VOL. XVI, NO. 2, JUNE 1971 




X 



COLUMBUS O'DONNELL ISELIN 



1904 1971 



HROUGH his skillful efforts and foresightedness, the Woods Hole Oceano- 

 graphic Institution became one of the world's leading places in ocean research, 

 making significant contributions to the knowledge of the seas, the welfare of the 

 nation in peace and war, and to the world at large through international investiga- 

 tions and free publication of its findings. 



General Assistant to the Director and Master of the R.V. 'Atlantis' 1930-1932. 

 Physical Oceanographer 1932-1940. Member of the Corporation and Trustee 

 1936-1971. Director 1930-1940 and 1956-1958. Henry Bryant Bigelow Oceanog- 

 rapher 1958-1971. 



COVER BY 



\ 



Noel B. McLean 



Chairman, Board of Trustees 



Paul M. Fye 



President and Director 



Arthur E. Maxwell 



Proves/ 



Bostwick H. Ketchum 



Associate Director 




Some Quotes 



Vol. XVI, No. 2, June 1971 



"Man is a land animal and relatively few of us feel at home or in sympathy 

 with the sea. The sea is an obstacle and to be combatted. One remains on it for 

 as short a time as possible. Scientists are no exception. They too get sea-sick and 

 enjoy their firesides." 



"The success of any expedition is always proportional to the congeniality of 

 its personnel." (log of the schooner 'Chance') 



"Another aspect of oceanography which is attracting considerable interest 

 at present is the circulation and dispersion of inshore waters from the standpoint 

 of both pollution and their ability to absorb industrial wastes. It is clear that in 

 the vicinity of the major coastal cities the limit of the capacity of the local waters 

 to absorb waste products is being reached and that very little planning or thought 

 has gone into the problem. More and more, the engineers and the responsible 

 government agencies are turning to oceanography to find out what is known about 

 the inshore circulation, and the chemistry and bacteriology of the waters." 



Memorandum to Dr. A. N. Richards and Dr. Detlev W. Bronk. 



Sept. 1, 1948. 



He wrote extremely well in a fine style in a fine hand, on long sheets of paper. 

 That he never learned to spell did not influence his sense of grammar. 



fr-u^ k 



jk&. 



Tl 



HE tributes in this issue of Oceanus show the great love and respect we all shared 

 for Columbus Iselin. He was a man of broad and encyclopedic interests. He cared 

 not only about our Institution and the study of the ocean but also the whole world. 

 He was a man of very human instincts, with a concern for all mankind. 



H/VERY great adventure has had its great leaders. Columbus O'Donnell Iselin 

 was one of the giants of oceanography. An era has ended. We have lost a friend 

 and mentor. Since the early days of Iselin and Bigelow, oceanography in Woods 

 Hole and indeed in the whole nation has had a fair wind. He will be sorely missed 

 by all who knew and loved him. 



E are pleased that so many of his friends were able to contribute to this issue 

 and only wish that we could share it with him. 



Paul M. Fye 




COLUMBUS O'DONNELL ISELIN 



25 September 1904 5 January 1971 




An Appreciation . . . 



Ti 



HE death of Dr. Iselin strikes a special 

 sad note for French oceanographers* be- 

 cause he had been a member of the 

 Comite de Perfectionnement of the Institut 

 Oceanographique (Fondation Albert ler, 

 Prince de Monaco) from 1951 until, in 

 1 966, he was placed on its honorariat list. 

 He had also been a member of the Comite 

 d'Honneur du Centre de Recherches et 

 d'Etudes Oceanographiques of Paris since 

 as far back as 1949. Those of us who 

 serve on both these bodies are distressed 

 to lose such an eminent colleague of 

 worldwide fame in matters oceano- 

 graphical. 



Compatriots of his have written fine 

 articles about him in the past, and there 

 will be obituary notices from the pens of 

 close colleagues which will do proper 

 justice to his memory. It would be a great 

 pity, however, if oceanographers of other 

 countries who knew him less intimately, 

 and who cannot say nearly so much about 

 him from personal experience, did not put 

 on record their genuine feelings of admira- 

 tion for such a wonderful person whose 

 great impact upon their Science stemmed 

 from very much more than professional 

 competence. Looking back over Columbus 

 Iselin's personal achievements in the 

 furtherance of oceanography, one realizes 

 that nobody less needs any trumpet blasts 

 of admiration. One realizes, too, that in 

 a way which always promoted our great 

 liking for him, his was a simple character. 

 We use that adjective as true praise to 

 convey that he was not complicated in his 

 thinking and in the expression of his 

 views. With him there was never any 

 question of "not seeing the wood for the 

 trees." He always knew where he was 

 going, what ought to be done, and to what 

 he could best apply his own endeavours 

 and great gifts. It was because he saw the 

 immensity of jobs to be done that he 

 became a great inspirer of others to the 



*This appreciation was prepared first for Cahiers 

 d'Oceanographie, Paris. 



end that young men should see the attrac- 

 tion and the value of probing the mysteries 

 of the ocean. Fitting indeed is it that he 

 should be remembered as a "pump- 

 primer" par excellence, for he had an un- 

 canny knack of seeing the real nub of a 

 problem. This writer well remembers the 

 honour of being invited to take part in 

 that celebrated cruise of the R. V. 'Atlantis' 

 to the Mediterranean Sea in 1948, in order 

 to help with the enlistment of Royal Navy 

 help regarding port facilities. Much cor- 

 respondence in advance with Iselin led to 

 the formulation of excellent plans based 

 upon his penetrating assessment of the 

 most worthwhile problems, and I shall 

 never forget his final exhortation: "Keep 

 Your Sights High." 



Iselin had been so long in the field of 

 oceanography that memories of him spring 

 up from the early days of the Woods Hole 

 Oceanographic Institution. This writer 

 remembers the building (in Copenhagen) 

 of that redoubtable research vessel the 

 Institution's 'Atlantis,' and has memories 

 of its sailing for home from Plymouth 

 under Iselin's captaincy and with Daniel 

 Merriman and Franz Zorell on board. Six 

 years later, Iselin's presence at the meeting 

 of the International Union of Geodesy and 

 Geophysics in Edinburgh afforded an 

 opportunity to get to know him better, 

 and it was then that one came to appre- 

 ciate that, to his great love of the sea and 

 its problems, he joined a passion for agri- 

 culture. In later years one had the joy 

 of staying with him as a house guest on 

 his farm on Martha's Vineyard, and of 

 seeing his herd of cows in which he took 

 such pride. That pleasant visit amply 

 revealed what a down-to-earth practical 

 man Iselin was as he busied himself with 

 all manner of chores land clearing and 

 wood cutting amongst them. 



Born on 25 September 1904 in New 

 Rochelle, N.Y., Columbus grew up in a 

 family circle adequately endowed with this 

 world's goods and with an avocation for 

 sailing. A great uncle had been four times 




a defender of the America's cup and his 

 father was also devoted to sailing. At the 

 young age of eleven Iselin built his first 

 boat which (because it leaked) was called 

 The Sponge.' This he was able to do 

 because he had learnt from the family 

 carpenter how to use tools. Entering 

 Harvard in 1922 with concentration on 

 mathematics at first, Columbus soon came 

 under the influence of that great man 

 Professor Henry Bigelow whose name is 

 so closely intertwined with everything to 

 do with the Woods Hole Oceanographic 

 Institution, and it was not long before he 

 had turned to oceanography as his main 

 interest. The story of how he ordered the 

 72 foot schooner 'Chance' to be built in 

 Nova Scotia, and of how he set off in her 

 with a crew of college students on his first 

 oceanographic trip to the icy coastal 

 waters of Labrador has been many times 

 told. That was the beginning of a career 

 which shines with high achievement in 

 fathoming the mysteries of the ocean. 

 Iselin's colourful life and his great accom- 

 plishments in his chosen field have been 

 well recorded in print as in the pages of 

 the Atlantic Edition of Time Magazine 

 (the issue of 6th July 1959). The studies 



made from the 'Chance' of the move- 

 ments of icebergs confirmed Norwegian 

 theoretical equations so thoroughly that 

 the American ships of the Ice Patrol forth- 

 with adopted the theoretical estimation of 

 current to predict the movements of ice- 

 bergs. It was the application of these 

 Norwegian theories to consideration of the 

 Gulf Stream which led Iselin to put for- 

 ward his ideas that the influence of the 

 Gulf Stream would be felt less far towards 

 Europe at times when its flow in its region 

 of origin was briskest and vice versa. 

 This writer well remembers the impact of 

 his Nature paper of 1938 on that topic 

 because it appeared at a time when some 

 European oceanographers were much con- 

 cerned with the fluctuations of Atlantic 

 influence in the waters off NW. Europe. 



Iselin's remarkable additions to knowl- 

 edge of the Gulf Stream are embodied in 

 a series of papers which have become 

 classical and are well known. What he 

 did in the realm of military oceanography 

 was indeed massive and earned him much 

 honour in his own country which con- 

 ferred signal distinctions upon him. His 

 views on fisheries and on coastwise ocean- 

 ography redound greatly to his credit 



.. 







The farm at Chappaquansett. 




but it would take much paper to list his 

 writing and to indicate their content even 

 briefly. We remember his extremely inter- 

 esting views on the possible cause of the 

 Thresher' disaster as we remember with 

 admiration many another presentation of 

 his views to important events. 



This great human personality who was 

 both an accomplished sailor and a first 

 class scientist, who so inspired others, and 

 who was twice Director of the famous 

 Institution which he loved and which 

 loved him, had to his credit a wealth of 

 publications and a host of offices and 

 honours merely to list which would be to 

 produce a sizeable booklet. We shall leave it 

 to others who were closer to him to list his 

 professional publications and other scienti- 

 fic doings; I who wrote this brief note for a 

 French oceanographical publication prefer 

 to use my space to place on record the 

 fact that we are indeed grateful for having 

 known Columbus Iselin whose fruitful life 

 was that of a man who added in very great 

 measure wide humanity, sound practical 

 sense, and high ideals, to the possession 

 of remarkable scientific talents. When we 

 learnt with sadness of his death on the 



fifth of January 1971 and realized that 

 never again would we be in his stimulating 

 presence, we realized with a shock that 

 another of the great makers of modern 

 oceanography had passed on. 



We of the French Institute record our 

 thanks to Iselin for his services on our 

 governing body and condole with our 

 friends at Woods Hole to whom his death 

 will be an irreparable loss. 



Wormley, Surrey 



J. N. Carruthers 



. . . one had the joy of staying on his farm 

 on Martha's Vineyard, and of seeing his 

 herd of cows in which he took such pride. . . 




The Chance and the Risk 



C 



OLUMBUS was kind enough (and I 

 was lucky enough) to share the long table 

 in his office during the postwar years. 

 Until he met Dr. Bigelow while an under- 

 graduate at Harvard, Columbus was sup- 

 posed to become a banker. Although some 

 may not agree with me, I believe Columbus 

 would have been as successful a banker 

 as he was an oceanographer. I base this 

 belief upon the fact that he dared to 

 speculate and not just because he hap- 

 pened to own two boats named 'Chance' 

 and 'Risk'! 



Columbus allowed enough explosives to 

 be stored on Nonamessett Island which, 

 if detonated accidentally, would have 

 blown Woods Hole and vicinity off the 

 map. Yet, these explosive charges were 



essential material for the performance of 

 oceanographic research be it peacetime 

 or wartime. There have been many oc- 

 casions when Columbus piloted 'Risk' 

 across Vineyard Sound in thick fogs with 

 aids such as his seaman's eye, his ears to 

 pick up the sounds of buoy gongs, his 

 very accurate knowledge of local tides and 

 currents, plus a stop watch! Columbus 

 also gambled on how to spend research 

 dollars available to the Institution and he 

 gambled wisely. Truly, he interpreted the 

 "scope of the work" of some of the Navy's 

 contracts broadly but not without con- 

 siderable forethought and weighing pros 

 and cons. Mostly, his decisions paid off 

 handsomely with resultant scientific and 

 engineering break throughs. 



The schooner 'Chance' was built for C.O'D. 

 by W. C. McKay & Sons, Shelburne, Nova 

 Scotia. She was 77 feef on deck, had a 



beam of 16 feet, draft of 11 feet six inches 

 and displaced only 37 tons. 



~~ 




Columbus risked his reputation in se- 

 lecting and supporting members of his 

 staff, some of whom would never have 

 "made it" had he been a Director whose 

 hiring policy demanded of candidates the 

 possession of at least a baccalaureate 

 degree. He had to make speculative deci- 

 sions as to when and where to send the 

 Institution's vessels to sea. A case in point 

 was shipping the 'Atlantis' from Woods 

 Hole to a safer berth in New Orleans 

 shortly after the U.S. entry into World 

 War II, when German U-Boats were sink- 

 ing surface vessels right and left up and 

 down the Atlantic seaboard. His meteoro- 

 logical acumen and his respect for the 

 might of the ocean served him well in 



scheduling the departures of the fleet but, 

 above it all, Columbus had the courage to 

 face risks. 



Thanks to Dr. Bigelow's conversion, 

 Wall Street's loss became oceanography's 

 gain. I trust other contributors to the 

 Iselin Issue of Oceanus will emphasize and 

 articulate his many other sterling attri- 

 butes among which were his patience, his 

 forbearance, his unmistakably clear writ- 

 ing style, and his gentle but effective 

 power of persuasion. To repeat, I was 

 fortunate to have been his roommate. I 

 envy those who were his shipmates. 



Cambridge, Mass. 



Francis C. Ryder 



Summer and winter, in fog, ice and storm he 

 crossed Martha's Vineyard Sound some 8,000 

 times over a period of more than 30 years. 



RISK TAKERS 



H 



ERE'S an incident which brings out Columbus' true nature. 



It was a Friday and due to a cancellation of the commercial ferry our little 

 group of 'Risk' takers bound for a weekend on the Vineyard had been joined by a 

 handful of ferry passengers, among them Kingman Brewster, now president of 

 Yale. When we arrived at our mooring at the head of Tashmoo Pond it was plain 

 that it would take two trips in the large rowboat to get us all ashore. 



And who loaded the passengers for the first trip ashore and who plied the 

 oars? Columbus, of course, in his usual quiet way had beaten us all to it. 



Back on the 'Risk' I said to his long-time friend, John Churchill, who had 

 sailed on the schooner 'Chance': "Columbus is as much at home rowing those people 

 ashore as he is addressing the National Academy of Sciences." "More," replied 

 John. 



Joseph Chase 

 Woods Hole, Mass. 




Wonderful 



Sea Stories 



c 



OLUMBUS ISELIN and I were closely 

 associated during the latter part of World 

 War II, from January 1943 until the end 

 in 1945, and we worked together to build 

 up American oceanography in the post- 

 war era. His enthusiasm, imagination, and 

 special way of talking about oceanography 

 and oceanographers had an enormous 

 impact, not only on government officials, 

 but especially on the scientific mandarins, 

 nearly all of them physicists, who con- 

 trolled the course of American science in 

 the early 1950's. I don't think he ever 

 fully believed that the Pacific Ocean was 

 as interesting or important as the Atlantic, 

 or that good oceanography could be done 

 in California as well as in Cape Cod. 

 Nevertheless, Woods Hole and Scripps 

 grew pretty much in parallel, and it turned 

 out that whatever was good for one insti- 

 tution quickly helped the other. 



One of the high points of my life was 

 a trip Columbus and I took together to 

 Florida, Puerto Rico, and Trinidad in the 

 early spring of 1943, when German sub- 

 marines were sinking about one ship a 

 day in the Caribbean. We saw a whole 

 series of admirals and told each one of 

 them how important oceanography could 

 be in fighting submarines. The admirals 

 were understandably skeptical, but they 

 were so desperate they were willing to 

 seize on any straw of hope, however frag- 

 ile. What I remember particularly, how- 

 ever, were the long evenings in which 

 Columbus told me wonderful sea stories, 

 most of which seemed to center around 

 a wild friend of his youth named Terry 

 Keogh. 



In the later 1950's and early 1960's, we 

 were both members of the Committee on 

 Oceanography of the National Academy 

 of Sciences, which for several years met 

 about once a month, and in this way we 

 saw a good deal of each other. Every 

 summer, the Committee would meet at the 

 "Lubec Oceanographic Institute," an im- 

 aginary organization established by our 

 fellow Committee member, Sumner Pike, 



down East in Lubec, Maine. Its stated 

 objective was: "the study of the ocean and 

 other fluids." These were marvelous week- 

 ends, and Columbus' stories were among 

 their most memorable aspects. 



In spite of his skill as a raconteur and 

 as a scientific salesman, Columbus was a 

 modest, shy man, with no discernible 

 egotism and little sense of his own 



greatness. 



Cambridge, Mass. 



Roger Revelle 



A 



FEW weeks ago in Saudi Arabia, of 

 all places, someone said to me that he 

 knew Columbus Iselin, Jr. and asked 

 what kind of a man is his old man. Sadly 

 I had to mention the recent death of 

 Columbus, Sr., but to say what kind of 

 a man he was in the brief time that 

 is allowed for conversation at a party was 

 difficult. I could say only that he was a 

 great and kindly man and that it would 

 take all night to tell why. 



My personal experience with Dr. Iselin 

 was slight, but highly treasured, and as a 

 shipmate rather than a scientist. I was 

 first introduced to him by Captain Pike 

 in the office. The great man blushed, 

 mumbled something, and backed out; it 

 should have been myself who did that! 



Much later we became better acquainted 

 when he joined the 'Atlantis II' in Cape- 

 town in 1963 to come home with us. I 

 believe that it was his first sea voyage since 

 World War II, or at least, for many years, 

 and it also was his last major cruise. 

 At any rate, he didn't come to run the 

 show, but to observe and comment upon 

 our performance. Our work was "water- 

 catching" i.e. hydro stations, BTs, wea- 

 ther obs, echosounding, etc. simple 

 work yet, A. R. Miller had developed a 

 team that did these things well and quickly 

 and it was nice to get the great man's 

 compliments. 




He spent much of his time on the bridge 

 watching the sea and sky, making com- 

 ments about what he saw, and talking with 

 all who came by. At other times his cabin 

 door was usually open to whomever 

 wished to come in, sit and tell stories, or 

 listen to him. And in this role I greatly 

 admired him. 



Few exceeded him as a teller of tales 

 (parables?). The stories always had a neat 

 way of summing up some facet of human 

 nature or some truth of nature. 



Many people came to him for advice 



on oceanographic and personal problems, 

 from teenaged girls to senior generals and 

 admirals. His outlook on human affairs 

 was so balanced that everyone had com- 

 plete confidence in his opinions. Certainly 

 he guided many people in the right paths, 

 away from the traps and snares. If only 

 for that, his influence will long be felt. 



But it is as a story teller on the bridge 

 and in the cabin of 'Atlantis II' that I shall 

 best remember him. 



Robert Munns 

 o/b R.V. 'Chain' 

 Indian Ocean 



In 1958, he received the Medal of Merit, 

 highest civilian award of the U.S. govern- 

 ment. The citation is printed on page 42 of 

 this issue. 



1 NEVER was a student of Columbus O'D. Iselin; never had I the opportunity to 

 work with him. Nevertheless, through his studies of the circulation of the North 

 Atlantic and, more particularly, of the Gulf Stream system, I used to consider him 

 one of my teachers before we had ever met. 



More than two decades ago, we met for the first time. His habitude was one 

 of a great man, of a celebrity. In reality, however, I learned to know in him, in 

 spite of his great mental energy and persistent intelligence, a cordial, almost humble 

 man. In numerous connections his advice and guidance proved to me most signifi- 

 cant, not only professionally but also humanly. He had the rare ability to give 

 instructions, to guide, and to correct mistakes in a way which made the younger 

 man to himself, not offended but rather co-equal in a stimulating and encourag- 

 ing way. 



There are many of us, in different parts of the world, who will remember 

 Columbus as a dear older brother. 



Helsinki, Finland 



Ilmo Hela 




Oh, they were 



things of Irish 

 beauty . . 



1 FIRST met Columbus in 1931 in Dr. 

 Bigelow's office in the Museum of Com- 

 parative Zoology. The occasion was to 

 "sign me on" as a prospective member of 

 the crew of the 'Atlantis' for her forth- 

 coming maiden voyage, Copenhagen to 

 Plymouth, England, to Boston and Woods 

 Hole, Massachusetts. He was four years 

 older than I, a horrendous age differential 

 to me at that youthful stage; perhaps just 

 as well, since 1 immediately regarded my 

 future skipper with due respect respect 

 for the "middle-aged," that is. The inter- 

 view was brief. Certainly I had not much 

 to commend me: a misfortunate and 

 broken college education, a love of the 

 water, natural history, and fishing in all 

 its varieties, and limited high seas' experi- 

 ence on commercial trawlers on the Banks. 

 At any rate, he took me on a pig in a 

 poke, pushed at him, I suspect, by familial 

 ties. If memory serves, my way was paid 

 abroad and my salary as an 'Atlantis' 

 "seaman" was handsome, especially since 

 there was no way to spend it for the 6-7 

 weeks between ports. 



My first real look at Columbus, and 

 the one I shall always remember, was at 

 Burmeister and Wain, ship-builders, in 

 Copenhagen harbor, mid-June 1931. The 

 'Atlantis' was tied up and we were 

 straightening things on deck prior to a 

 trial run. Suddenly Columbus and his 

 bride of two years, Nora Lapsley, ap- 

 peared above us, deck-side. There was a 

 wave of the hand, a reticent but deep- 

 throated "Hello," a sense of pride and 

 excitement which somehow communicated 

 itself to us with no visible outward emo- 

 tion. He was never a Captain in the 

 military sense; things just got done without 

 orders being given. We were proud of our 

 assignment, he of his; he shed an easy 

 confidence, and if he had any misgivings 

 about his responsibilities, as well he might 

 at 26, he never showed them. 



His only frailty, if indeed it be called 

 such, was his concern for and generosity 

 to certain characters who found them- 

 selves in trouble more often than not, 

 broke or intemperate. One Terence Keogh, 

 black-sheep son of Justice Martin J. Keogh 

 of Tammany Hall, was our bosun; one of 

 the best at sea, but with a massive thirst 

 ashore. He could tie Columbus around his 

 little finger. We literally hauled Terry out 

 of a jail in Copenhagen in the wee small 

 hours just before we sailed, and Columbus 

 told him he was too valuable to risk ashore 

 in Plymouth. Confinement to the ship 

 (mercifully we were anchored off-shore) 

 was a monstrous torment to Terry, and 

 each day in port his pleadings to Columbus 

 became more eloquent. Oh, they were 

 things of Irish beauty and on the next to 

 last day before sailing Columbus capitu- 

 lated to blarney interspersed with word- 

 of-honor promises of sobriety. Several 

 hours later a Royal Navy gig stood by to 

 inform us that one of our men, Keogh by 

 name, was in the Plymouth gaol. When 

 we inquired as to the charges, it turned 

 out that he had been arrested for ripping 

 a toilet seat off one of His Majesty's public 

 conveniences and attempting, as in quoits, 

 to "ring" the Bobby who was directing 

 traffic at the busiest intersection. 

 Columbus' patience must have been 

 strained to the limit, but he never showed 

 it; his humor saved the day. 



Terry's skill 



We were not long at sea when Columbus 

 got his leg tangled in the main sheet, tack- 

 ing in a stiff North Atlantic breeze. The 

 burn was fierce, but he bore it with forti- 

 tude though confined to his cabin for most 

 of the rest of the crossing and forced to 

 relinquish command to the 1st Mate. 

 Fresh off a Cunarder, our new captain was 

 wholly unaccustomed to sail and much 

 given to orders, facts which did little to 

 endear him to the predominantly Scanda- 

 navian crew whose members had already 

 become devoted to Columbus; indeed, 

 there might well have been mutiny had it 

 not been for Keogh's tact and nautical 

 skill. 



We landed in Boston in early September 

 and most of the crew scattered. It seems 

 to me that four of us, Columbus, Chief 



10 




Trial run of the 'Atlantis.' 



Columbus Iselin, first captain of the 'Atlantis.' 



Backus, Knute Nielson, and I took that 

 1 48-foot ketch from Boston to Woods Hole 

 via the Cape Cod Canal alone. Fool- 

 hardy? It didn't seem so then with 

 Columbus at the wheel. 



Later, from the viewpoint of a Trustee, 

 I saw Columbus as Director and Senior 

 Scientist of the Institution. My admiration 

 grew as he guided the Institution to a 

 ten-fold expansion through the decade of 

 the 40's. Now the age-gap disappeared, 

 but the circumstances never permitted the 

 intimacy of friendship I should have liked. 



And finally, there was his gallant ap- 

 pearance and reminiscent speech last 

 June 18th on the occasion of the dedica- 

 tion of the new Iselin facility. 



* % % % H: 



The central window of the apse of St. 

 Michael's Church (1 138 A.D.) in Linlith- 

 gow, not far from the Firth of Forth, is in 

 memory of an earlier oceanographer, 



Charles Wyville Thomson of 'Challenger' 

 fame. The motif is after the 104th Psalm, 

 Evening Prayer, Benedic, Anima mea: 



24 O Lord, how manifold are thy 

 works! in wisdom hast thou made 

 them all; the earth is full of thy 

 riches. 



25 So is the great and wide sea also; 

 wherein are things creeping innum- 

 erable, both small and great beasts. 



26 There go the ships, and there is 

 that leviathan, whom thou hast 

 made to take his pastime therein. 



The words of the psalter are similarly 

 apposite to the memory of Columbus 

 O'Donnell Iselin. A century apart, both 

 men were giants; they represented two 

 great era of oceanography; either would 

 have fitted the other's shoes. 



Daniel Merriman 



New Haven, Conn. 



11 




COLUMBUS ISELIN AND 



THE MEXICAN BURROS 



C 



OLUMBUS ISELIN was a man of 

 great composure and many strengths. 

 These traits often cropped up, sometimes 

 quite unexpectedly. One such time that 

 was not of much consequence, but which 

 has never been forgotten, has often been 

 related by both remaining participants 

 around the oceanographic circuit. 



One late Friday afternoon in Woods 

 Hole, Art Maxwell and I were given a lift 

 to Boston by Columbus and taken to his 

 winter home, at Milton, for dinner prior to 

 catching the midnight train for Washington. 

 After we had two generous cocktails, Mrs. 

 Iselin joined us and with a few pleasantries 

 chose the opportunity, in front of wit- 

 nesses, to advise Columbus that she had 

 purchased two Mexican burros for the 

 children's Christmas. 



After a seemingly interminable silence, 

 Columbus questioned flatly, "Nora, where 

 are they?" 



"In the basement," Nora replied with 

 equal lack of expression. "I've had a 

 carpenter fix them two nice stalls where 

 they can stay until we can take them to 

 the Vineyard." 



With unshaken control, Columbus had 

 but one further question before we went 

 in to dinner. "But, my God, Nora, what 

 will the police say?" 



I shall always remember Columbus 

 Iselin as a man of great composure and 

 many strengths. 



Washington, D.C. 



Go ahead and prove it 



Gordon Li 11 



MY 



strongest remembrance of Columbus 

 Iselin was the breadth of his interests. In 

 whatever field you were interested he 

 could suggest other workers with whom 

 it would pay you to get in touch. Along 

 with this was the encouragement he of- 

 fered. When I told him that I believed the 

 deep scattering layer was probably caused 

 by euphausids - - and I was probably 



wrong - - he said, "I am sure that you are 

 wrong, but go ahead and try to prove it." 

 This was typical of him. 



Miami, Florida 



Improved English 



Hilary B. Moore 



L 



IKE many scientists, Columbus Iselin 

 was fascinated by the Gulf Stream. The 

 'Atlantis' sections through the Gulf Stream 

 have set an example for the extremely 

 successful research work at sea, especially 

 under difficult current conditions. Iselin's 

 insights obtained by these investigations 

 with the 'Atlantis' are reflected in his 

 publication: "A study of the circulation 

 of the western North Atlantic." The three 

 names: Iselin, Gulf Stream, and 'Atlantis' 

 are closely linked together, since he intro- 

 duced a new epoch in the exploration of 

 the Gulf Stream. 



I am sure there are numerous stories 

 about the Woods Hole Oceanographic 

 Institution in the early thirties. One story 

 that I was told by my late colleague Dr. 

 F. Zorell may be mentioned at this place. 

 It tells about seagoing oceanographers: 

 Iselin was chief scientist on the maiden 

 cruise of the 'Atlantis' from Europe to 

 America in 1930, and Zorell was joining 

 as a guest. He did not know English very 

 well, but this ability improved during the 

 cruise as he learned from Iselin and the 

 other crew members. Back on shore Zorell 

 found that he had to be very careful in 

 using his vocabulary because it was a 

 sailor slang that he had learned and of no 

 use for a conversation with a lady. 



Giinther Dietrich 



Kiel, Germany 



During official ceremonies Columbus could 

 not be found on a podium or on a chair in 

 audience. He preferred to sit in the back- 

 ground where the "tape recorder" of his mind 

 recorded the important and rejected the 

 excess rhetoric. /an hahn 



12 




I 



WISH I could find the right words to express my feelings about Dr. Iselin. 



What can I tell you about Dr. Iselin, except that he was a true gentle man, 

 quiet in his speech and a very humble man. He would help anyone who asked for 

 his advice (sometimes spent hours just talking to the person) he was never too 

 busy for that. He always answered letters from prospective oceanographers, no 

 matter how busy he was, even if the letters were from youngsters. 



He always treated me with great respect and I feel fortunate to have worked 

 for him. I, like many others, will never forget such a great man! 



Woods Hole, Mass. 



Kaleroy L. Hatzikon 




Seismic reflection and refraction shooting with explosives was initiated by Dr. M. Ewing 

 and continued for many years without accident on board our ships. Still, no one was 

 happy with tons of TNT on the deck of our small vessels. The methods have been replaced 

 by using gas or electrically induced "booms". 



Columbus invariably saw the ships off to sea and greeted them on their return. Here 

 he chats with "Doc" Ewing just returned from A- 1 50, National Geographic Society 

 cruise to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in 1948. 



"He watched us in a curious way 



M' 



* * 



.Y first meeting with Columbus was 

 memorable. It occurred in the latter part 

 of the summer of 1935. A. P. Crary, 

 H. M. Rutherford, and I completed work- 

 ing across the continental shelf and coastal 

 plain at Cape Henry, Virginia, doing the 

 marine part of the work on the 'Oceanog- 

 rapher' of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic 

 Survey. We had got few results in the 



marine part of that traverse owing to a 

 disruption in the working plan of the ship 

 caused by a serious motor accident just 

 before sailing time. The Chief Scientist 

 lost his life and the Captain was hospital- 

 ized for several months. Professor Richard 

 M. Fields who had been the leading spirit 

 in a distinguished committee which had 

 made it possible for us to undertake the 




whole program had invited me to spend 

 the night in his summer home in Duxbury. 

 He drove with me to Woods Hole and 

 introduced me. I explained the hopes for 

 seismic refraction work to learn the struc- 

 ture of the continental shelves and received 

 an opinion that the work was of interest 

 to the Institution and that Dr. Bigelow 

 and Columbus would make the 'Atlantis' 

 available for a short cruise to the Virginia 

 Cape region to complete the work. 



In the early part of October, I received 

 permission to be absent from my classes 

 at Lehigh for a period of two or three 

 weeks, and we came to Woods Hole when 

 the ship was expected to return from a 

 cruise and take a sort of post-season 

 cruise. 



Dr. Bigelow wanted to be sure that 

 there would be no irresponsible use of 

 explosives to endanger the ship. He had 

 us first go into a sand pit northeast of 

 Falmouth, accompanied by Henry Stetson, 

 to make some tests about the distance 

 between an electric detonator and some 

 of the types of explosives to be used that 

 would be necessary in order to avoid 

 detonation. We succeeded in convincing 

 Henry that there was no risk in the pro- 

 cedure which we planned to follow. 



Use of explosives 



Dr. Bigelow's second safeguard was to 

 arrange for a short preliminary cruise 

 south of Nomansland off Martha's Vine- 

 yard, with Columbus aboard, to observe 

 what kind of sailors we were and whether 

 our procedures were safe according to his 

 estimates. We went down to about 20 

 fathoms south of Nomansland and worked 

 through the remainder of the day and all 

 of the night trying to get the seismic re- 

 fraction measurements. For the daytime 

 work we anchored the ship and sent Crary 

 in a whale boat with two of the Scandina- 

 vian sailors, to shoot charges at various 

 distances. This small boat operation was 

 not feasible by night, but we continued 

 to make tests by setting up geophones on 

 the bottom and floating the charges off the 

 stern of the 'Atlantis' using pieces of wood 

 for bouyancy and the wire to the electric 

 detonator for tether. 



During the small hours after midnight, 

 only Columbus and I were working. He 



was tending to the shooting and I was 

 tending to the recording. We got the wire 

 to one of the charges, less than half a 

 pound of dynamite, caught somewhere 

 under the stern in the rudder or the pro- 

 peller. It seemed like it was not going 

 to come loose. We decided to take a coffee 

 break and think it over. We discussed 

 various possibilities, including the prob- 

 ability of explosion from action of the 

 propeller, the likely extent of damage in 

 case of an explosion, etc., etc. The deci- 

 sion was that the best move would be to 

 start the propeller dead slow and gradually 

 speed it up to full ahead. This was carried 

 out without any ill effects, and we were 

 quite confident that by then the little 

 charge of explosive was entirely free of 

 the ship. Columbus had weighed all 

 available evidence, quietly made a deci- 

 sion, and followed through on it. 



After dawn on the second day, we made 

 a few more tests in the whale boat, the 

 weather was a little rougher than it had 

 been the previous day. Columbus was 

 watching us in a curious way which I 

 finally decided amounted to monitoring us 

 for signs of the expected seasickness. He 

 seemed reassured when the whaleboat 

 returned for more explosives, and in it was 

 Albert Crary chewing a big plug of 

 tobacco. 



Turning point 



Toward the end of this day, we returned 

 to Woods Hole. Dr Bigelow was reas- 

 sured, and the following day we set off for 

 the Virginia Capes and the completion of 

 our continental margin traverse cruise on 

 the 'Atlantis.' That cruise was a turning 

 point in my career. 



My first meeting with Columbus led to 

 a friendship as pleasant as any that I have 

 formed in my life. His guidance and ad- 

 vice at all stages from that time until the 

 present have been a principal source of 

 my learning how to work on the high seas. 

 His warm and steady friendship, his love 

 of the sea as an object of study, and his 

 compassion for the people in all walks of 

 life have been a priceless source of inspira- 

 tion for me, and, I am sure, for many 

 others. 



Maurice Ewing 

 Palisades, N. Y. 



15 




Fun and Productivity 



IN 1962, I dedicated my monograph* 

 on sea-air interaction to Columbus Iselin 

 with the words: 



"This effort is dedicated to Columbus 

 O'D. Iselin to whom the writer owes 

 her interest in the sea and her oppor- 

 tunity to pursue it without restriction. 

 His efforts have provided a stimulating 

 atmosphere of broad inquiry into the 

 earth sciences and a group of lively and 

 productive interacting individual col- 

 leagues without whose experience and 

 participation such an ambitious en- 

 deavor could not have been under- 

 taken. His glorious confidence in us all 

 has given each of us the necessary self- 

 confidence to tackle difficult problems, 

 while at the same time his own humility 

 in the face of the sea's complexity has 

 imbued us with the necessity of con- 

 tinuous self-criticism in our attempts to 

 understand its behavior." 



Now many years later that I am, on a 

 small scale, a Laboratory Director on my 

 own, Columbus' example is my main guide 

 and to it I attribute the fun and successful 

 productivity we have enjoyed. As I inter- 

 preted it, his secret was to pick promising 

 people, mostly young ones, and to allow 



them all possible freedom in their research, 

 even to make mistakes and to learn by 

 them. At the same time he was always 

 available to offer advice when called on and 

 to help us out of whatever trouble circum- 

 stances or our own actions brought upon 

 us. While fostering freedom of inquiry, 

 Columbus did not encourage undisciplined 

 scientific dilettantism; I shall not forget his 

 oft-repeated statement that he himself must 

 spend at least 50% of his time "earning 

 a living"- that is, directly devoted to the 

 main mission and support of the labora- 

 tory. I have not only tried to follow his 

 example in this balance between free 

 inquiry and mission orientation, but have 

 also tried (I think successfully) to pass it 

 on to my younger colleagues, students, 

 and staff. 



In retrospect, my years under Columbus' 

 directorship at Woods Hole were the 

 happiest and most productive of my life, 

 and also I think, great years in the flower- 

 ing of marine meteorology. 



Miami, Florida 



Joanne Simpson 



*This work appeared as Chapter 4 in The Sea: 

 Ideas and Observations (Vol. 1), pp. 88-294, 

 by Interscience Publishers. 



16 




I've never seen the 

 barometer so low . . . 



1 SHALL always remember Dr. Iselin 

 because he was, so far as I have ever 

 been able to determine, the only man (on 

 Cape Cod, at least) who "called" the great 

 hurricane of September 21, 1938. 



In the late 1930's I was a reporter for 

 the Falmouth Enterprise the only re- 

 porter. It was my job in those days to 

 visit each of the outlying "villages" once 

 a week and seek out various individuals 

 in the community for the latests news. 



One of my beats was, of course, the 

 Institution, although in that depression 

 era it was in darkness 99.44 percent of 

 the time. The only man 1 found in his 

 office regularly (most of the other offices 

 were unoccupied, anyway) was Dr. Iselin. 



I paid him my usual call that Wednesday 

 and we chatted until I led up to the inevi- 

 table question, "What's new?" He thought 

 a minute and came to the conclusion, not 

 unusual, that nothing was new at the 



Institution which would interest Fal- 

 mouth's readers. But that day, just as I 

 was about to leave, he added: "I've been 

 watching the glass all morning and it's 

 my feeling that we're going to have one 

 helluva tropical storm. If I were you, 

 I'd go home and stay indoors this after- 

 noon because I've never seen the barome- 

 ter so low. It has got to be a storm of 

 major proportions." 



I didn't go home (except for lunch) but 

 after lunch went back to the office and 

 started typing up what little I had gleaned 

 in Woods Hole that morning. It wasn't 

 until we got a call from the police station 

 that the steeple of the old Methodist Church 

 on Main Street (then located in front of 

 the Elm Arch Inn) was about to go down 

 that I remembered Dr. Iselin's warning. 

 I high tailed it into the boss, Mr. George 

 A. Hough, Jr., who promptly heeded the 

 prediction and hurriedly closed shop. 



It was the beginning of a long night 

 and next day for me, and throughout a 

 number of hair-raising experiences I kept 

 wondering how Columbus Iselin had de- 

 termined that a hurricane was coming. In 

 those days of my youth I didn't even 

 know what a barometer was! 



Falmouth, Mass. 



George L. Moses 



17 




WEATHERING STORMS 



M 



,Y earliest recollections of Columbus 

 are in New Rochelle where we lived until 

 I was about four or five. They are distinct 

 and clear in my mind to this day. His 

 name was fascinating to me and I loved 

 to roll it over my infant tongue and think 

 of it. And it seemed to me then that he 

 and his name were perfectly suited. Those 

 early impressions of his largeness of char- 

 acter, his essential simplicity, and his 

 purposefulness have never altered. 



Years later, when we were growing up, 

 Columbus reappeared in our lives first as 

 legend and then as suitor of my sister 

 Nora. The legend reached us through 

 Terence Keogh, our cousin, and Columbus' 

 friend, follower and sail-mate throughout 

 Terence's short life. It was a curious, 

 almost symbiotic relationship of two com- 

 pletely opposite persons each one requiring 

 something of the other's dominant charac- 

 teristics. Columbus' calm, generous and 

 purposeful nature responded to Terence's 

 volatile wild humor and total unpredict- 

 ability. They were both brilliant sailors 

 and had sailed together since childhood. 

 John Churchill and Bob Jordan were also 

 his cruise mates in those early days sailing 

 to Labrador and across the Atlantic in 

 The Chance.' In his role of suitor to my 

 sister Nora he included our brother 

 Howard on the trip to Cowes in the sum- 

 mer of 1928. Howdy was only sixteen 

 or seventeen and had had no sailing exper- 

 ience so his inclusion was definitely the 

 act of a suitor. His devotion to my sister 

 Nora from their first meeting was complete 

 and I believe never varied throughout their 

 more than forty years together. 



In the summer of 1933 Ned Stone and 

 I cruised with Nora and Columbus from 

 Woods Hole through Long Island Sound, 

 the East River (Sis LaFarge hung a bed- 

 sheet out of her window at the Doctor's 

 Hospital where she had just produced 

 Phyllis and we raised flags and waved as 

 we went ripping through Hell Gate). From 

 there we went up the Delaware Bay, across 

 the canal into the Chesapeake Bay and 



up and down the Eastern Shore and 

 Tidewater Virginia, exploring the rivers 

 and plantations, until we reached Norfolk 

 and it was time to go home. We set a 

 course directly for Martha's Vineyard 

 and started off one morning in July. By 

 night, about 70 miles off Cape May, we 

 found ourselves in a bad blow. All sail 

 were reefed and the tiller lashed. We were 

 blown before the gale for two nights and 

 days and ended off Kittyhawk, South 

 Carolina. There we had to hoist sail and 

 beat back up the coast to Norfolk in the 

 teeth of the, by now, diminishing gale. We 

 pumped the entire time; everything was 

 wet bunks, stove, etc. Large pieces of 

 gilt ornamentation from the bow of our 

 chartered ketch kept flying back through 

 the wind and spume. The only other vessel 

 we saw was a U.S. destroyer. Ned Stone 

 suggested I be transferred to it (I was 

 pregnant). Columbus said firmly, "Don't 

 be silly, she's much more comfortable 

 here" and did not point out that such a 

 maneuver under the circumstances would 

 have been quite impossible. We spelled 

 one another at the pumps and I can see 

 Columbus lying fast asleep on the deck 

 of the cabin in his boots and oilskins while 

 the bilge water washed back and forth 

 over him. 



Looking back on this episode I attribute 

 the fact that none of us suffered from fear 



18 




hunger, cold, seasickness, and exhaus- 

 tion yes but never panic fear entirely 

 due to Columbus. His attitude was that 

 this situation was not in the least unusual, 

 was, in fact, to be expected if one went 

 to sea and simply called for resolution, 

 endurance, and vigilance. There was no 

 talk about it, it simply emanated from him 

 and was exceedingly bracing. He told me 

 years later that he had not known how our 

 charter, the 'Lady Kelvin,' would behave 

 under the buffetting she received. I have 

 no doubt he had a practical plan for 



exactly what to do in the event that she 

 broke up. 



I think so often, too, of his quality of 

 understanding and sizing up a person's 

 situation or problem and doing something 

 specific about it with no fuss and the mini- 

 mum of talk. I know from experience 

 that he had an unusual capacity to grasp 

 another's problems and the imaginative 

 ability to suggest alternatives that could 

 relieve them. 



Mrs. Mott B. Schmidt 

 Katonah, N. Y. 



X ERSONNEL PROBLEMS some unknown person took off with the 'Asterias,' 

 ran out of oil and burned out the engine. C.O'D. said "If he was from the 

 institution, he should be fired, if it was someone from outside and he could 

 figure out how to start that engine, he should be hired." 



ADMINISTRATIVE ATTITUDE once when being complimented by a staff 

 member on how tolerant and broadminded an administrator he was, 

 Columbus sat quietly. However, when the staff member said that sometimes 

 he was so tolerant it hurt, Columbus smiled and said "Well sometimes it hurts 

 me too." 



LJ AST minute alterations to equipment before a cruise almost always involved an 

 all night stand. On one occasion, the carpenter shop was locked and the 

 scientist involved chopped down the door with a fire ax so the ship could 

 sail at dawn. Come morning the irate carpenter confronted Iselin with an 

 ultimatum of bringing the scientist back into line. Columbus' solution was 

 prompt and to all but the carpenter seemed reasonable. His advice "Well 

 I guess the thing for you to do is take an ax and chop down his door." 



A. C. Vine 

 So much to know . . . 



(COLUMBUS was one of our great figures in oceanography. After World War II 

 when all the scientists were returning from thsir war assignments to their labora- 

 tories, he was one of the leaders in this shift, the transition from the applied area 

 to the research area. I observed this from Washington and as a Trustee, and also 

 as a summer neighbor at the Vineyard where he was the gentleman farmer. He 

 poured concrete for barns and outhouses with the same enthusiasm as he did 

 oceanography. I can only quote him regarding his love for the ocean, and this is 

 not verbatim but in his spirit: "Just in sitting at the shore or in a rowboat and 

 looking at the ocean, one realizes there is so much to know and to learn from the 

 sea, both as a thing of beauty and as a source of information." 



E. R. Piore 



Armonk, New York 



19 




Project 

 Nobska 



I 



w 



I 



I 



N 1956 Columbus Iselin, with his usual 

 diffidence, agreed to direct Project Nobska 

 the first of the National Academy of 

 Sciences' Woods Hole Summer Studies - 

 after some difficulty had been experienced 

 in finding a suitable director. Columbus 

 was one of the most conscientious and 

 faithful members of the Committee on 

 Undersea Warfare, which was responsible 

 for organizing the study. He was one of 

 the key scientists of the World War II re- 

 search effort whose continuing advice and 

 counsel the Navy sought to have available 

 when it asked the NAS to form the Com- 

 mittee in 1946. 



Because of the extensive advance plan- 

 ning and short intensive period, Columbus 

 accepted the directorship with some reluc- 

 tance, in large measure out of a feeling 

 of patriotic duty. In those days there were 

 no questions about the need for preserving 

 national security through an adequate 

 defense and Columbus, along with his 

 fellow committee members, was dedicated 

 to the Navy with both its strengths and 

 weaknesses. In 1956, the potential impor- 

 tance to the Navy of a variety of techno- 

 logical advances was just beginning to be 

 realized. The 'Nautilus' had demonstrated 

 the usefulness of nuclear propulsion for 



Nobska Lighthouse in the winter 



submarines, the experimental submarine 

 'Albacore' had shown how greatly im- 

 proved speed and maneuverability could 

 be achieved through streamlining, and 

 there was talk of using the concealment 

 of oceans to hide missile-launching plat- 

 forms. Columbus perceived the implica- 

 tions of these and other developments and 

 also foresaw the continuing importance of 

 an adequate understanding of the media 

 in which the Navy operates - - the sea and 

 the air above it. From his World War II 

 experience he well knew the extent to 

 which the performance of the Navy's ships 

 and equipment could be degraded by the 

 weather in and above the sea, and by 

 ignorance of oceanographic conditions. 



As the Academy staff officer responsible 

 for organizing the study, it became a 

 necessity as well as a pleasure for me to 

 work closely with Columbus, and a casual 

 acquaintance ripened into a close personal 

 friendship. During the winter of 1955-56 

 I found myself a frequent overnight guest 

 in the Iselin's big old rambling home in 

 Milton, driving down to the Cape with 

 Columbus on the following day. The 

 younger members of the family were still 

 at home and it was clear that Nora Iselin 



20 




devoted most of her time to them how- 

 ever, the three of us would have cocktails 

 together before dinner and the conversa- 

 tion tended to be about the welfare of the 

 Oceanographic Institution and the prob- 

 lems of the Navy. Having lost both a 

 brother and a close relative in the North 

 Atlantic during World War II, Nora found 

 it difficult to be detached and objective 

 in speaking of the sea; Columbus took a 

 relaxed and philosophical approach, speak- 

 ing with some diffidence, as though not 

 wishing to impose his views on anyone. 

 This, along with his quiet, unassuming 

 manner, I came to recognize as a trait of 

 character. 



His traits 



He had an extraordinary way of reduc- 

 ing complex problems and issues to their 

 fundamentals, which he often stated in a 

 way that had an elegance of simplicity and 

 practical straightforwardness. Without 

 appearing to realize it, he was a keen and 

 compassionate observer of human nature. 

 He understood what individuals said or 

 did in terms of their motivations. Although 

 he was a reserved, essentially private 

 person, these qualities made him many 

 friends and followers, as the experiences 

 of the Summer Study were further to 

 demonstrate. 



One of our first tasks was to locate a 

 site for the summer study group to meet. 

 Columbus suggested that Geoffrey Whit- 

 ney, who worked at the Oceanographic 

 Institution, might be willing to lease his 

 summer home, Little Harbor Farm, as 

 indeed he was. I remember the three 

 of us tramping over the snow-covered 

 grounds in March and shivering as we 

 walked through endless rooms in the un- 

 heated house. Turning this big old house 

 into office and conference room space 

 brought many problems, but must be 

 counted as a considerable success. The 

 Academy had no previous experience in 

 this kind of undertaking and at every turn 

 Columbus and, through him, everyone at 

 Woods Hole was exceedingly helpful. 



In due course, a beautiful Cape Cod 

 summer arrived and the ten-week project 

 got under way. An excellent group of 

 scientists and engineers assembled and the 

 Navy's top brass took a keen interest in 

 the deliberations. The pace of activity was 



often fast and furious. Columbus supplied 

 the leadership and stabilizing influence; 

 the Associate Director, Ivan Getting a 

 vice president for research from Raytheon 

 supplied much of the energy and initia- 

 tive needed to accomplish what was desired 

 within the time available. The combination 

 worked out well and the results of the 

 study had far-reaching effects, not only on 

 the Navy but, I would deduce, on the 

 individual participants themselves. Most, 

 if not all, would agree that their experience 

 that summer marked a significant point 

 in their careers. A number subsequently 

 became university presidents or laboratory 

 directors and one participant, Paul Nitze 

 (who crewed for Harvard with Columbus) 

 eventually became Secretary of the Navy. 

 Paul Fye, a "Nobska" member, was named 

 the director of the Woods Hole Oceano- 

 graphic Institution the year following and 

 the new director of research at the Insti- 

 tution, Robert W. Morse, at the time of 

 his participation in "Nobska," was a 

 physics professor at Brown. In the inter- 

 vening fifteen years or so, membership on 

 the Committee on Undersea Warfare has 

 inevitably changed, but "Nobska" is still 

 regarded as perhaps the high point of the 

 Committee's twenty-five years of existence. 



Much credit 



For the success of that summer's effort, 

 much credit is due Columbus Iselin, who 

 believed that what he set out to do was of 

 great importance to the Navy and the 

 nation and who was willing to make the 

 personal sacrifices necessary. Until his 

 illness of the past few years made it abso- 

 lutely impossible, Columbus attended the 

 meetings of the Committee on Undersea 

 Warfare faithfully. It is impossible to 

 know what the effort may have cost him, 

 but he attended the 93rd meeting in 

 Annapolis in November, 1970. This was 

 his last. He had missed the previous few 

 meetings and was particularly glad to be 

 back among his old friends. During the 

 executive session, with not wholly con- 

 cealed emotion, he suggested that perhaps 

 the time had come for him to be replaced 

 by a younger oceanographer. 



George W. Wood 



Washington, D.C. 



21 




CoLUMBUS ISELIN was one of my 

 oldest friends. We first met as 15-year 

 olds and roomed together our last year 

 at boarding school. While we were there 

 at St. Mark's, he was active in the forma- 

 tion of the S.M.B.C., the "Boat Club" 

 which was the school's initial entry into 

 the sport of rowing. Columbus was even 

 then noted (and kidded) for his physique, 

 which stood him in good stead throughout 

 his distinguished rowing career at school 

 and college. 



He must have acquired a good sized 

 sailboat at a comparatively early age, for 

 I can remember his shanghaiing groups of 

 us during our freshman year at Harvard 

 to work on her on weekends. Actually, 

 it did not take too much persuasion, as 

 it was lots of fun on a warm spring Sunday 

 to be provided with scrapers or pails of 

 varnish and brushes with which to attack 

 her spars. In this respect he was a sort 

 of nautical Tom Sawyer. 



My most recent contact with Columbus 

 dates back twenty-odd years to Woods 

 Hole. The 'Atlantis' seemed to offer 

 exactly what my teenage son Bob needed 

 in the way of a summer job. He and 

 Columbus, Jr. were of an age, and when 

 Columbus, Sr. was picking summer crews 

 for the big ketch, he generously included 

 Bob along with young Columbus. Bob 

 was allowed to have the same job on one 

 or two successive summers, and he and I 

 shall always be grateful to Columbus 

 Iselin for those priceless opportunities. 



Hollis S. French 



Annisquam, Mass. 



O 



NE example of the informality which 

 was pervasive about the Institution in 

 Columbus' days is the time Fritz Fuglister 

 asked Eloise Soderlund, his new assistant, 

 to dig a certain paper by Columbus out of 

 the files. Some time later Eloise, practi- 

 cally in tears said, I can't find that paper, 

 or for that matter, anything in the files 

 under Iselin." Fritz thought for a moment 

 and said, "Did you look under C for 

 Columbus?" 



Dean F. Bumpus 

 Woods Hole, Mass. 



'He was a sort of 



nautical Tom Sawyer" 



M 



Y acquaintance with Dr. Columbus 

 O'D. Iselin began in September 1939, 

 when I sailed to the United States to 

 attend the General Assembly of the Inter- 

 national Union of Geodesy and Geophys- 

 ics held in Washington, D.C. In this 

 meeting I met him and several of the 

 members of the Institution. I went to 

 Woods Hole just after the termination of 

 the meetings, but I missed him there 

 because most of the scientists there had 

 not yet returned. 



The World War II was quite a night- 

 mare to me and for almost ten years during 

 and around the hostilities. However, 1 

 was anxious to meet my old colleagues in 

 America, so I left Japan in June 195 1 and 

 stayed in the United States for two months. 

 I met Dr. Iselin on this trip and spoke 

 many things about oceanography and its 

 development in America and in Japan. 

 During the 1930's Dr. Iselin accomplished 

 many distinguished works on the hydrog- 

 raphy and dynamics of water movements 

 in the Northern and Equatorial Atlantic. 



Since the end of hostilities, I met him 

 in many places, at the meeting of IUGG, 

 of IGY held in January 1957 in Goteborg, 

 Sweden, of the SCOR, etc. He was always 

 very gay. About ten years ago I was given 

 funds from the Carnegie Institution to 

 stay in the United States for six months 

 and stayed for seven weeks at Woods 

 Hole. However, I was told that Dr. Iselin 

 was seriously sick so I could not meet him. 



Perhaps the last time I met him was in 

 November 1 964 when I went to Hamburg 

 to attend SCOR meetings there. This 

 time I enjoyed him very much. 



On request by Mr. Jan Hahn, I am 

 happy to contribute a tiny report about 

 the friendship between Dr. Iselin and 

 myself. Thank you. 



Tokyo 



Koji Hidaka 



22 




IT is indeed surprising that Iselin is 

 gone before me. Of course, he is to be 

 associated with Bigelow, as having been 

 his right-hand man. How different they 

 were! I think of his husky voice and his 

 quiet smile with so much expression in it. 

 Will there be a photo to show it? He 

 seemed to have so much strength in re- 

 serve as to be able with firmness to "sit 

 on the lid," as Bigelow called it, of the 

 boiling cauldron of the Institution they 

 started. The name "Columbus" surely 

 fitted him. 



I always hoped to see more of Iselin, 

 greatly enjoying our chats on objectives, 

 a matter of common and great interest. 

 He took over the physical oceanography 

 which Bigelow had so well started. He 

 tried to elucidate the North Atlantic Cir- 

 culation as typified by the adjacent Gulf 

 Stream. While this seemed simpler than 

 inshore waters, I wondered whether he 

 really found it so. It seemed to become 

 more and more complex. I never had a 

 good chance, with so many other things 

 to think about, to learn from him what 

 might have been responsible for the un- 

 usual amount of Gulf Stream water, as 

 typified by Salps, in the Bay of Fundy in 

 the summer of 1951, a more peculiar 

 condition there in Passamaquoddy Bay 

 than in any other summer of my expe- 

 rience. 



He well supplemented Bigelow by try- 

 ing to get the basic factors of the main 

 oceanic phenomenon on the doorstep of 

 the Institution. 



A. G. Huntsman 

 Toronto, Canada 



His quiet smile with so much expression in it. 



M- 



. Y association with Columbus extended 

 over some 30 years, never really close but 

 always on my part with the feeling of a 

 slightly difficult son toward a strong and 

 kindly father. My earliest recollection of 

 his kindliness concerns a time in the 30's 

 when we were oiling some galvanized wire 

 on the 'Asterias' at the dock on a hot 

 summer day. As the lowliest member of 

 the crew, I was sent to get a bucket of oil 

 from a drum lying on a rack on its side. 

 As I pulled the bung, the heated waste oil 

 shot out and covered me completely. With 

 a mild "damn!"; I managed to plug the 



flow and returned to the 'Asterias" full of 

 apologies for a job ill done, expecting to 

 be berated for my carelessness. Columbus 

 looked me over and said, "Any man who 

 can keep control of himself as well as you 

 did up there doesn't need to apologize. 

 Go get yourself cleaned up. We'll take 

 care of the rest." In all our infrequent 

 contacts over the years, Columbus offered 

 his thoughtful and kindly advice just as 

 he had done then to an undeserving 



crewman. 



Boston, Mass. 



William S. Butcher 



23 




Salute to Columbus Iselin on the occasion of the presentation to him c 



1 AM pleased to be asked to speak about 

 Columbus Iselin as a man, although I 

 realize that whatever I can say will be 

 inadequate. Columbus has towered over 

 most of us physically and in many other 

 characteristics. 1 think you should have 

 assigned two or three persons to this task 

 instead of one. I am reminded of our early 

 days of skiing in New England when we 

 used to poke fun at one of our number by 

 saying, "It takes three people to watch 

 Ted ski, one to say 'Here he comes,' a 

 second to say There he goes,' and a third 

 to say 'Who's dat guy!' ' 



In my assignment for today the only 

 excuse I can think of for my being the one 

 to attempt to tell you "who is dat guy" is 

 that perhaps I have known Columbus 

 Iselin longer than anyone else present.* 

 It might be appropriate, then, for me to 

 recount to you briefly some glimpses I had 

 of his beginnings as a leader in oceanog- 

 raphy almost forty years ago, and how the 

 qualities which have made him so success- 

 ful were already apparent in those early 

 days. 



We met in 1927 when, as an under- 

 graduate at Harvard College, I was at- 

 tempting to find an opportunity to study 

 biology in nature, not just in the labora- 

 tory. 1 had been referred to Prof. H. B. 

 Bigelow and he introduced me to a begin- 

 ning graduate student who was planning 

 a summer cruise, and who might be willing 

 to take me along. Later I shared a table 

 with Columbus in the room for graduate 

 students on the 4th floor of the Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology. In those days 

 one-half of a table was all the space avail- 

 able for a graduate student. Dr. Bigelow 

 had been quick to realize Iselin's poten- 

 tialities as a future oceanographer, and 

 was encouraging him to push ahead in 

 this field. 



I soon discovered that Iselin had be- 

 come a man at an early age. Already, as 

 an undergraduate, he had designed, built, 

 and skippered a 78-foot schooner chris- 

 tened the 'Chance'. Coming from a yacht- 

 ing family, Columbus had acquired much 

 experience with boats, but he had decided 

 that he wanted to do something more 

 substantial than merely cruising for pleas- 

 ure. In the summer of 1926 he organized 

 a group of college friends as crew for his 

 schooner, and explored the coast of 



24 



Labrador. In spite of icebergs, treacherous 

 currents, and the vagaries of the compass 

 in that region, Columbus made an im- 

 pressive start in obtaining hydrographic 

 measurements in the Labrador Current 

 and in collecting specimens. 



The following year I was, indeed, 

 fortunate enough to be included in the 

 ship's company for Iselin's summer pro- 

 gram. This consisted of an exploration 

 of the coral banks off Bermuda and, par- 

 ticularly, the making of hydrographic 

 sections across the Gulf Stream from 

 Bermuda to Nova Scotia. When 1 returned 

 home at the end of the summer, a local 

 newspaper reporter who got wind of the 

 cruise, sought to get a story from me about 

 what he assumed had been our narrow 

 escapes. He was much disappointed to 

 learn that we hadn't had any. It was 

 borne in on me then that our avoidance 

 of serious difficulties was due largely to 

 the competence and foresight of our 

 skipper. 



Columbus' qualities of leadership were 

 thus apparent in his early cruises, and 

 continued to develop and emerge as he 

 undertook more and more exacting tasks. 

 The following year he attempted success- 

 fully to obtain bottom cores along with 

 hydrographic data on his cruise to Europe 

 and back in a new 98-foot schooner.** 

 In 1931 he was made Captain of the Insti- 

 tution's new 142-foot ketch, the 'Atlantis.' 

 He was in command of 25 men, many of 

 them his senior, and responsible for the 

 full oceanographic program for the maiden 

 voyage of the ship from Plymouth, Eng- 

 land to Boston. Since the ship carried 

 no radio and had no doctor on board, the 

 young captain was definitely on his own 

 during the 41 days at sea. 



Realistic planning 



Ability for realistic planning was one 

 of Iselin's characteristics. In the early 

 work at sea in which Columbus took 

 part, each operation was thought out 

 and discussed in advance to anticipate 

 possible trouble with the equipment or 

 danger to the personnel. The same fore- 

 sight went into the planning of successive 

 cruises, and later, when he became Direc- 



* Except for Bill Schroeder and Mary Sears. 



** Originally christened 'Atlantis', this schooner's 

 name was changed to 'Raman' by her new 

 owner, Dr. Alexander Forbes, so that the Insti- 

 tution's new ship could retain the name 'Atlantis'. 




the Bigelow Medal on June 22, 1966 



tor, into the program of the Institution. 

 During World War II when the Institu- 

 tion's effort was directed toward research 

 for national defense, and all of us on the 

 staff were working all-out at various proj- 

 ects, I remember Iselin's saying one day, 

 "There should be more of us sitting around 

 just thinking." Another example of his 

 far-sightedness was his early recognition 

 that efforts to increase the productivity of 

 the sea, as for example by fish farming, 

 would come to nothing, if the legal aspects 

 of who owned the fish, or other product, 

 were not established. This is one of the 

 points he made in his address at the First 

 International Congress of Oceanography 

 in New York in 1959. 



Other characteristics of Columbus which 

 were apparent from the early days, and 

 have continued to make him a great leader, 

 are his selflessness and his encouragement 

 of others. His attention has always 

 centered on the objectives of the project. 

 I have never known him to give a thought 

 to his own comfort or to the recognition 

 of his own efforts and ideas. The most 

 dangerous jobs he took on himself, such 

 as descending through a manhole to get 

 a demented man out of a coal bunker in 

 the old Albatross; or climbing to the very 

 top of the 'Atlantis" 135-foot mainmast 

 while at sea to tend an instrument. Nor 

 did he ever lack courage to set out into 

 the unknown, either at sea, or in the areas 

 of research, or administration. His en- 

 thusiasm to forge ahead is contagious. He 

 has supported new ideas, thought things 

 could be done, and that you could do 

 them. A colleague or subordinate came 

 away from a discussion of plans with 

 Columbus feeling strongly supported, if 

 not inspired. He has often been able to 

 see hidden talents in individuals with little 

 or no scientific education, and through his 

 generous encouragement, some of these 

 eventually attained outstanding achieve- 

 ment in oceanography. It is no wonder 

 that Columbus has so many devoted 

 friends and associates today. I am one of 

 many who has the strongest personnel 

 regard for him. Foresight, farsightedness, 

 selflessness, and sincere encouragement of 

 others have produced a great leader in 

 oceanography, and these are the attributes 

 of the man we honor today. 



George L. Clarke 

 Cambridge, Massachusetts 



/ 



Columbus on the 'Chance' 



Many of us have clear-cut ideas 

 about ways by which the oceans 

 could be exploited and at the same 

 time become more useful to man- 

 kind. It is time that the lawyers and 

 the statesmen go to work so that 

 these achievable improvements in 

 the overall economy can become a 

 reality. 



The sea is the only part of the 

 earth that nobody claims to own. 

 The old idea of the freedom of the 

 sea has well served its original pur- 

 pose. It arose because until now the 

 most important characteristics of the 

 oceans were that they provided for 

 cheap world-wide transport and for 

 national defense. I am afraid that 

 the idea of the freedom of the seas 

 is somewhat incompatible with their 

 efficient and wise exploration. 



The economic and social problems 

 that will be encountered as we begin 

 seriously to exploit marine resources 

 seem to me formidable, much more 

 formidable than the remaining un- 

 solved scientific problems. I hope 

 that it is significant that during the 

 last 10 days our discussions have 

 been held at the United Nations. 

 Some very wise agency needs to be 

 developing the ground rules within 

 which the vast marine resources can 

 be developed in an efficient and 

 safe manner for the benefit of all 

 mankind. 



COT). I. 



From Oceanus, Vol. VI, No. 3, March 1960 



25 




T, 



HOSE of us who were privileged to be 

 associated with Mr. Iselin during the war 

 years know how much he gave of himself. 

 Time and energy on his part were of no 

 object. He exerted both to the extreme. 



In those days several of us were com- 

 muting daily from the Vineyard and we 

 got to know each other better than just a 

 nodding acquaintance. Under trying cir- 

 cumstances we got to know how each 

 would stand we were all on the same 

 level. He never failed to measure up. 



He spent much time in Washington 

 during those hectic years and I have seen 

 him come back from conferences com- 

 pletely exhausted, throw himself into a 

 corner of the boat, and just "sit it out" all 

 the way home. He grew older with every 

 trip and although we had no idea how 

 tough it had been, we knew enough to 

 realize that not only had it been physically 

 a rough session, but that he had been 

 called upon to make some mighty impor- 

 tant decisions that would affect very 

 substantially certain phases of the war. 

 When he spoke, men of high rank listened 

 until he was through. Nobody knew as 

 much about certain phases of the ocean, 

 and the military needed his advice. 



Many nights he would be detained in 

 his office in Woods Hole until seven- 

 thirty or eight o'clock holding conferences 

 by phone with Washington. Or maybe 

 some high official from our allies in 

 Europe would be in his office. When he 

 would finally appear, he would apologize 

 for being late and for delaying us; this 

 from a man to whom generals and ad- 

 mirals listened. 



I had the privilege of driving him home 

 on the way to my home at Menemsha 

 practically every night during those years 

 so we had something extra in common. 

 He always talked about boats and fishing 

 things I understood and had been 



'RISKING" 



associated with; never about big things 

 going on in oceanography of which I had 

 very little if any understanding. When 

 one talks your language, you appreciate 

 him even more. 



Mr. Iselin was known by most people 

 as a great oceanographer as indeed he 

 was, but to us whom I feel knew him 

 rather intimately, he was a great man. His 

 passing ended an era for a few of us. 



Menemsha, Mass. 



Stanley E. Poole 



M 



Y acquaintanceship with Columbus 

 started through his offer to give me a ride 

 to work, while I was a graduate student. 

 The vehicle, of course, was the 'Risk' and 

 the route; Tashmoo Pond to Woods Hole 

 and return. There were many of us who 

 shared this particular aspect of Columbus' 



Alternate tracks of the 'Risk' show that in 

 wintertime early dark, in fog or in storms it 

 was quite a task to avoid hitting an unlighted 

 buoy or go aground on Middle Ground. Tidal 

 currents of 34 knots are to be reckoned with. 



i d d I e 

 i 'riiJSJ^ss^-C-Vy Ar 



26 




generosity, and many distinguished guests 

 of the Institution were treated to unantici- 

 pated and, perhaps, unwanted experiences 

 if they happened to accompany us on a 

 return trip across the Sound after the 

 southwest wind had a chance to work up 

 for a bit. 



Over the course of several years we 

 made many crossings. Typically, we would 

 all be closeted in the small cabin where 

 Columbus would contentedly puff on his 

 cigarette either reading or keeping up a 

 running stream of conversation. It was 

 during the short period of years, when he 

 was serving as the Director of the Institu- 

 tion for the second time, that I particularly 

 remember these voyages. At that time, he 

 had asked me to serve as his assistant; I 

 learned quickly that there were certain 

 practical problems associated with this 

 position. 



Simply disappeared 



When Columbus was in residence at the 

 Vineyard, his normal regime upon setting 

 foot on the Woods Hole dock in the morn- 

 ing was to collect a copy of the New York 

 Times and retire to read its contents. 

 Following this, and I assume the handling 

 of those matters which were thrust to his 

 attention by anyone who happened to be 

 close at hand, Columbus would then 

 simply disappear. He had an insatiable 

 curiosity to know what was going on 

 around the Institution, and he prowled 

 into every corner. This characteristic had 

 a salutory effect on the morale of the staff 

 and was a clear testimony to Columbus' 

 interest in his chosen profession, but un- 

 fortunately it had the consequence of 

 leaving his young assistant to his own 

 devices. 



My saving was, of course, the fact that 

 I rode to work with the boss. In addition 

 to providing a constant seminar on all 

 aspects of Columbus' interests my rides 

 with him on the 'Risk' also provided a 

 tutorial on how I ought to be discharging 

 my job. Although this was perhaps an un- 

 conventional way to transact Institution 

 business, from a personal point of view, it 

 was a marvelous way to start a career. 



Captain Poo/e at the wheel of the 'Risk' 



IVlY earliest contact with Columbus 

 Iselin was in the summer of 1939 when 

 I came to Woods Hole. My first impres- 

 sion of him was that of a tall, lanky indi- 

 vidual who each morning in his motor 

 launch would slip in from across the 

 Sound and his home on the Vineyard. 

 Even on the days with the thickest blanket 

 of fog hanging over the sea, his daily 

 schedule never varied and his arrival 

 could be used to check the clock. I became 

 more directly aware of and appreciative 

 of the man when I took his course in 

 descriptive oceanography in the spring of 

 1940 at Harvard. This was my introduc- 

 tion to the dynamics of the oceans as 

 known at that time. Many of the basic 

 principles in oceanography that he de- 

 scribed in those early days have stayed 

 with me and are still quite frequently 

 used in presenting basic principles of 

 oceanography to young people today. And 

 as my first impression was one of him 

 arriving by sea from across the Sound, my 

 last one was this past June, the day of the 

 40th Anniversary celebration at Woods 

 Hole. I was fortunate to have been there 

 and following Columbus' address, he went 

 down to the dock and boarded the boat 

 for the return to the Vineyard. Shirley 

 and I were on the dock at the time and as 

 the boat pulled away, he acknowledged 

 our farewell with a lift of his hand and 

 his broad smile. 



Cambridge, Mass. 



Richard G. Leahy 



Charles M. Weiss 



Chapel Hill, N.C. 



27 




Don't bother about 



Radcliffe girls . . . 



ABOUT Columbus' scientific life, I 

 know next to nothing, but he gave advice 

 to many people, both high and low, includ- 

 ing me. When I first went cruising to 

 Maine and Nova Scotia, aged 17, which 

 was the same age as he had been when he 

 first went to Maine in a Victory class 

 racing boat named 'Flapper' with Terence 

 Keogh, he gave me the best simple list of 

 do's and don'ts for the New England Coast 

 in summer. Here it is: "Start early in the 

 day, come in early. Go east as fast as you 

 can because, remember, you will have to 

 beat back. If the SW wind increases after 

 sundown, it will blow hard all night. In 

 calm weather, there is usually an offshore 

 breeze after midnight. Become accus- 

 tomed to navigating with a lead line. It is 

 your surest and best friend." 



When I went to Harvard, he told me the 

 following: go to class drunk or sober. You 

 will learn more if you go than if you take 

 "cuts." Don't bother about Radcliffe girls: 

 there are no pretty ones. (This was in 

 1932, not 1971). And what now seems 

 to me very odd sartorial advice, "wear 

 a hat." 



My father died when I was 13; so, 

 Columbus was in many ways my father. 

 I think the only time that I impressed him 

 was when he came to see me in Boston 

 when I was commanding officer of the 

 U.S.S. 'Atherton' (the D. E. 169) during 

 World War II. He watched me move her 

 from the East Boston Yard to the South 

 Boston one with the aid of tugs her main 

 engines were down. He said "I am sure 

 I could dock her, but not with tugs. I've 

 never done that." 



Columbus once said to me, "You are 

 fortunate as an artist because you deal in 

 magic. We scientists have only reality." 



One last thing: when sailing to wind- 

 ward, he had a tendency to "pinch" a 

 little, but he had a great hand off the 

 wind, which is really harder, particularly 

 in light air. 



I miss him. And so would Terence and 

 Tom LaFarge and John Churchill, and the 

 rest of them who went to sea in the old 

 days.. 



Lewis Iselin 



what now seems to me odd sartorial 

 advice, "wear a hat". 



" 



* < fc- 



~:"~ Jfc" 



When Columbus wore a hat it always 

 was the same model. 



It couldn't have been the same one 

 through the years. 



.. 



tf. \ 



jS 



IJ 



E/fher he had boughf a supply or had 

 a hatter who manufactured a new one 

 occasionally. 



28 




KLY N L V.'SA.VAGA/ I Vt 



' 



Ot eanoyraphcr 



COLUMBUS 



ISELIN 



B 



When T/A/IE did a cover sfory "Ocean 

 Frontier in 1959, Columbus and the 

 'Atlantis' were chosen for the cover. In 

 the July 16, 1928 issue of TIME a photo 

 showed young Iselin above a V/i column 

 of text about his investigation of the Mid- 

 Atlantic Ridge on the schooner. 'Atlantis.' 



Stuffy Iselins 



I 



DONT think anyone realized how much 

 Columbus would have preferred to be on 

 active duty with the Navy than in his job 

 at Woods Hole. He was really interested 

 in his job, of course, but he also would 

 have liked to do the other. 1 used to think 

 at the time that he was silly to think that 

 way, but I realize now that it must have 

 been a certain strain to have your friends 

 and relations off in the war while you were 

 in an executive position at home, and after 

 Howard Lapsley and Tom LaFarge were 

 killed, 1 know he did mind. 



He was such a dear with us, and had a 

 great sense of humor about the stuffy 

 Iselins of which there were far too many 

 in the pre-war days. 



We both miss him a lot. 



Sally Iselin 

 New York, N. Y. 



He was a true seaman . . . 



V_>OLUMBUS commanded respect where- 

 ever he appeared, in whatever company. 

 With larger ships, with expanding pro- 

 grams, and particularly increased special- 

 ization it will be a rare man, if any, that 

 ever matches his universal coverage of the 

 science and the art of ocean research, and 

 of seamanship or his familiarity with the 

 total literature, the researchers themselves 

 and, not least, the sea itself. 



Whenever I saw Columbus near a boat, 

 I had the feeling that he was a true seaman 

 - the man, the boat or ship, and the 

 water seemed a unit, belonging together. 

 I was impressed with his daily trek from 

 his island home across to his waterfront 

 institution, and one day I asked him how 

 he maintained his record of crossing such 

 a difficult navigational stretch day in and 

 day out, without fail, come wind, snow, 

 fog, or what have you? "Well, I look over 

 the side, and the look of the water often 

 tells me about where I am." He smiled 

 his own distinctive smile, but the back 

 of his hand was hardly less familiar to him 

 and certainly was less carefully noted than 

 the swirls and the currents around the 

 Hole. 



Columbus made outstanding contribu- 

 tions to the awareness, acceptance, and 

 support of oceanography in many signifi- 

 cant quarters. Its present stature owes 

 much to him. It is notable that he could 

 do what he did and remain so quiet and 

 retiring and that he could build around 

 him and inspire a group that accomplished 

 so much with his leadership but with 

 complete informality and camaraderie 

 rather than formal management or disci- 

 pline. The genial yet productive atmos- 

 phere of his staff reflected his personality. 



I often envied those of his associates 

 who were qualified and privileged to work 

 closely with Columbus in the atmosphere 

 of the early days of the Woods Hole 

 Oceanographic Institution. I shall read 

 with great interest the comments of those 

 who knew him from such close association. 



Boston, Mass. 



Raymond Stevens 



29 




Some Early 



Cruises 



I FIRST met Columbus in 1925, just out 

 of boarding school, when fog-bound for 

 several days in Isaac's Harbor east of 

 Halifax while cruising with my father on 

 the Nova Scotia coast aboard his little 

 Malabar schooner, 'Mary Ann.' Columbus, 

 an undergraduate at Harvard, was also 

 fog-bound in the same place aboard that 

 charming little Maine smack schooner, 

 Theresa White.' He bought the Theresa 

 White' from my uncle, Nathaniel Emmons, 

 who bought her at a government auction 

 after she had been captured by the Coast 

 Guard while running rum. It was the pro- 

 hibition era and Columbus had an under- 

 graduate crew also including his boyhood 

 friend, Terry Keogh, who never went to 

 school or college. The crew were sure 

 hitting the booze while anchored in the 

 fog and then I realized what a great leader 

 Columbus was because he kept them 

 under control and was able to get them 

 out of their bunks to get the anchor up 

 when the fog finally cleared. He continued 

 on to Newfoundland and, I believe, even 

 at that early age accomplished useful 

 oceanographic work. 



Terry again 



When I was at Harvard, I saw a good 

 deal of Columbus cruising or racing 

 aboard various yachts. I think he skip- 

 pered the schooner, 'Rose of Sharon,' 

 down in the 1930 Bermuda race. In Easter 

 vacation, 1928, he asked me to help sail 

 that lovely Woods Hole schooner, the first 

 'Atlantis,' on her maiden voyage from 

 Shelburne, Nova Scotia, to Woods Hole. 

 It was late March or early April, as I 

 remember, but anyway damn cold, snow 

 all over in Shelburne. The night before 

 we left; Columbus got a keg of rum off a 

 wrecked rum runner, mixed up a punch, 

 and gave a party for all the males in 

 Shelburne. It was some party but I could 

 see what a humorous, gracious host he 

 was and how popular and beloved he was 

 there by men from all walks of life. Of 

 course, his friend Keogh ran the yard 

 where 'Atlantis' was built. I think 

 Columbus put him in that remote job to 



keep him out of trouble. I could see why 

 Columbus liked him so because he had a 

 marvelous Irish sense of humor and was 

 a thorough seaman. He used to get extra 

 drinking money by fighting preliminaries 

 all over the Province. 



We put to sea and ran into a bad 

 easterly gale, freezing snow, and real 

 rough in the Gulf of Maine. The rigging 

 all slacked up and the masts looked as if 

 they would go out of her the second night. 

 That was when Columbus showed what 

 a magnificent seaman he was, putting her 

 to rights. She was a wonderful, fast, sea 

 kindly schooner and Columbus was mainly 

 responsible for her design and layout. 



Wave tests 



I was at a loose end when I got out of 

 the Navy in January, 1946, and Columbus 

 gave me a job as liason man between the 

 Navy and the team Woods Hole was send- 

 ing out to measure the heights of the waves 

 the atom bombs made at those first tests 

 at Bikini. I may say it paid better than 

 the Navy. I spent most of February and 

 March before we took off at Woods Hole, 

 trying to help test the instruments. Spent 

 a lot of nights on the Vineyard with 

 Columbus and Nora which was a privilege, 

 indeed. When I heard him discussing 

 and arguing with Allyn Vine how the 

 wave measuring instruments should be 

 made and operated, I realized what a great 

 scientist he was from both a practical and 

 theoretical point of view, although all their 

 conversation was completely over my 

 head. I have to admit however, that I 

 was astounded when the infernal looking 

 machines Iselin and Vine devised actually 

 worked, lying on the bottom of Bikini 

 Lagoon when they blew up the bombs. 



My last hook-up with Columbus was in 

 1960 when I sailed my Concordia yawl, 

 'Winnie of Bourne' from Bermuda to 

 Portugal and kept a pretty detailed water 

 temperature record for Woods Hole en- 

 route. It gave a little point to the voyage 

 and certainly gave the crew plenty to yak 

 about. Typical of Columbus, he made me 

 feel as if I had accomplished a major 

 scientific feat when I handed the record 

 into him. I end by saying Columbus Iselin 

 was a hero to me all his life. 



John Parkinson, Jr. 



New York, N. Y. 



30 




The schooner Theresa White/ in which 

 Columbus made a cruise to Nova Scotia in 

 1925, had been a rum runner during prohibi- 

 tion days. Lying at City Point, Boston her 

 huge mainsail boom shows that she was a 

 2-master, the 3d mast belongs to another 

 vessel. 



Yacht historian John (Jack) Parkinson Jr. on 

 board his beloved 'Winnie of Bourne'. 



Lunch at Cap'n Kidd 



1 CAME to work in the Office of Naval 

 Research in late 1949 as a temporary 

 replacement for Gordon Lill who was on 

 six months' leave of absence. My task 

 was to "run" ONR's program in oceanog- 

 raphy, geology and geophysics. Although 

 life was simpler in those days, apparently 

 even ONR had some reservations about 

 the arrangement and Joe Worzel came 

 down from Lamont about one week a 

 month to help out on geology and geo- 

 physics. Oceanography, however, was all 

 mine. Soon after 1 arrived I was told that 

 the best way to find out what was going on 

 was to get out of Washington and talk 

 to those doing the work. My first visit 

 was Woods Hole where 1 had never been 

 and my host was Columbus Iselin whom 

 1 had never met. 



Dr. Iselin met me at the train station, 

 bought me lunch at the Captain Kidd, 

 and was with me most of the day. He was 

 kind, helpful, and most tolerant. How 

 tolerant Fll probably never know, since 

 time mercifully blurs many memories. But 

 I do remember him showing me around 

 the lab, introducing me to the staff, and 

 explaining what it was that Woods Hole 

 was doing and why. There was no need 

 for him to do so. In actual fact I was not 

 running anything at ONR and no one 

 knew that better than Columbus Iselin. 

 But Columbus apparently felt that if I 

 was ONR's representative, I should be 

 treated like one and 1 was. It was a great 

 boost to both the morale and ego of a very 

 nervous young man, and I have never for- 

 gotten it. 



John A. Knauss 



Kingston, R. I. 



31 






I 



( 



jA -^^^ P >) 



A\ s 1 



Holding forth or intently listening 



y 



Air-Sea interaction 



I 



FIRST met Columbus when I was a 

 metorology student at M.I.T. during the 

 early 1930's. Columbus attended some of 

 the meteorology seminars and occasionally 

 was the speaker always illuminating and 

 delightful. 



He was quite able to field technical 

 questions from the attentive and critical 

 audience, 95 percent of whom were mete- 

 orologists; but on one occasion when he 

 lectured on the Gulf Stream he seemed at 

 a loss for words to answer the first ques- 

 tion, which happened to be raised by a 

 Weather Bureau official. The unexpected 

 question following his scholarly presenta- 

 tion was, "Dr. Iselin, I enjoyed your talk 

 very much, but can you tell me where to 

 find the best fishing in that area?" After 

 a lengthy pause, Columbus just flashed his 

 winning smile, the audience laughed, and 

 then posed questions more appropriate to 

 the Gulf Stream's physical oceanography. 



Columbus was never a cold person. I 

 always felt comfortable in his presence 

 whether at meetings, in committee, in his 

 office, or socially. He always had a way 

 of expressing physical ideas in a concise, 

 yet not oversimplified, form. In this way 

 he had a strong and good influence on his 

 contemporaries and students. In my case 

 he continually encouraged my attempts 

 to learn more about air-sea interaction. 

 This encouragement was heartening in the 

 late 1950's, especially since many meteor- 

 ologists were switching to satellite cloud 

 studies, numerical weather prediction, air 

 pollution, and other important topics in 

 which air-sea interaction apparently had 

 little relevance. Fortunately, as Columbus 

 foresaw, there is much relevance. The 

 editors of TIME were indeed wise to have 

 selected such a central figure in oceanog- 

 raphy for their cover story in 1959. 



Jerome Namias 



La Jolla, California 



A tall, shy young man 



IVlY Association with Columbus began 

 in the spring of 1927 when a tall, very 

 shy young man called at my laboratory in 

 the Federal Fisheries building in Woods 

 Hole and handed me a letter of introduc- 

 tion from Dr. Bigelow, with whom I 

 collaborated since my student days. The 

 purpose of the communication was to 

 relate that young Iselin was preparing for 

 a cruise in the Labrador Current and 

 desired to conduct some oceanographic 

 observations. To this end H. B. asked 

 that, if possible, arrangement be made for 

 an operational demonstration of the 

 Greene-Bigelow reversing water bottle, at 

 that time standard equipment in ocean 

 investigation. That afternoon on the Fish- 

 eries' vessel Thalarope,' commanded by 

 Captain Bob Veeder, we operated in 

 Vineyard Sound, arranged the loan of 

 required apparatus for use on the 'Chance,' 

 and I launched cooperative relations 

 which endured thereafter. 



Later, in the development of the gradu- 

 ate student program of the Narragansett 

 Marine Laboratory, Columbus generously 

 participated as a regular lecturer and 

 arranged annually for the services of other 

 members of his scientific staff to round 

 out a balanced curriculum, until the URI 

 Graduate School of Oceanography attained 

 sufficient size to handle the job itself. 



The honorary doctorate subsequently 

 awarded to Columbus by the University of 

 Rhode Island was well deserved, but at 

 best could not adequately express the 

 magnitude of his services or the apprecia- 

 tion of the Narragansett Laboratory for 

 those contributions. 



Charles J. Fish 

 Kingston, R. I. 



32 




A hard struggle 



Cowboys and Indians 



(JpTEN it's the little things that stick 

 with you when remembering a great man. 

 Soon after the National Academy of 

 Sciences Committee on Oceanography 

 (NASCO) was formed in 1958 (Columbus 

 was a charter NASCO member) I came 

 up to Woods Hole to ask him about some 

 of the major issues confronting oceanog- 

 raphy. Columbus had a special sense of 

 concern for the importance of ocean 

 understanding to our national security. 

 That the defenses of our nation should 

 depend upon detailed knowledge of the 

 ocean environment seemed obvious to all 

 of us - - so much so that it was difficult 

 to find the best arguments to make this 

 fact clear. One afternoon in Columbus' 

 sunny office overlooking Vineyard Sound 

 we were searching for an analogy on this 

 point that might help the layman reader 

 of the forthcoming NASCO report. The 

 conversation swung to the advantages that 

 one familiar with his own territory might 

 have over an adversary. Perhaps, the 

 home team might enjoy some advantage 

 over the visiting baseball team? As it 

 turned out, data from several years did 

 show that home teams had won more 

 games than visiting teams, but the advan- 

 tage was too slight to be convincing. I 

 th^n suggested that, in early American 

 times, Indians (intimately familar with the 

 local landscape and forests) were able to 

 win many battles though they eventually 

 lost the war to "modern" technology and 

 superior firepower. 



Over the next few months Columbus 

 used this analogy several times in discus- 

 sions with laymen, congressmen, and top- 

 level administrators. To the best of my 

 knowledge, each time he used it (whether 

 or not I was present) he took pains to give 

 me credit for the thought. There are many 

 marks of a great man. One is his ability 

 to recognize the contributions of others. 

 This was a quality that Columbus had and 

 that I have since tried to emulate. 



C 



(OLUMBUS ISELIN greatly influenced 

 my career and that of many others through 

 a conversation I had with him during the 

 war years. We met 40 years ago when the 

 newly launched 'Atlantis' put in at Ply- 

 mouth, with Columbus as master of the 

 vessel. With a number of the staff and 

 other visitors at the Marine Laboratory, 

 I was able to make the acquaintance both 

 of Columbus and of the vessel during the 

 week or ten days they were preparing for 

 the Atlantic crossing. My own contact 

 at the time was limited to a few brief 

 conversations. 



Two years later I visited Columbus at 

 Woods Hole while on a two-year post- 

 doctoral Commonwealth travelling fellow- 

 ship. For the next five years I saw very 

 little of him, since I was working for 

 various British governments on West In- 

 dies fishery problems. 



My next contacts with Columbus came 

 when I accepted a position on the Uni- 

 versity of Miami faculty for the purpose 

 of establishing a marine laboratory. After 

 two years of frustration it seemed that to 

 fulfill such an ambition in what was then 

 a small, ill financed and not very dis- 

 tinguished university would be a difficult 

 if not impossible task. Many other friends 

 advised me to leave and seek a position 

 at an established institute such as Woods 

 Hole. Columbus, however, strongly urged 

 me to undertake a hard struggle to achieve 

 the objectives at Miami. He pointed out 

 that there was no tropical marine research 

 institute anywhere on the continental 

 coasts of the U.S.A., that Miami was lo- 

 cated closer to the Pacific tropical coasts 

 of South America even than Scripps, and 

 that this unique situation could eventually 

 justify any initial hardships involved. It 

 is no exaggeration to say that his en- 

 thusiasm and vision and his friendly 

 interest and encouragement were the de- 

 ciding factors in founding the School of 

 Marine and Atmospheric Science. I am 

 happy and I am sure that all of my col- 

 leagues are equally happy to acknowledge 

 with gratitude the important part he has 

 played in our careers. 



Richard C. Vetter 



F. G. Walton Smith 



Washington, D.C. 



Miami, Florida 



33 




THE TECH ENGINEERING NEWS 



-.... &i '' "if-*,:*.. 



% 



January, 1931 



The New Oceanographic 



Institute 



BY C. ISELIN 



Assistant Curator of Oceanography, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. 



The reader can now see that a good oceanographer 

 should be both a seaman and a scientist. In much of the 

 work which needs to be done at sea, a knowledge of 

 engineering is also important as special instruments 

 have to be developed that can withstand hard usage on 

 shipboard and the corrosive effects of salt water. It is 

 obvious that Tech men can be of great assistance to 

 this undertaking and it is hoped that many of them will 

 take an active part. 



Go forth and be like Columbus 



COLUMBUS O'DONNEL ISELIN was 

 an ususual man in many respects, and 

 some of his finest personal traits became 

 evident when he assumed the role of a 

 teacher. So naturally and effectively did 

 he teach, that he was as likely to leave 

 an impact on an informal group of coffee 

 drinkers, or a crew aboard ship, as he was 

 to stimulate the members of a formal class. 

 He taught as much by example as by 

 speech, and his stories of the sea convinced 

 his listeners that he loved that realm of 

 nature above all others. 



The oceanographic part of M.I.T.'s 

 present program in the earth sciences 

 could not have started and then developed 

 the way it did without the help of that 

 incomparable quintet from Woods Hole 

 Iselin, von Arx, Hersey, Stommel, and 

 Malkus. And of these, Columbus stood 

 first, because he came early to help us get 

 instruction started, stayed on to help guide 

 our academic program, and continued 

 even after retirement to provide a subtle 

 but definite influence that motivated more 

 than one student to do a better job than 

 he would have done otherwise. 



It was one of the strengths of Columbus 

 that he never needed to raise the decibel 

 level of his voice in order to be heard or 

 understood; so gently, yet so firmly and 

 logically, did he present an idea or express 

 an opinion that it was rare to hear disagree- 

 ment with him. Although courteous and 

 considerate, at times almost to a fault, he 



never left his audience in doubt as to what 

 he thought or where he stood on an issue, 

 but this was done with a disarming gentle- 

 ness and humility that belied the firm 

 conviction that he had reached only after 

 long and careful thought. 



His was not the rapid and facile rhetoric 

 of the glib lecturer; rather, he seemed to 

 carve his phrases out of a complex of 

 thoughts, but they came out loud and 

 clear. His ideas, his theories and hypoth- 

 eses, his explanations, all could stand 

 alone by their logic and clarity. 



Thus he taught an informative and con- 

 vincing course, and conveyed to his 

 students a strong sense of enthusiasm for 

 the sea and devotion to the profession of 

 oceanography. Perhaps the best indica- 

 tion of how deeply he felt his responsi- 

 bility for meeting his classes was the fact 

 that only the foulest of weather could keep 

 him from making the long trip from 

 Martha's Vineyard to Cambridge. 



Being deeply sensitive, and having great 

 compassion and respect for people, it was 

 natural that Columbus was so often sought 

 out for assistance and counsel, both of 

 which he always gave cheerfully and in 

 good measure. And perhaps the greatest 

 single impact he made on his students and 

 peers was the desire generated in them 

 "to go forth and be like Columbus." 



Robert R. Shrock 



Cambridge, Mass. 



34 




WHEN you asked for remembrances of Columbus, I thought I would see if 

 there was anything in my notes from Geology 136 Physical Oceanography which 

 1 took the last year he taught it. There was, his opening statement to us, "Oceanog- 

 raphy isn't a science at all." 



Richard Haedrich 



Woods Hole, Mass. 



.LIE was one of the founding members of SCOR and played an important part 

 in intitiating the International Indian Ocean Expedition, activities in which I played 

 a later role, but by the time I came to them, Columbus had gone to something else. 

 I remember him principally, in our rare encounters, as a challenger of conventional 

 wisdom, and a proponent of a fresh and realistic point of view. It is my loss that 

 our contacts were so limited. 



Warren S. Wooster 

 La Jolla, California 



1 NEVER have seen nor heard of the partially finished letter addressed to me and 

 written during his cruise from Capetown to Woods Hole on 'Atlantis II.' I would 

 love to have it. Very few "Owners" would bother to write the designer giving their 

 thoughts and suggestions regarding a new ship. But then, there are very, very few 

 Columbus Iselins. 



Lester Rosenblatt 

 New York, N.Y. 



, had numerous battles 



death of Columbus Iselin was a 

 personal loss as well as a loss to all of us 

 concerned in any way with understanding 

 the oceans. 



Columbus and 1 had numerous battles. 

 Yet, I think 1 enjoyed our differences 

 more than I do my agreements with most 

 people. For a number of years Columbus 

 Iselin was Chairman of the National Acad- 

 emy of Sciences Committee on Oceanog- 

 raphy (NASCO) Panel on Ocean Wide 

 Surveys while I chaired the comparable 

 federal panel of the Interagency Commit- 

 tee on Oceanography. NASCO had recom- 

 mended that the Navy and Coast & 

 Geodetic Survey undertake systematic sur- 

 veys of the deep sea. We in Washington, 

 under considerable obstacles, began the 

 operation in the North Pacific in 1961. Al- 

 though NASCO had recommended such 

 surveys, Columbus saw in them a threat to 

 the more research oriented activities of the 

 private institutions. His feeling was that 

 there was only so much federal support 

 for oceanography and the more that was 

 drained away in surveys the less there 

 would be for research at the private lab- 



oratories. It was a long battle to convince 

 Columbus that it was not an either-or 

 situation but that funds for surveys would 

 not otherwise go to research. He had 

 serious doubts about the science to come 

 from such systematic surveys, and he 

 caused me many an uncomfortable mo- 

 ment at NASCO meetings. An indication 

 of his true greatness was a letter he wrote 

 to me in 1967 in which he complimented 

 the federal government on the science 

 that was beginning to immerge from the 

 SEAMAP program in the North Pacific. 

 It takes a really big man to do this. 



Foremost at all times in Columbus' 

 mind was the science-of the sea and if he 

 felt that money was being spent which was 

 not producing good science, he was any- 

 thing but reticent. When he saw that good 

 science was being produced, he was quick 

 to say so. His incisive comments and his 

 deep love for the sea will be sorely missed 

 by all of the "sea people" of whom he 

 was one of our great leaders. 



Miami, Florida 



Harris B. Stewart, Jr. 



35 




Returning from the 



IGY section along 16 South, 



Fritz is hugged by 



his daughter Betsy 



Once upon a time . . . 



1 HINKING back over the last thirty years, the period during which I knew, 

 admired and worked for and with Columbus Iselin, I am struck by one fact. In 

 spite of our close relationship and almost daily meetings, there was a number of 

 contacts, that are usually routine between associates, that never occurred with 

 us or happened only once in all those years. 



It is well known that Columbus did not use the telephone casually or often, 

 but in my case I can state positively that Columbus called me on the phone only 

 once in thirty years; I never called Columbus. 



Once, when I stopped in St. Helena (16S. Lat.) with the 'Crawford 1 on the 

 first International Geophysical Year (IGY) cruise, I received a letter from Columbus. 

 He wanted to let me know that we had run out of IGY money but, since I had 

 gotten so far away, I might just as well go the rest of the cruise. I once wrote 

 Columbus a letter which he did not answer either. 



Once, just the two of us had dinner together. It was in Copenhagen at a very 

 nice fancy place on a hill overlooking the water where, Columbus said, they had 

 celebrated the commissioning of the 'Atlantis" years ago. The shipbuilding firm had 

 thrown quite a party at that time; our meal, though very nice was Dutch. 



Once, Columbus spent the evening at my house; a blizzard was raging and 

 he could not get back to the Island. He did not spend the night because he knew 

 of another place where the beds were longer. I never visited Columbus' home. I 

 came close to doing it once when I met him on the train going to Boston: I was 

 on my way to Washington, D. C. and he knew that I would have several hours to 

 wait for the Federal so he invited me to stop at his home in Milton. I was delighted 

 at the idea but then I remembered, with disgust, that the editor of OCEANUS had 

 given me an important package to deliver to someone who would meet the train 

 in Boston. I should have forgotten it under the seat, or something. 



Once I was on a plane with Columbus. Well, I guess you can say I was with 

 him; it was a flight from Copenhagen to Helsinki and I had met Columbus, Roger 

 Revelle, (Sir) George Deacon and several others in the airport. I was talking with 

 Roger as we boarded the plane when I became aware that some passengers were 

 in another line going into the tail end. You can imagine my embarrassment when 

 I realized that I was flying first class while Columbus and Deacon were pigging 

 it back in steerage; I had a hard time gulping down my champagne and caviar. 



For years I looked forward to the day when I would accompany Columbus 

 on an oceanographic cruise but it never came. Once, when the Iselin Building and 

 dock were dedicated, I had the honor to be with him coming and going across 

 the Sound. 



Once upon a time I wrote a paper with Columbus. 

 Woods Hole, Massachusetts 



F. C. Fuglister 



36 




Gulf Stream Papers* 



IF one scouts the offices of the Institution 

 for copies of "Papers in Physical Oceanog- 

 raphy and Meteorology" (P.P.O.M.) Vol- 

 ume IV, No. 4, what he is most likely to 

 find is a bedraggled, dog-eared pamphlet, 

 coming apart at the seams, held together 

 with scotch tape, pencil marked on 

 margins, text, and diagrams a pamphlet 

 showing the signs of extensive and re- 

 peated use and reference over a period of 

 many years, actually to this very day. This 

 document, titled "A Study of the Circula- 

 tion of the Western North Atlantic" was 

 dated August 1936. 



In the last pages of the document, its 

 author, Columbus Iselin, first master of 

 the 'Atlantis' and progenitor of this re- 

 search, articulates the first tentative 

 answers to his own large questions in 

 trenchant phrases. 



With the benefit of 30 years of hind- 

 sight, Columbus would probably love to 

 alter a number of statements and improve 

 a few diagrams, but that is neither here 

 nor there. The use that this document 

 still receives and the viability, to the 

 present day, of the research tradition it 

 initiated, amply attest to the significance 

 of the work and the influence it has sus- 

 tained. Every present day physical ocean- 

 ographer finds aspects of this scientific 

 inheritance in his knowledge, his outlook, 

 his entire frame of reference for generating 

 new questions about the processes of the 

 ocean. 



Among the questions that currently 

 seem to be most challenging and important 

 to theoretical oceanographers are ques- 

 tions that have to do with the origin, 

 dynamics, and influence of transient effects 

 in oceanic circulation. It seems likely that 

 a next level of conceptual understanding 

 of oceanic phenomena will come in this 

 realm. But theoretical hypotheses and 

 syntheses develop fruitfully only under 

 the guidance of observational facts. 

 Columbus Iselin began asking about the 

 relevant observational facts in the paper 

 quoted above. He apparently had an 



This is an abbreviated version of remarks made 

 during the 1966 presentation of the H. B. 

 Bigelow Medal. (Ed.) 



intuitive, instinctive grasp of their impor- 

 tance, and he continued the inquiry in 

 another P.P.O.M.: "Preliminary Report on 

 Long-Period Variations in Transport of 

 the Gulf Stream System." 



The synthesis is yet to be attained. 

 More observational facts in a variety of 

 geographical areas are still needed, but 

 whoever works in this area does so under 

 the benefit of Columbus Iselin's pioneer- 

 ing question asking. 



T-S diagram 



In 1939, Dr. Iselin published a three 

 page paper in Transactions of the Ameri- 

 can Geophysical Union; its title: "The 

 Influence of Vertical and Lateral Turbu- 

 lence on the Characteristics of the Waters 

 at Mid-Depths." This, paper drastically 

 altered the view of oceanographers toward 

 the significance of the well-know T-S 

 diagram first used by Helland-Hansen 

 around 1916. Countering then widely 

 prevalent opinion, Iselin asks: 



". . . can the temperature-salinity 

 correlation at mid-depths in the Sar- 

 gasso Sea be explained by lateral turbu- 

 lence, rather than by vertical turbulence 

 accompanied by certain lateral mass 

 movements at mid-depths [as is cur- 

 rently supposed]?" 



Pointing to the one diagram appearing 

 in the paper, Iselin says: 



". . . but if the fresher waters north 

 of the Gulf Stream are excluded, all 

 temperature-salinity curves of the sur- 

 face layers in March more or less follow 

 the mean vertical temperature-salinity 

 curve for the Sargasso Sea. In other 

 words, the temperature-salinity correla- 

 tion of the surface layer of the North 

 Atlantic in winter is not very different 

 from the vertical salinity curve in mid- 

 latitudes. This fact, of course, has been 

 generally appreciated for some time." 



The fact may have been generally ap- 

 preciated, but the interpretation Iselin 

 placed on it was new and immediately 

 influential. In Chapter IV of the Gospel 

 according to Sverdrup, Johnson, and 

 Fleming*, one finds the following para- 

 graph: 



*'The Oceans", Prentice-Hall, 1942. 



37 




"Iselin (1939) showed that the hori- 

 zontal T-S curve along the [surface of] 

 middle part of the North Atlantic Ocean 

 is very similar to the vertical T-S curve 

 that is characteristic between tempera- 

 tures of 20 and 8 over large areas of 

 the North Atlantic Ocean, and he sug- 

 gested that processes of sinking and 

 lateral mixing are mainly responsible 

 for the formation of that water. Exten- 

 sive use of this concept will be made 

 in the chapter dealing with the water 

 masses and currents of the oceans." 



And extensive use has been made 

 indeed not only by Sverdrup and his 

 co-workers but by many others as well, 

 including virtually every oceanographer 

 here at the present time. 



Uncanny ability 



Many of us here today have had the 

 experience of going to Columbus to talk 

 over a scientific idea or a plan of research 

 and in the process have experienced not 

 only the enthusiasm and hearty encourage- 

 ment he so unassumingly generates but 

 have also encountered his uncanny ability 



to "surround" a problem to grasp it in 

 the large and to set it and its implications 

 in a wider perspective than we ourselves 

 had established. It must have been from 

 just this kind of framework that Columbus 

 got the Navy early during World War II, 

 to pay attention to the influence of thermal 

 structure on underwater sound propaga- 

 tion. It must have been in a similar frame 

 that he attracted and encouraged the group 

 under Maurice Ewing in the work that led 

 to the prediction and verification of the 

 existence of the Sofar sound channel. It 

 is clearly in the same vein that he has had 

 his profound influence in the National 

 Academy's Committee on Undersea War- 

 fare and on the international research 

 panels which he has served by the SCOR. 

 For these pioneering scientific achieve- 

 ments in oceanography, and for numerous 

 more personal reasons as well, it is an 

 honor, a privilege, and a very great per- 

 sonal pleasure to salute Columbus Iselin 

 on the presentation of the 1966 Henry 

 Bryant Bigelow Medal. 



Seattle, Washington 



Arnold B. Arons 



He always seemed to say yes . 



H. 



.OW does one acknowledge in public 

 words the debt he owes to those without 

 whose guidance his own career would not 

 have developed? On the one hand, modesty 

 (maybe my work will not turn out to be 

 all that significant), on the other, ambition 

 (if it's my career I must make it on my 

 own) keep even from one's own inner self 

 the truth about how much is owed, how 

 crucial was the assistance offered, the 

 suggestion made. I can only state as simply 

 as possible that, without Columbus Iselin's 

 help on two occasions a decade apart, my 

 efforts to bring the understanding of the 

 historian to bear on those least articulate 

 among scientists, the oceanographers, 

 would never have begun. 



During my junior year, as I cast about 

 for a senior thesis topic on which I could 

 work in a summer spent in the Navy, 1 

 discovered first hydrography and then 

 oceanography. A summer surveying in 



Labrador showed me that the scientific 

 content of the former was small, so in the 

 spring of 1 95 1 , as I labored over a history 

 of American hydrography in the early 

 19th century, I enrolled in Geology 136: 

 Physical Oceanography, the course which 

 Columbus taught at the Museum of Com- 

 parative Zoology at Harvard. Columbus' 

 lectures were not inspiring he was too 

 shy to be theatrical in the classroom, but 

 they were clear and straightforward. The 

 course followed the outline of his volume 

 in the Undersea Warfare series, conclud- 

 ing with a descriptive account of the new 

 theories of westward intensification by 

 Henry Stommel and Walter Munk. I did 

 not do very well in the course, since most 

 of that semester was swallowed up by my 

 thesis, but Columbus did not seem to mind. 

 He encouraged me to shift the subject on 

 which I was to spend a Fulbright year in 

 the Netherlands from historical cartog- 

 raphy to the history of oceanography 



38 




and he gave me an introduction to Pier 

 Groen at the Royal Netherlands Meteoro- 

 logical Institute, whose lectures at the 

 Free University of Amsterdam I attended 

 the following year. Armed with a copy of 

 Henry Stommers historical paper on the 

 Gulf Stream, I set sail for Europe. My 

 career as a historian of oceanography had 

 begun. 



In 1960 I was back at Harvard after 

 sea duty in the Navy and study at the 

 Scripps Institution, looking for the spon- 

 sorship necessary to permit me to write 

 a doctoral thesis on the history of 

 geostrophy. Columbus kindly agreed to 

 sponsor me, and in the spring of 1961 he 

 suggested that perhaps Woods Hole would 

 be a good place to work in the summer. 

 From that quiet suggestion dates the con- 

 nection I cherish with the Institution and 

 most of the writing I have done on the 

 history of oceanography. That summer's 

 work at Woods Hole laid the foundations 

 for my continuing studies in the history of 

 geostrophy, and I have been coming back 

 every summer since to do research and 

 write on this and other topics. 



Fluid dynamics 



Twenty years have gone by since I 

 was first Columbus' student, ten since he 

 brought me to Woods Hole. I had hoped 

 that Columbus himself would sum up his 

 career in the form of an autobiography, 

 but, with the reticence typical of the sea- 

 going scientist, he found it easier to write 

 about others than about himself. I do not 

 feel that I knew Columbus well enough, 

 in spite of a close association, to say any- 

 thing personal about him, but one parti- 

 cular aspect of his vision of oceanography 

 stands out in my mind. Though he always 

 stressed his early training in mathematics, 

 Columbus was committed to empiricism 

 as the source of our knowledge of the sea's 

 motion. The oceanography he believed 

 in was done from ships, with Nansen 

 bottles, reversing thermometers, and the 

 newer tools of our trade. What the 

 oceanographer did on shore was to plot 

 up this data and to try to make sense of 

 it. In recent years when the theoretical 

 and experimental work in geophysical 

 fluid dynamics seemed to be bringing forth 

 important advances in our understanding, 

 Columbus insisted that nothing had been 

 discovered which had not first appeared 

 in empirical studies. 



It seems to me remarkable that, given 

 his feeling for the primacy of empirical 

 oceanography, Columbus presided both as 

 Director and as Department Chairman 

 over the establishment at Woods Hole of 

 the outstanding group in geophysical fluid 

 dynamics. This breadth of judgment, this 

 willingness to encourage others to venture 

 along paths he would not tread himself, 

 was I believe the source of Columbus' 

 influence over oceanography in our time. 

 In a world where most men are skeptics, 

 where most proposals of work to be done 

 are scrutinized with a jaundiced eye, 

 Columbus seemed always to say yes. By 

 letting others do what they chose to do he 

 made them face up to themselves, to set 

 their own standards and reach them if they 

 could. He had the capacity to give people 

 faith in themselves, and 1 for one owe my 

 career to him. 



In spite of his heavy commitments as a 

 statesman of science, he was dedicated to 

 teaching, to imparting to his successors his 

 vision of a science of the sea. 



Pittsburgh, Pa. 



Harold L. Burstyn 



Nansen bottle oceanography 



39 




"Joking a BT" are the editor o/b the 'Atlan- 

 tis' and CO. /se//n Jr. o/b fhe 'Albatross III' 



The Bathythermograph 



i 



_N 1938, before Federal funds were 

 available for research and development, 

 I needed somehow to get my crude models 

 of the Bathythermograph built properly. 

 In attempts to convince people, I waxed 

 enthusiastic about my instrument point- 

 ing out that it could be used by fishermen 

 and that every oceanographer in the world 

 would want one. The president of one 

 instrument firm replied, "Yes, all six of 

 them!" I became pretty discouraged. 



It was Columbus Iselin who not only 

 saw the potential of the Bathythermograph 

 for oceanography and fishing, but who 

 with his deep dedication to and knowledge 

 of U.S. Navy problems, recognized the 

 importance of the BT to underwater sound 

 location of submarines. 



By the summer of 1938 I had a crude, 

 but workable, model. At that time the New 

 London Submarine Base was conducting 

 tests in the neighborhood of Guantan- 

 amo Bay and when the surface destroyer 

 carrying the sonar could not detect the 

 submarine, they attributed it to faulty 

 equipment. Columbus and I were con- 

 vinced that many of these misses in 

 location could be due to the temperature 

 gradient in the surface layers acting like 

 lenses or prisms, and bending the rays 

 away from the object to which they were 

 directed. Clearly if a BT were let down 

 by the destroyer they would be able to tell 



what ranges to expect, when sonar condi- 

 tions were good and when they were bad. 

 Columbus arranged for us to go to sea 

 in the summer of 1938 on the U.S.S. 

 'Semmes' from New London. We con- 

 ducted the first exercises of destroyer vs. 

 submarine using the BT. But the Navy 

 was slow to adopt the instrument. 



Shortly after the outbreak of war in 

 Europe, the British were losing many 

 ships to German U-boats, notably off the 

 Straits of Gibralter. Columbus was con- 

 vinced that the U-boats were hiding from 

 sonar detection beneath the strong thermo- 

 cline in and near the Straits. With his 

 help I met the British Naval Attache in 

 New York (more or less clandestinely 

 because I was still a British subject and 

 the U.S. was not yet at war). I passed him 

 th; suggestion to use BT's on their 

 destroyers. He told me that he would send 

 it to London to the Admiralty with a 

 strong recommendation, but warned that 

 it might "just go into the 'lion's maw' and 

 you'll hear nothing more about it!" For- 

 tunately, this did not happen thanks to 

 Columbus' persistence. Without his fore- 

 sight, the BT might never have been used 

 in World War II and would not have had 

 the impact on oceanography in general 

 that continued after the war. 



Washington, D.C. 



Athelstan Spilhaus 



40 




Underwater Acoustics 



I 



T was through my interest in underwater 

 acoustics that I first became aware of 

 Columbus' contributions in this area of 

 the broad field of oceanography. His out- 

 standing theoretical and, later, practical 

 studies as related to the effect of thermo- 

 clines on acoustical transmissions opened 

 the doorway and made possible our pres- 

 ent systems for detection and classification 

 of underwater objects, thus greatly en- 

 hancing our nation's antisubmarine cap- 

 abilities. 



My contacts with Columbus broadened 

 and became more personal through the 

 early days of the Associates' program. 

 Later, in the first years of my service to 

 the Institution as chairman of the board, 

 Columbus' understanding of the problems 

 faced and his support were vital in the 

 orderly growth and the present character 

 and status of the Institution. 



Noel B. McLean 



New York 



World War II at Woods Hole 



IN 1940 when Iselin became Director of 

 the Institution, the signs of a global war 

 were ominous. The fact that the Institution 

 acquired one of the earliest defence con- 

 tracts under the newly-formed National 

 Defense Research Council (NDRC) was 

 indicative of Iselin's leadership, sense of 

 patriotism, and involvement. 



Iselin's personal contacts and ability to 

 sythesize the advice from his many friends 

 were particularly important in those days 

 when he transformed the Institution from 

 basically a summer organization into a 

 year-round laboratory. One of his neigh- 

 bors on Martha's Vineyard was Dr. Frank 

 Jewett of the Bell Telephone Laboratories 

 who was involved in preparing the nation's 

 scientists for war-time problems. Jewett's 

 wise, and probably somewhat fatherly, 

 counsel convinced young Iselin that his 

 primary responsibility was not to join the 

 Navy and run ships like so many of his 

 friends and classmates were doing but 

 rather to run a laboratory to help solve 

 the Navy's broader problems. 



A close contemporary friend of Iselin's 

 was the geophysicist Maurice Ewing who 

 had been doing acoustical work on the 

 'Atlantis.' These two scientists believed 

 that by sharing their widely different tech- 

 nical backgrounds they could learn more 

 about the principles of submarine hunting, 

 as effected by the ocean. Thus, the Insti- 

 tution's wartime efforts were started with 

 a rather small group of biologists and 



physical oceanographers already at Woods 

 Hole plus some newly imported physicists 

 and electronics specialists. During the 

 next five years the influx of people steadily 

 increased. Even when the Institution 

 grew to include several hundred people, 

 Columbus remained personally and tech- 

 nically involved in individual problems to 

 an amazing extent. He spent a great deal 

 of time wandering around the lab, quietly 

 observing, gently encouraging, and posing 

 questions so pertinent that they frequently 

 suggested solutions. 



To list all the problems tackled during 

 the war years would be too lengthy but 

 some of the major ones were: 



performance of anti-fouling paints. 



- current and drift predictions for 

 downed aviators on life rafts. 



- prediction of wind-shear and inver- 

 sion layers on smoke screens. 



burying and countermining in mine 

 warfare. 



wake suppression for landing craft. 



wave and swell predictions for am- 

 phibious landings. 



development and application of 

 underwater explosives. 



submarine diving problems. 



transmission of sound in the sea. 



convoy-routing. 



41 




discouragement of sharks, 

 underwater photography. 



writing of manuals to instruct Navy 

 people of all ranks how knowledge 

 of the ocean might improve their 

 situation. 



Medal of Merit 



For his leadership during the war Iselin 

 was given the Medal of Merit in 1948, the 

 highest U.S. civilian award. The citation 

 read: 



Dr. Columbus O'Donnell Iselin, for 

 exceptionally meritorious conduct in 

 the performance of outstanding serv- 

 ices to the United States from 1940 to 

 1946. Dr. Iselin, Director of the 

 Oceanographic Institution at Woods 

 Hole, Massachusetts, because of his 

 prudent foresight and technical and 

 scientific skill made a valuable contri- 

 bution in the development and perfec- 

 tion of the bathythermograph and 

 other instruments which saved a large 

 number of our ships during the war. 

 Dr. Iselin's vision which led him to 

 pioneer in a new field of scientific 

 research, his technical and analytical 

 knowledge, proved to be invaluable 

 contributions to the war effort of the 

 United States. 



Signed at the White House 

 Harry S. Truman 



A second important phase of Iselin's 

 Navy interests started after the war when 

 he was asked to serve on the newly formed 

 Committee of Undersea Warfare of the 

 National Academy of Sciences. He was 

 active in this Committee for the remainder 

 of his life. Iselin's contributions in this 

 group of scientists, engineers, and edu- 

 cators were partly as a globally oriented 

 marine scientist and partly as an experi- 

 enced sailor. Not only the experience of 

 his ocean travel but his daily runs from 

 the Vineyard to Woods Hole in his boat 

 'Risk' gave Iselin a seagoing character 

 and philosophy that was recognized and 

 respected by Navy personnel of all ranks. 



While the above list of problems might 

 make good chapter headings for a resume 

 of the wartime interests of Iselin and 

 Woods Hole, the essence of such chapters 

 would be about the wide variety of people 



he assembled or that were sent to him on 

 a permanent or transient basis. Certainly 

 one chapter would be devoted to how he 

 devised and led a system that made chaos 

 a little less chaotic, rules of thumb a little 

 more rigorous and jury-rig experiments a 

 little faster and more pertinent. Teamwork 

 was prevelant in most laboratories and 

 organizations during those war years but 

 it seemed exceptionally pronounced at 

 Woods Hole. Also unlike most laboratory 

 directors, Iselin had the problem of mak- 

 ing sailors out of a great conglomerate of 

 land-lubbers. 



Columbus' Right Arm 



Any portrait of Iselin at Woods Hole 

 without mentioning John Churchill would 

 be deficient. John was a classmate and 

 shipmate of long standing, and in the "Log 

 of the Schooner 'Chance' ' was called 

 "that hard boiled engineer." By profession 

 he was an architect, but his heart was 

 on the water, and his mode of thinking 

 and action were obviously in line with 

 Columbus'. As a result, Columbus had an 

 executive who also believed in shoving 

 great responsibility on individual scientists 

 and workers, but who was quite capable 

 of making major decisions, skippering the 

 ships and arbitrating disputes in a way 

 that was more likely to leave the partici- 

 pants laughing than mad. 



Allyn C. Vine 



The Falmouth Enterprise reported: 



This interview with Mr. Iselin 

 received prompt clearance from 

 the Office of Censorship and was 

 published on the first page of 

 The Enterprise on August 4, 1944. 

 The story filled six columns of 

 newspaper space For the first 

 time and one of the few times 

 Falmouth people learned some- 

 thing of the war effort in which 

 they lived. 



For Director Iselin it was pos- 

 sible to satisfy public interest 

 without alerting the enemy. The 

 incident is unusual because it is 

 not usual for men in Director 

 Iselin's position to be concerned 

 with public interest and the peo- 

 ple's right to information. 



Columbus O'Donnell Iselin was 

 a man of science and an individu- 

 al of rare common sense. 



42 




Watching the builders' trial of the 'Atlantis' 

 off Copenhagen in 1937 are Columbus Iselin 

 at left and the designers Prof. George Owen 

 and Mr. Francis Minot in caps. 



Maybe you ought to teach me 



i 



BECAME interested in physical ocean- 

 ography late in my career as a graduate 

 student of theoretical physics at Harvard. 

 As a typical student of my times I was 

 well versed in quantum field theory and 

 high energy nuclear physics, ignorant of 

 classical physics, and unaware of the 

 existence of oceaanographic science. My 

 contact with Columbus Iselin was not 

 intimate, but his influence upon me and 

 my career was profound. He educated me 

 with wisdom and sensitivity and initiated 

 me to the realities of the sea. 



My curiosity having been aroused by 

 the reading of a mathematical paper 

 which mentioned the oceans, I impul- 

 sively found "Oceanography" in the Har- 

 vard catalogue and knocked on the door 

 of Professor Iselin's office in the Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology. By coincidence, 

 it was the only half-day that semester that 

 Columbus was spending at Harvard. I 

 asked him to give me a reading course the 

 next term. He inquired into my back- 

 ground, muttered "maybe you ought to 

 teach me" and agreed to do so. Two 

 months later when I showed up at the ap- 



pointed time to start, he exclaimed "I 

 never thought I'd see you again." One of 

 the first parables he related to me con- 

 cerned the frustration and retreat of an 

 eminent Harvard physicist who had 

 crossed Oxford Street to solve the prob- 

 lems of the ocean. 



Under Columbus' guidance I first read 

 Proudman's "Dynamical Oceanography," 

 then Brunt's "Physical and Dynamical 

 Meteorology" and Jefferies "The Earth," 

 tackled "Lamb" and delved into the 

 modern literature. We met once a week 

 in the only room of the MCZ where smok- 

 ing was permitted, exchanged brief com- 

 ments on references and questions, and 

 then settled down to a long session of 

 anecdotal oceanography. That summer 

 Columbus brought me to Woods Hole and 

 introduced me into the intensely stimu- 

 lating theoretical group centered about 

 Malkus, Stommel, and Veronis that had 

 formed during his Directorship of the 

 Institution. 



Allan R. Robinson 



Cambridge, Mass. 



43 




. . . help me persuade Henry Bigelow 

 to write a book on waves 



;?-*X^.-'- ~ 



-e-aScCS^P ,..^^^a*.- *< 



*K;J " ; . -^; ir-^- 





-,^v. 



rs-^ 



A.' . 





*[ 



!&*& r 



IN 



the winter of 1944 I was dispatched 

 to Woods Hole to learn something about 

 amphibious landings. Working under 

 George Clarke, my immediate task was 

 to build an instrument to record wave 

 action on landing beaches. Columbus 

 would walk through the laboratory each 

 morning and look over our shoulder, 

 normally without saying anything. One 

 day he remarked, "I think it would be a 

 good idea if you had a look at what 

 Maurice is doing." It turned out that 

 Maurice Ewing was building a reference 

 pressure volume connected to the outside 

 by capillary leak, so that the reference 

 pressure represented a time average over 

 the last half hour or so. It was just what 

 we needed for what today would be called 

 a "high-pass filter." The instrument turned 

 out to be quite successful, and served as 

 a standard for many years. 



Later that winter Columbus came by 

 and said, "Would you help me persuade 

 Henry Bigelow to write a book on waves?" 

 This request was very flattering to a green 

 oceanographer. Evidently someone in the 

 U.S. Naval Hydrographic Office had 

 talked to Columbus about the need to put 

 between two covers a technically sound 

 account of what was known about ocean 

 waves, written in a language that would 

 make sense to a seafaring man. Columbus 

 had decided that Bigelow was the man for 

 the job. We took the Cape Cod Express 



and then jumped a taxi to Cambridge. 

 The mission was not unsuccessful*. 



Next spring I was extended the hospi- 

 tality of staying at the Iselin farm on the 

 Vineyard. There Columbus pointed with 

 pride to his accomplishment as a carpen- 

 ter. In the evenings he would tell about 

 ships and the sea, and of the close friends 

 the Iselins had lost in certain naval actions. 

 Thirty years have passed, and I vividly 

 remember the great warmth of this island 

 haven. 



It was clear that Columbus had become 

 totally committed to the war effort, as an 

 oceanographer and as a director. I think 

 it was he who first identified the "after- 

 noon effect" (loss in the range of under- 

 water sound) with a diurnal warming of 

 the surface waters. He made many other 

 contributions, few of them credited to him. 

 He chose to do his work through a de- 

 voted, colorful (if somewhat unlikely) 

 group of disciples: Fuglister, Worthington, 

 Vine, Schevill. . . After the war he never 

 quite regained the taste for personal 

 scholarship. A selfless man whom I miss 

 greatly. 



Walter H. Munk 

 San Diego, California 



*Bigelow, H. B. and Edmondson, W. T. (1947), 

 Wind waves at sea, breakers and surf. U.S. Navy 



Hydrogr. Office Pub. 602, xii plus 177 pp., 57 text 



figs., 24 pis. (Also translated into Russian in 

 1951 by B. B. Shtokgana). 



44 




Mood of excitement 



VvHEN I walked into Columbus' office thirty years ago he had my letter, asking 

 for a job on his desk. He glanced at it for a few seconds and said: "The 'Atlantis' 

 is at sea right now; you will be going on her next cruise. Why don't you read this 

 while you wait?" He handed me a copy of a paper called "Sound Transmission in 

 Sea Water" and I was hired as a bathythermograph observer at $1200.00 per annum. 



Ten years later Columbus was having coffee with us in Fritz Fuglister's office 

 one afternoon and he said: "Can anybody use the 'Atlantis' next month?" I stuck 

 up my hand and she was mine; it was my first independent effort as an oceanog- 

 rapher. Sometimes I think that Columbus' method of picking oceanographers in 

 those days could be compared to throwing people into the ocean and seeing whether 

 or not they could swim, but I am the last man to complain about it. I owe my 

 career to my ten year apprenticeship under Columbus Iselin and the group of 

 oceanographers which he led. 



Columbus' leadership was pretty informal but it was most real. He had the 

 habit of dropping in on everybody in the Institution from time to time because he 

 was interested in everything that was going on. He was able, without saying 

 anything in particular, to show people that he liked what they were doing and that 

 he thought it was good for oceanography. I believe that this enormous, personal 

 encouragement was felt, at one time or another, by every man and women who 

 worked at the Institution under his directorship. 



No student of the North Atlantic can function without Columbus' two great 

 treatises within easy reach; one on the general circulation and the other on variations 

 in the strength of the Gulf Stream. To me, though, his finest work was a four page 

 paper on the relative importance of vertical and lateral mixing published in 1939. 

 He once told me that it only took him two or three days to write, but that paper 

 changed the whole concept of water mass formation in the oceans. 



Oceanography is much more highly organized nowadays, and a great deal 

 better paid than it was then but I do not think it is as much fun. Of course, most 

 of us who worked for Columbus in our youth are fat and middle aged now and 

 that may have something to do with it, but I believe that the mood of excitement 

 and enjoyment in the ocean which prevailed in those days was largely due to him. 



Woods Hole, Massachusetts 



L. V. Worthington 



Nothing was too small for him 



J_xURING the pre -Christmas season of 

 1945 the Institution was swarming with 

 Navy officers, Washington VIPs, foreign 

 Allied VIPs, plus quantities of mail, red 

 tape, expanding contracts, problems, and 

 people. All this rested on Columbus' broad 

 shoulders. All this was tightly locked into 

 the well secured, guarded "Old Building." 

 The first floor had a section called "the 

 cage"; this section was wired with an 

 alarm system connected with the Marines 

 on guard at the adjoining Navy base. 

 Columbus and Dr. Redfield and the sub- 

 marine warfare staff worked in this area. 



I was fortunate in being in this group. 

 I had been to Falmouth at lunch time and 



bought a doll for a Christmas gift. It was 

 a doll with a definite personality and made 

 by a well known, reputable doll manu- 

 facturer. I was delighted to find such a 

 treasure in the local store and was showing 

 my great coup when Columbus appeared 

 with as much appreciation of this little 

 doll as I had. He smiled and chuckled at 

 it and said he was going right over to 

 Falmouth and buy one. I offered to do 

 this for him but he seemed to want the fun 

 of doing it himself. 



His character was so big that no person 

 or no thing was too small for him to 

 appreciate. 



Dorothy Ryder 



Cambridge, Mass. 



45 




V>iOLUMBUS did play an important 

 part in my life during the time 1 was 

 President of the Travelers Research Center 

 in Hartford, Connecticut, 1963-69. He 

 was a member of my Board of Directors 

 and on the Board's Science Advisory 

 Committee. Although his health was 

 obviously of concern during most of this 

 period, he was both conscientious and 

 effective in his participation in Board and 

 Committee meetings. He was unfailingly 

 wise and perceptive in his advice to me, 

 and the quality of his thinking was com- 

 bined with a grace and personal sensitivity 

 that made even criticism constructive. 

 Criticism was not his usual mode of 

 address, however. Normally, his contri- 

 butions were made in the more positive 

 form of suggested approaches to problem 

 resolution, mention of new opportunities 

 for research, and comments calling atten- 

 tion to the most promising features in our 

 work or plans. This kind of gentle, positive 

 reinforcement exerted great influence on 

 me and my colleagues. 



Columbus combined the qualities of 

 professional leadership and advisor with 

 those of friendship in an extraordinarily 

 attractive way. The pleasure these memo- 

 ries provide compensates in part for the 

 hole left by his passing. 



Hartford, Conn. 



Douglas L. Brooks 



Be the fellow to answer questions 



IN 1939, George Woolard and I were 

 measuring gravity beside the old Penzance 

 garage, where the Smith building stands. 

 Columbus paused on his way for a chat. 

 I do no remember what any of us said, 

 but a strong impression was left with me 

 that here was a most significant man. 



In January 1946 I had decided to look 

 into oceanography as a peacetime pursuit. 

 Columbus had apparently made up his 

 mind, before the interview, that he would 

 hire me because he proposed that I come 

 to Woods Hole and make myself into the 

 fellow who could answer questions the 

 Navy might ask about underwater acous- 

 tics. This is no quotation, but 1 am sure 

 many readers will recognize it as just 

 about what Columbus might have said. 

 Although my scientific interests are far 

 from limited to underwater acoustics, this 



IN 1954 I retired from active business 

 and made my permanent residence at 

 West Chop, Vineyard Haven. From time 

 to time I would meet Columbus Iselin on 

 Main Street and we would exchange pleas- 

 antries. Once he said to me, "You seem 

 to be spending a great deal of time here 

 on Martha's Vineyard." I said, "I have 

 decided to retire here." He said, "That 

 is most interesting; we need more people 

 over to help us at the Institution." 



I received a call from Woods Hole invit- 

 ing me to become a member of the Corpo- 

 ration which I promptly accepted, although 

 feeling totally unqualified. Whether it is 

 true or not, 1 somehow detected the fine 

 Italian hand of Columbus Iselin inviting 

 me to join. 



I might quote from my 35th Anniversary 

 report of the class of 1925 Harvard. "My 

 principal change in status since the last 

 class report, other than becoming a grand- 

 father at long last, was my recent election 

 as a Member of the Corporation of the 

 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 

 Now I am in really deep water." 



The deep water, however, has, down 

 through the years, drawn me closer and 

 closer to Columbus Iselin, cemented our 

 friendship, taught me more about the 

 unlimited horizon of our oceans, and 

 brought me to say goodbye and a job well 

 done! 



Edward M. Douglas 



Vineyard Haven, Mass. 



simple suggestion describes much of my 

 professional life since that time. 



My relations with Columbus have been 

 an important and influential part of my 

 professional life. No matter what the 

 occasion, 1 have always felt and frequently 

 made use of the impulse to ask his advice. 

 This has to be, I think, because many of us 

 on the early post-war Institution staff knew 

 that his advice would be sound and would 

 reveal the fundamentals of the problem we 

 were facing in ways that we had not been 

 sensitive to. This, after all, is exactly what 

 one hopes for in good advice. 



Like a host of other people, I have en- 

 joyed his friendship and his wonderful 

 humor. He is certainly a man who con- 

 tinues to be part of all of us. 



J. Brackett Hersey 

 Washington, D.C. 



46 




Mrs. C. 0. Iselin Dies 

 Shortly After Husband 



Mrs. Eleanor Lapsley Iselin, widow of 

 the oceanographer, Dr. Columbus O. Iselin 

 of Vineyard Haven, died unexpectedly at 

 her home on Monday, following her fa- 

 mous huband in death within less than two 

 weeks. Dr. Iselin died on Jan. 5. 



Mrs. Iselin was 63 years old, a native 

 of New Rochelle, N. Y., but for 37 years 

 she and her husband had made their home 

 on their farm at Chappaquansett in Tis- 

 bury. 



Before she met Dr. Iselin in 1927, she 

 had studied in Paris and worked in New 

 York as a medical secretary. With her 

 sisters, Katherine, Elizabeth and Jane, she 

 was noted for her horsemanship, and a 

 New Yorker cartoon once showed the 

 three Lapsley girls tumbling from their 

 horses while their dogs looked on, sur- 

 prised. 



All her life a devoted horsewoman, be- 

 fore her marriage, she had schooled 

 hunters in Westchester County. It was 

 Mrs. Iselin who saw to it, once the family 

 had moved to the Island from Milton, that 

 there were horses on the farm. At first, 

 these were hunters; then she bought a 

 large jumper; then Arabs struck her fancy, 

 for, being smaller horses they seemed 

 more suitable for the Iselin children. 



One Christmas, she bought a male 

 Mexican burro, St. Bernard-sized at the 

 time of the purchase, and brought it to the 

 Island in the back of the family car. It 

 was not long before Mrs. Iselin feared it 

 would be lonely and purchase a mate, and 

 the pair, who became beloved pets, were 



V 



so completely at home that they would 

 wander in and out of the Chappaquansett 

 kitchen begging for tidbits. 



A warm, outgoing woman with a highly 

 developed sense of humor, Mrs. Iselin 

 delighted her friends with her stories 

 among them the tale of how, only days 

 before her marriage, she had fallen off a 

 horse into a brier patch and her face had 

 been so badly scratched that she wondered 

 if her husband-to-be would want to go 

 through with the ceremony. 



During World War II, Mrs. Iselin was 

 active in war work of all sorts, and her 

 energy and efficiency in efforts for the Red 

 Cross were admired by all who knew her. 

 At that time, too, she started what was 

 called the "Ship's Bell School" in the barn 

 in back of the Iselin house, and there, a 

 young English refugee, the Iselin children 

 and several Island neighbors studied. Two 

 other youngsters whom she virtually 

 adopted were Mavis and Carol Randolph, 

 whose aunt, Miss Alice Warring, was her 

 cook for 30 years. Household help always 

 stayed long with Mrs. Iselin. For decades, 

 Miss Martha Caughey was the family 

 nurse. 



Surviving are two sons, Columbus O. 

 Iselin Jr. of Dover and Sgt. Thomas Iselin 

 of Fort Devins, and three daughters, Miss 

 Eleanor E. Iselin of Boston, Mass. Mrs. 

 Marie Doebler of Naples, Italy, and Miss 

 Victoria Iselin of Cambridge. There are 

 also six grandchildren. 



Surviving her, also, are two sisters, Mrs. 

 Mott B. Schmidt of Katonah, N. Y., and 

 Mrs. John Hallowell of Cambridge. 



Reprinted from 

 Vineyard Gazette 1/22/71 

 Martha's Vineyard 



47 




In addition he was the author of numerous popular articles and 

 technical reports. His many speeches, carefully written in longhand 

 are a source of much historical value. 



Bibliography of 

 COLUMBUS O'DONNELL ISELIN 



1930. Recent work on the dynamic oceanography of the North Atlantic. 

 Trans. Amer. Geophys. Union, 10th Ann. Meet.: 82-89. 



1930. A report on the coastal waters of Labrador, based on explorations 

 of the "Chance" during the summer of 1926. Proc. Amer. Acad. 

 Arts Sci., 66(1): 1-37. 



1933. The development of our conception of the Gulf Stream system. 

 Trans. Amer. Geophys. Union, 14th Ann. Meet.: 226-231. 



1933. Some phases of modern deep-sea oceanography with a description 

 of some of the equipment and methods of the newly formed 

 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Smithsonian Inst., Ann. 

 Rept. for year ending June 30, 1932 (Publ. 3198): 251-267. 



1934. Temperature-salinity correlation within the Florida Current. Trans. 

 Amer. Geophys. Union, 15th Ann. Meet.: 208-209. 



1936. A study of the circulation of the western North Atlantic. Papers 

 in Physical Oceanography and Meteorology, 4(4): 1-101. 



1936. The influence of the Mediterranean outflow at mid-depths in 

 the Sargasso Sea. Trans. Amer. Geophys. Union, 17th Ann. 

 Meet.: 219-221. 



1937. The new plans for the cooperative investigation of the North 

 Atlantic circulation. Trans. Amer. Geophys. Union, 18th Ann. 

 Meet.: 222-223. 



1938. The influence of fluctuations in the major ocean current on the 

 climate and fisheries. Collecting Net, 13(7): 1-4. 



1938. Problems in the oceanography of the North Atlantic. Nature, 

 141(3574): 772-776. 



1938. A promising theory concerning the causes and results of long- 

 period variations in the strength of the Gulf Stream system. Trans. 

 Amer. Geophys. Union, 19th Ann. Meet.: 243-244. 



1939. The influence of vertical and lateral turbulence on the character- 

 istics of the waters at mid-depths. Trans. Amer. Geophys. Union, 



1939: 414-417. 



1939. Some physical factors which may influence the productivity of New 

 England's coastal waters. J. Mar. Res., 2(1): 74-85. 



1940. Preliminary report on long-period variations in the transport of 

 the Gulf Stream system. Papers in Physical Oceanography and 

 Meteorology, 8(1): 40 pp. 



1 940. The necessity of a new approach to the study of the circulation on 

 the continental shelf. Trans. Amer. Geophys. Union, 1940: 347-348. 



1942. Interaction between the hydrosphere and the atmosphere. Trans. 

 New York Acad. Sci., (2), 4(3): 99-106. 



48 




LIBRARY 



1947. Preliminary report on long-period variations in the transport of 

 the Gulf Stream system. Int. Hydrogr. Rev., 24: 92-94. [Extract 

 from: Pap. Phys. Oceanog., Meteorol., 8(1 )J. 



1948 and F. C. Fuglister. Some recent developments in the study of the 

 Gulf Stream. J. Mar. Res., 7(3): 317-329. 



1949. Principal instrumentation problems of deep-sea oceanographic 

 exploration. Instruments, 22(10): 898-901. 



1950. Some common characteristics of the Gulf Stream and the atmos- 

 pheric jet stream. Trans. New York Acad. Sci., (2) 1 3(2): 84-86. 



1952. The Gulf Stream system. Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., 96(6): 660-662. 



1955. Recent advances in our understanding of the circulation problem 

 and their implications. J. Mar. Res., 14(4): 315-322. 



1955. Oceanographic problems of the Arctic Ocean. Arctic, 7(3/4): 

 195-198. 



1955. Coastal currents and fisheries. Pap. Mar. Biol. and Oceanogr., 

 Deep-Sea Res., Suppl. 3: 474-478. 



1956. We hope to witness the start of a hurricane. Oceanus, 4(3): 3-7. 



1957. Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873) "Pathfinder of the Seas," 

 the development of oceanography. Newcomen Publ. in N. Amer., 

 Princeton Univ. Press. 8-26. 



1957. Synoptic studies in oceanography. Oceanus, 5(3/4). 3-12. 



1958. Synoptic studies in oceanography. Geophys. Monogr., 2: 169-174. 



1959. The basic thermal structure of the oceans. In: Environmental 

 factors influencing the performance of naval weapons systems, 



W. H. O. I., Pt. 1: 9-22. (Unpublished manuscript.) 



1959. New discovery in physical oceanography. Oceanus, 6(2): 11-12. 



1960. The World Ocean. Oceanus, 6(3): 5-6. 



1959. Use of the ocean. (Editorial. Based on remarks at the concluding 

 session of the First International Oceanographic Congress). 

 Science, 130(3380): 895. 



1961. An interpretation of the deep current measurements. Oceanus, 

 7(3): 9. 



1962. Inshore fisheries management. Oceanus, (3): 2-6. 



1962. Oceanography, 1962. Navigation, 9(3): 182-184. 



1963. Improving world fisheries. 2. The oceanographer's viewpoint. 

 Special Issue on Marine Biology, AIBS Bull., 13(5): 69-70. 



1963. The loss of the THRESHER. Oceanus, 10(1): 4-6. 



1964. From Cape Town to Woods Hole. Oceanus, 10(3): 11-12. 

 1964. Oceanographic forecasts. Oceanus, 10(4): 8-13. 



1969. (with K.O. Emery) Human Food from the Ocean. Science, 157(3894): 

 1279-1281. 




C. O'D. /se//n Issue 



Vol. XVI, No. 2, June 1971 



Contents 



AN APPRECIATION 



fay J. N. Carruthers 3 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF COLUMBUS O'DONNELL ISELIN 48 

 IN MEMORIAM-MRS. C. O'D. ISELIN 47 



Contributors 



Arnold B. Arons 37 



Doug/as L. Brooks 46 



Dean F. Bumpus 22 



Harold L. Burstyn 38 



Wm. S. Butcher 23 

 Joseph Chase 



George I. Clarke 24 



Edward M. Douglas 46 



Gunther Dietrich 12 



Maurice Ewing 14 



Chor/es J. F/sh 32 



HO//IS S. French 22 



F. C. Fug/ister 36 



Pau/ M. Fye 1 



Richard Haedrich 35 



Ka/eroy L. Hatzikon 13 



J. BracJcetf Hersey 46 



//mo He/a 9 



Ko/i Hidaka 22 



A. G. Huntsman 23 



lewis Iselin 28 



Sa//y Iselin 29 



John A. Knauss 38 



Richard G. Leahy 27 



Gordon li// 12 



Noel B. McLean 41 



Daniel Merriman 10 



H//ary B. Moore 12 



George L. Moses 17 



Walter H. Munk 44 



Roberf Munns 9 



Jerome Nam/as 32 



John Parkinson Jr. 30 



E. R. Plots 19 

 Sfan/ey E. Pools 26 

 Roger Revelle 8 

 Allan R. Robinson 43 

 tes/er Rosenb/atf 35 

 Francis C. Ryder 6 

 Dorofhy Ryder 45 

 Mrs. Mott B. Schmidt 18 

 Robert R. Shrodc 34 

 Joanne Simpson 16 



F. G. Walton Smith 33 

 Athelstan Spilhaus 40 

 Raymond Stevens 29 

 Harris B. Stewart Jr. 35 

 Richard C. Vetfer 33 

 A//yn C. Vine 19 and 41 

 Charles M. Weiss 27 

 George W. Wood 20 

 Warren S. Wooster 35 

 L. V. Worth/ngton 45 



Published by the 



WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION 



WOODS HOLE, MASSACHUSETTS