There had never before been anything like the 1870s voyage of the H.M.S. Challenger. From late 1872 to 1876, with the full support of the British navy, and specially refitted as a floating scientific laboratory staffed by some of the empire’s finest naturalists, it sailed the oceans of the planet solely for the purpose of discovering more about what was in them and how the systems they contain function and inter-relate with one another.