RV Atlantis (1930)

RV Atlantis was a steel-hulled ketch built as the first research vessel of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, entering its service in 1931 and remaining with it until 1966. She was designed with steadiness, silence and cruising range in mind rather than speed, and was the first ship built specifically for interdisciplinary work in marine biology, marine geology and physical oceanography. Over 299 cruises and some 700,000 miles she carried every kind of ocean science, and a continuously recording fathometer on her cruise number 150 helped scientists locate the first abyssal plain, later named the Sohm Abyssal Plain, in 1947. In 1966 she passed to Argentina as the research ship El Austral, and in 1996 to the Argentine Naval Prefecture as a training ship; a new vessel on similar lines, incorporating small parts of the original, replaced her in 2009 as Dr. Bernardo Houssay.