Oceania was then the focus of many European scientific expeditions and the narratives of the voyages of Dampier, Flinders, Wilkes and Captain Dumont d'Urville were eagerly read. Today they still have the power to excite our interest and admiration. These expeditions, dependent on sail power alone, were conducted in the face of hardships and dangers now unknown.

Measurements of the ocean were mostly made to satisfy curiosity. Although great ingenuity was applied to creating instruments that could sound the depths, only few findings were of immediate practical consequence.

Now, more than a century later, we are able to use their work to answer many economically important questions about the stability of oil platforms, how fish stocks respond to surface currents and, more recently, the correlation between sustained droughts and the temperature of the tropical ocean surface.