Photographs of the Challenger crew
Images of ordinary seamen in the era of the tall ships are rare. But we have assembled over 60 photographs of the original crew, identifying them by name and rating. The images were taken by the expedition’s first official cameraman, Caleb Newbold, in March 1873. He photographed seven groups of seamen. The Band, The Marines and The Crew of the Officer’s Gig were taken on board ship. Two further groups of 20 or so Bluejackets were photographed at leisure on the island of St Thomas (now the British Virgin islands) in the West Indies. None of these images name the sailors involved. But, always the notemaker, the naturalist Herbert Moseley carefully wrote the name and position of each sailor on his own copies. They are in Moseley’s archive at the Bodleian Museum, Oxford.
Caleb Newbold left the expedition in South Africa. In October 1873, his replacement, Frederick Hodgeson, photographed the crew on the remote Inaccessible Island, although Moseley did not annotate a copy of these images.
Altogether, more than 1,000 official photos were taken during the voyage, but just these few feature the crew.
Service records spreadsheet
Key data from the Admiralty’s Continuous Service Record for each sailor:
Table 1: The crew, listed in the order of their Continuous Service number, including name, rank, date of birth, civilian trade, physical description, service record and ‘whether discharged.’
Table 2: Deserters or attempted to desert
Table 3: Crew hospitalised or discharged as invalids.
Source: UK, Royal Navy Registers of Seamen’s Services, 1848-1939