Detail an Expedition

Detail an Expedition

Your mission in this activity is to pick an expedition (or part of an expedition, such as Cook’s first voyage) from the list of expeditions below and become an expert in its historical and scientific details. Specifically, you’ll research and gather details about:

1. the location of the expedition, including ship’s positions in latitude and longitude

2. the political, social and/or scientific driving forces that gave rise to the expedition (i.e., political turmoil that led to the ouster of a group of people causing them to emigrate to a new island; a scientific need to learn about ocean currents to reduce shipping times between countries, etc.)

3. the major goals of the expedition (i.e., what were their specific military, social, scientific and/or political goals?)

4. the primary tools of the expedition for carrying out its mission (i.e., the type of ships, the scientific equipment carried on board, food and water stores, weapons, other tools, etc.)

5. the major events that occurred during the expedition (including logistic, meteorological, oceanographic, scientific, historical, social or political events on board or external to the expedition, if those events affected the completion of the expedition) and their timelines

6. the major personages involved in the expedition and their roles

7. the major results of the expedition (i.e., did they accomplish their goals and what did they learn?)

Keep this information on 3x5 notecards. Label your notecards 1 through 7 to correspond to the items in the list. Certainly, you will have to use more than one notecard for each item so you will have multiple notecards marked 1 or 2 or 3, etc. Colored notecards also work well to separate each of the seven items above.

Choose one of the expeditions. A partial list of web sites is provided to get you started. You may want to skim through all of them before making your choice. The video and textbook will also guide your choices. You are encouraged to use any external sources (library books, documentaries, local experts) to support your research. Consult your instructor if you wish to choose an expedition that is not on the list.

Migrations of the Oceanian Peoples to Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia

Wayfinders

http://www.pbs.org/wayfinders/

Traditional Navigation in the Western Pacific

http://www.museum.upenn.edu/Navigation/Misc/contents.html

The Viking Settlement of North America

Parks Canada – L’Anse aux Meadows

http://parkscanada.pch.gc.ca/parks/newfoundland/anse_meadows/english/history_e.htm

The Norse in the North Atlantic

http://www.heritage.nf.ca/exploration/norse.html#north

The Indian Ocean Voyages of Zheng He and the Chinese Fleet

The Great Chinese Mariner, Zheng He

http://www.chinapage.com/zhenghe.html

Explorer from China who “Beat Columbus to America”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/03/04/nexp04.xml

The Coastal Africa Explorations Funded by Prince Henry the Navigator

Prince Henry the Navigator: Royal Patron of Explorers

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/h/henry.shtml

The European Voyages of Exploration: Prince Henry the Navigator

http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya/henry1.html

The Discovery of the West Indies by Christopher Columbus

The Columbus Navigation Homepage

http://www1.minn.net/~keithp/

The Explorations of Christopher Columbus

http://www.mariner.org/age/columbus.html

The Round-the-World Voyages of Ferdinand Magellan

The European Voyages of Exploration: Ferdinand Magellan

http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/eurvoya/magellan.html

Modern History Sourcebook: Ferdinand Magellan’s Voyage Round the World, 1519-1522 CE

http://www.bigchalk.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/WOPortal.woa/wa/HWCDA/file?fileid=109291&flt=cab

The Pacific Explorations of Captain James Cook

Captain Cook Society

http://freespace.virgin.net/chris.jones/index.htm

Cooks First Voyage: 1768-1771

http://pacific.vita.org/pacific/cook/cook1.htm

The Northwest Passage Expeditions of Sir John Ross and Sir James Clark Ross

Sir John Ross

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/FrankenDemo/People/ross.html

Sir John Ross and the 1829 Arctic Expedition

http://www.cronab.demon.co.uk/Ross.htm

The Arctic Expeditions of Fridtjof Nansen

Fridtjof Nansen: Man of Many Facets

http://www.mnc.net/norway/Nansen.htm

Fridtjof Nansen: Scientist, Diplomat and Humanist

http://www.nrsc.no/nansen/fritjof_nansen.html

Charles Wilkes and the United States Exploring Expedition

The United States Exploring Expedition on Mauna Loa

http://www.mlo.noaa.gov/HISTORY/PUBLISH/20th%20anniv/usexp.htm

Charles Wilkes

http://www.south-pole.com/p0000079.htm

The Compilation of Ocean and Meteorological Data by Matthew Maury

(Caution: don’t be distracted by the many web sites that engage in the religious controversy surrounding Maury’s work on ocean currents; the currents were known long before Maury. He just compiled them into a book.)

Maury, Matthew Fontaine

http://www.xrefer.com/entry/494853

Matthew Fontaine Maury: Pathfinder of the Seas

http://www.navo.navy.mil/Bulletin/Jun_Jul_2002/maury.html

The Gulf Stream Mapping and Measurements of Benjamin Franklin (who actually went to sea to measure ocean temperatures!)

Oceanography History: Benjamin Franklin and the Gulf Stream

http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/kids/history.html

Benjamin Franklin: Inquiring Mind, Weather Wise

http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_inquiring_weather.html

The Expedition of Charles Darwin and the HMS Beagle

(Again, don’t get distracted by the controversies surrounding Darwin’s work on evolution as you search the web.)

Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle: Selections and Commentary

http://www.unbf.ca/psychology/likely/voyage/voyage.htm

The Voyage of the Beagle: Online Text

http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-voyage-of-the-beagle/

The Challenger Expedition

The Challenger Society for Marine Science

http://www.soc.soton.ac.uk/OTHERS/CSMS/

Cyberhiker: The Birth of Oceanography

http://www.enn.com/yoto/dailynews/1999/01/011599/challenger.asp

The SCIEX polar expedition of the submarine, U.S.S. Pargo

SCIEX: Scientific Ice Expedtions

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/SCICEX/

Nuclear Submarine and Oceanography in the Arctic

http://www.arcus.org/Witness_the_Arctic/Spring_96/WNucl_Subs.html

Map and Annotate the Expedition!

Our map for this activity ism provided courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency, who publishes outstanding world maps (and other maps) for public use. (Here’s your chance to pretend you are a secret agent.) Click on the link and open the world map provided. Print a copy for your use. You will need Adobe Acrobat reader to open the file. (You may wish to right-click on the link and select “Save Target as...” to save the file on your hard drive for later use.)

[File included as attachment: jpg and pdf version; can also be found at

http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html

Use the map to trace the route of the expeditions. On your map, use numbers and symbols (and/or colors) to highlight key events during the expedition. These numbers and symbols should correspond to the 3x5 notecards on which you put all the information about the expedition (as detailed in the section “Pick an Expedition”).

For example, you may have several notecards labeled “1” that indicate the positions of the H.M.S. Challenger on her voyage. On your map, you may create a symbol for “location” (a circle, triangle, square, one you invent!) and place a 1A or 1B or 1C in the symbol to correspond to each of your labeled notecards (which you now will also want to label with letters). Similarly, you may have several notecards labeled “4” that describe the various tools used on the expedition. A symbol on your map marked at the start of the Challenger voyage, numbered 4A, might correspond to a notecard marked 4A that describes the characteristics of the ship itself.

Here’s an example of a map created on a poster board to depict the voyage of the fictitious submarine Nautilus as described in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Insert link to figure with filename, 20k_mapofnautilus.jpg

Feel free to enlarge your map, decorate it and/or annotate it in any way that illustrates the details of the expedition. You are creating a visual representation of the expedition. Let your imagination and passion be evident!