Atlantic before swooping down to the sub Antarctic Kerguelen archipelago, circling Australia and the Pacific, and finally passing through the Straits of Magellan at the tip of South America on her way home.

A challenging legacy

This, however, is not the end of the story. On her voyage, the Challenger measured depth and temperature and collected biota, samples of living organisms from the sea floor, at 360 stations along the route of her voyage. The vessel was fitted with a fully-equipped laboratory, and vast volumes of specimens, data, and readings were amassed during the three years at sea; sediment samples sealed in meticulously-labelled bottles and countless specimens steeped in alcohol, volumes upon volumes of log-books and charts, water samples, and photographic negatives. There is a limit to the amount of useful scientific study that can be done by half-a-dozen scientists on a ship, so the massed volume of potential information was stored for the journey before being distributed across the country upon the ship’s return, each major grouping of specimens going to an organisation or individual most proficient in the study of that given group. Thus began the process of documentation, interpretation, and publication which follows any respectable scientific endeavour; but from the start it was fraught with difficulty, and the project would outstrip the length of the voyage six fold in terms of years spent upon it.

Tome after tome…

The grandly-titled ‘Report of the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the Years 1873-76’, and its associated texts, started trickling from the presses almost as soon as the ship returned to port, but publication would drag on across fifty volumes and more than 29,500 pages. These shelves of heavy tomes contained the distilled data of the expedition, beautifully illustrated with hand-coloured lithographs depicting the litany of species which described as new to science. Wyville Thomson oversaw the publications, but the stress of the project overwhelmed him and he withdrew in 1881, dying shortly afterwards. His place was taken by John Murray, his friend and fellow oceanographer on the voyage; the Report would not be completed until nineteen years after the Challenger docked, a vast, sprawling and prohibitively expensive manuscript which has yet to be matched in terms of vision, boldness and scope (and quite possibly cost) to this day. In the current climate of meandering austerity and profit-motivated science, it seems inconceivable that such a dedicated blue-skies expedition, and the years of follow-up, could be mounted in the 21^st century; modern oceanography exists as a passenger, travelling alongside the oil industry and the world’s navies, everywhere studying the workings of nature through the lens of humanity’s impact upon it.

Echoes of Challenger

Echoes of Challenger appear everywhere in the study of samples from the deep ocean. Besides the heavy, leather-bound volumes that sit in the Mollusca Library at the Museum, the Ted Phorson collection which I’m currently working on contains swathes of sub-millimetre-sized mollusc shells (and other, stranger things) sampled from the North Atlantic by a remote vehicle (R.V.) designated vessel named Challenger, and Phorson himself worked on some of Charles Wyville Thomson’s still-unsorted specimens in the late 1970s, almost a hundred years on from when they were first collected. Modern scientific literature on the fauna of the deep oceans refers frequently to the Challenger Report, as so few works have tackled these organisms at the same level of detail since, and it seems unlikely that the oceanographers of the future will be able to; the days of the explorers are surely long gone. It is easy to feel a twinge of nostalgia for the scientific buccaneers of Challenger and, before it, the Beagle voyage – free from want for time and money, invested not with a desire for the wealth of nature, nor with a noble wish to save the oceans from man’s depredations, but instead willing to cast themselves out into the boundless wastes of the sea in search of the heady drug of knowledge, a pure and stupefying substance that raises one above the clouds, denied to us pragmatic, modern mortals. It is comforting to think of the vast mines of secrets that remain undreamt amid the vastness of the abyss, waiting for the explorers of the far future to uncover. Perhaps it is just as well that the days of the old sojourners are over, for now – after all, they have left the better part of their work undone.

The first object this month is this wages book from Roath Power Station. Roath Power Station was owned by the Cardiff City Electricity Department until Nationalisation, when the Central Electricity Generating Board formed. It was situated on a site on the corner of Newport Road and Colchester Avenue, and began supplying electricity in 1902. It was essential in supplying electricity to the new fleet of electric trams that began running in Cardiff from 1902, and a Tram Depot was situated close by on Newport Road. This aerial view from the Tempest Collection shows the site in the 1950s after the construction of the two concrete cooling towers were completed in 1942.

Last year we were donated a copy of the design for the Lesbians & Gay Men Support the Miners Group badge that was produced in 1984. The events from 1984/85 were recently depicted in the film ‘Pride’. We have now been donated two of the original designs for the badge. This complements a number of objects in our collection including a 30^th anniversary badge manufactured in 2014.

Also relating to the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike we have been donated this month this ‘Cardiff Miners Support Committee’ mug. It was manufactured by the Welsh Beaker Company in about 1985. It was purchased by the donor at a benefit gig at Cardiff Students Union, whilst a student at Cardiff, to support the miners during the 1984/85 strike.

Finally we need your help to identify this lovely view of a Victorian boating lake. It was taken by the photographer J. Owen of Newtown who had won a prize for his photography at the National Eisteddfod on 1889. The lake is currently unidentified but it has been suggested it might be the lake at Llandrindod Wells, or possibly Lake Mochdre at Newtown. If anyone is able to help confirm the location we would love to hear from you.

Mark Etheridge
Curator: Industry & Transport
Follow us on Twitter - @IndustryACNMW

Exhibition review by Museum's Youth Forum.

As youth forum members we were able to help input our opinions into the design of the temporary exhibition and have been able to see it develop from a drawing on paper to a physical form. Today we have examined the exhibition and have evaluated the information and items displayed.

Amgueddfa Cymru has been tasked with commemorating the WW1 centenary. Personally, we believe that the exhibition is very interesting as it gives an insight into the medicinal history starting from Ancient Greece right up to the 21st century. We enjoyed the exhibition overall. The video grabbed our attention the most and we were able to see a visual aspect of medicinal practice with a humorous touch.

The exhibition has a number of different displays which hold valuable information about medicine and the different tools used to carry out medical procedures such as amputations. It contains a silent video in both Welsh and English that shows a few medical procedures from the Roman times. There are some replicas of medical items in the display case that have been used such as a Face Mask used in World War One to disguise facial wounds. 

There is also a small game on an iPad that tests your knowledge of the information in the exhibition. This together with the video has proved to be a success with the general public. Some reviews say that they liked “the doctor video” and a young person enjoyed it when the doctor was “cutting the leg off”.

By Joel Powell, Emma Jones and Hannah Sweetapple.

It’s been another busy lambing season down at Llwyn yr Eos – we really hope you’ve enjoyed watching all the action via #lambcam.  This year, as well as welcoming lots of excited visitors to the farm to see our mums and babies, there’s been a couple of new additions to the programme. We ran our first ever Lambing Experience Day Courses and were really pleased to get great feedback that included 'a once in a lifetime experience'! They're something we hope to build on in 2017 - so watch this space!. Our Learning Team also organised lambing tours for schools, with over 600 children visiting (some of whom were lucky enough to witness births happening!).

The lamb-o-meter clocked up 186 at close of play – there’s a few stragglers left to deliver, but we’re on course for a total of 204 births. For those of you who like some stats, here goes…

• Lambing 204 from 114 ewes gives a lambing percentage of 178% (which is good).
• The vast majority of those are happy, healthy and with their mothers.
• But we’ve also lost a few along the way…
  • One set of twins were a late miscarriage.
  • One lamb too premature to survive.
  • 2 failed to thrive and died at a few days old.
  • 2 stillborn.
  • 1 accidentallly smothered by its mother.
• So far we have ended up with two lambs being bottle fed:
  • One was born very poorly and had to be hand reared from the start.
  • The other was from a set of twins where the mother had mastitis and only had enough milk for one lamb.
  • Both of them are bouncing around happily now.

• There’s also been a couple of bonuses – two ewes that we thought were carrying singles delivered twins!

So here’s a few of this year’s cutest pictures to keep you going till next year……

Yma yn y popty gallwn glywed yr ŵyn bach yn brefu yn y caeau wrth i ni weithio, yn dangos bod y gaeaf drosodd a’r gwanwyn ar ei ffordd o’r diwedd i Sain Ffagan. Ar ôl ein cot o baent a gwaith trwsio blynyddol, mae’n bryd tanio Idris unwaith eto – Idris y ddraig yw llysenw’r popty. Mae’n ddigon hoffus ond yn gallu bod ychydig yn anwadal weithiau!

Mae pobi Cymreig traddodiadol yn rhan allweddol o waith y becws, oedd yn wreiddiol yn fusnes teuluol yn Aberystwyth. Codwyd yr adeilad ym 1900 gan Evan Jenkins, ffermwr lleol, fel busnes ar gyfer ei ddwy ferch, Catherine Jane a Mary Elizabeth. Christine fy mam gafodd y fraint o ail-danio’r popty a phobi’r bara cyntaf ar ôl ailagor yr adeilad yn yr Amgueddfa ym 1987. Yn anffodus fe wnaeth hi’n gadael ni yr haf diwethaf, ond rydyn ni’n parhau i ddefnyddio’r ryseitiau y gweithiodd hithau a’r ymchwilydd Minwel Tibbott mor galed i’w casglu.

Dros y gaeaf rydw i a’r tîm wedi bod yn datblygu syniadau ar gyfer cynnyrch newydd. Mae gerddi’r amgueddfa o’n hamgylch ni yn llawn ffrwythau a llysiau sy’n ein hysbrydoli ni. Rhai o’r ffefrynnau hyd yn hyn yw’r bara riwbob, y deisen gellyg a siocled a’r Rholiau Sir Benfro.

Ond mae’r Pasg ar ein pennau ni’n barod a dyw rhai pethau byth yn newid – ar ddydd Gwener y Groglith byddwn ni’n croesi a rhoi sglein ar deisennau’r Groglith, gan flasu ambell un... i sicrhau safon wrth gwrs! Rydyn ni’n edrych ymlaen at groesawu ein cwsmeriaid yn ôl dros y misoedd nesaf. Mae arogl bara ffres yn rhoi rhyw deimlad cynnes i lawer o bobl, felly dilynwch eich trwyn i’r popty i ddweud helo.