The vessel tied up at the 7th Street wharves presented the Institution with a problem. There was valid work to do in the magnetic surveys, but keeping a ship at sea was expensive; even keeping it decommissioned cost money. There was, however, a growing interest in oceanography, the subject founded, one might say invented, in Washington by the Virginian, Matthew Fontaine Maury. It was a subject for which data were scarce, data that had to be acquired with a research vessel, and the United States had only the Carnegie. There was wide interest and encouragement from many quarters for the Department to undertake this field of study, but little was offered except instruments and various intangibles. President Merriam finally agreed to another cruise that would undertake an extensive number of oceanographic observations in addition to magnetic ones.

In the summer of 1927 the Carnegie was towed to dry dock in New York where new masts and yards were installed and much dry-rotted timber replaced (Fig. 6.1). The whale boats were moved from the quarterdeck to mid-ship platforms in order to free deck space for the various wires that were to drop sampling bottles and thermometers. There was equipment for continuously measuring the ocean surface temperature, for measuring temperature at depth, for determining the plankton concentration, for bringing up bottom samples, as well as measuring atmospheric pressure and temperature, and the dust content of the air.