UK Marks 70 Years of Modern Oceanography

On June 5th 1944, the day before the landings on the Normandy beaches, a small research group was formed in the Admiralty Research Laboratory at Teddington in Middlesex.

Weather and wave prediction had been central to the decision made by Eisenhower about the timing of the Normandy landings. The new group, Group W, was charged with learning how waves are generated and how they travel away from storms so that useful predictions could be made of wave conditions for amphibious landings that might be made in the Pacific. Here it was expected that swell waves from distant storms would be more important than in the English Channel.

Group W (for waves) was made up of young mathematicians and physicists and was led by Dr (later Sir) George Deacon, FRS. Deacon was a chemist and oceanographer who since 1927 had worked with the Discovery Investigations learning about the physics and chemistry of the vast Southern Ocean so he had plenty of practical experience of waves. He took it as a good omen two weeks later a horse called Ocean Swell won the Derby.

Group W scientists and technicians started to measure waves on the beach at Perranporth in North Cornwall, a place where there would be both short period local waves and low frequency swell waves.The next challenge was to learn how to analyse the wave records so as to separate the effects of waves and swell. Inspiration came from an unexpected source. Deacon had a friend in the film industry and learned that the sound track on films at that time was recorded as a wavy line alongside the picture frames. The same method was used for the 20 minute-long wave records. The records were mounted on a large spinning drum and as the drum slowed the output of a photocell changed according the amount of wave energy at each frequency. This produced a wave energy spectrum. The records taken at two hour intervals showed the longest swell waves from storms arrived first followed by the shorter, local waves.

The war ended in August 1945 but Group W continued its wave research and broader studies of the interactions between the atmosphere and ocean. On 1 April 1949 Group W combined, under Deacon’s direction, with the researchers of the Discovery Investigations to form the multidisciplinary National Institute of Oceanography (NIO). In 1953 the NIO moved to a wartime Admiralty radar research laboratory at Wormley near Godalming in Surrey. This remained the home of UK oceanography until 1994 when the lab moved to Southampton to form the Southampton (now National) Oceanography Centre.

Group W was remarkable. Six of its scientists became Fellows of the Royal Society in recognition of their work. That work work laid the foundations of UK (and indeed international) wave research that had important practical applications particularly during the 1970s and 80s in the design of offshore structures for use in the North Sea.

Press Release, June 05, 2014