Galathea expeditions

The scientists included physician and assistant botanist Didrik Ferdinand Didrichsen, botanist Bernhard Casper Kamphøvener, entomologist Carl Emil Kiellerup, geologist Hinrich Johannes Rink and zoologists Wilhelm Friedrich Georg Behn and Johannes Theodor Reinhardt, not all of whom remained for the duration of the voyage, as well as sketch artist Johan Christian Thornam and genre painter Poul August Plum.

[2] The Galathea left Copenhagen on 24 June 1845 and, after a provisioning stop at Madeira, sailed southwards around Africa to India, where she visited Tranquebar, Pondicherry, Madras and Calcutta.

[3] The Galathea proceeded to Southeast Asia, calling at Penang, Singapore, Batavia, and Manila before heading for the Chinese coast and visiting Hong Kong, Macau, Canton, Amoy, and Shanghai.

The ship then crossed the Pacific Ocean, visiting the Hawaiian archipelago and Tahiti on the way, to Valparaiso, Callao, and Lima in South America, before rounding Cape Horn.

Further visits were made to Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, and Bahia, following which the Galathea headed back to Denmark, anchoring in Copenhagen harbour on 24 August 1847 after a voyage of more than two years.

Most of the boxes of collected items lay unopened for many years and, with some exceptions, were never properly processed, nor the full results formally published.

The main difference in the route taken from the earlier expedition was in using the Panama Canal, rather than the Drake Passage at the southern end of South America, to transit between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic.

From 1950 to 1952 the expedition carried out a program of scientific exploration; the highlight occurred in July 1951 when, while investigating the Philippine Trench, scientists secured biological material from a record depth of 10,190 m (33,430 ft).

It left Copenhagen in August 2006 and visited the Faroe Islands and Greenland, then travelled southwards through the Atlantic Ocean along the west coast of Africa to Cape Town.