Getting Around the Americas

The first circumnavigation of the Americas was accomplished by the Canadian Survey Ship Hudson in an 11 month voyage (1969 - 1970). She carried an international team of marine scientists along with a large contingent of Bedford Institute of Oceanography (BIO) researchers to a number of remote and poorly-documented parts of four of the world's oceans, and to a group of unsurveyed fiords along the Chilean coast. The expedition established Canada's global-scale interest in the oceans including their biology, seafloor environments and the geological characteristics of their underlying basins. Dr. C. Mann and the Captain D. Butler, two Canadian federal government employees, were among the outstanding members of the Hudson 70 Coordintaing Committee that, respectively, guided the development of the expedition's scientific program and ensured safety-minded ship's operations under a range of weather and sea ice conditions. Data gathered during the circumnavigation were still being analyzed and published in the scientific literature as late as the early 1990s.