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Bon Voyage

April 8, 2012

In 1948, a crowd gathered as the original research vessel Atlantis set sail from Cape Cod for a journey to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, part of a long chain of mountains and valleys on the ocean floor. The 142-foot, steel-hulled ketch (the first of three WHOI-operated ships named Atlantis) was the original vessel used by scientists at the Institution. It sailed on 299 cruises and covered more than 700,000 miles for ocean science from 1931 to 1966. Today, the research vessel Atlantis still visits the Mid-Atlantic Ridge for research, often using the submersible Alvin for undersea exploration.(Photo by Jan Hahn, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)