Photographs of the Challenger crew

Photographs of ordinary seamen at this time are rare. But by combining two sources of information, we can for the first time put a face to the name of at least sixty of Challenger’s original crew.

In March 1873, the expedition’s first official photographer, Caleb Newbold, photographed six groups of seamen: The Band, The Marines and The Crew of the Officer’s Gigon board ship, and three groups of Bluejackets on St Thomas (now the British Virgin islands) in the West Indies. The meticulous naturalist, Herbert Moseley, added the name and position of each sailor on his copies of the photos. These are archived at the Bodleian Museum, Oxford. The men could buy their own copies for a shilling, perhaps to send home to their family.

Newbold left the expedition in South Africa. In October 1873, his replacement, Frederick Hodgeson, photographed the crew on the remote Inaccessible Island.

Altogether, more than 1,000 official photos taken during the voyage, but just these few feature the crew.