The name was intoned every night on the shipping news; HMS Vidal was broken up in 1975 after an epic voyage taking scientists to the US nuclear station in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
In the month-long sea voyage the scientists will visit a number of sites in UK, Irish and international waters.
The voyages of these scientists around the globe and the reader's imagined voyages in time to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century form the backdrop of an intellectual voyage.
Dr. Tim O'Hara, the voyage's Chief Scientist and Museums Victoria's Senior Curator of Marine Invertebrates, writes, "We have found highly concerning levels of rubbish on the seafloor.
On Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper, AC's resident sadboy, Noah Lennox, leaves the mother ship for another solo voyage, with drone scientist Sonic Boom on hand to work the controls.
Dr George Murray, Gregory's successor as chief scientist, was due to travel only as far as Australia (in fact he left the ship at Cape Town), using the voyage to train the scientists, but with no part to play in the detailed work of the expedition.
It is as if the thirty-first scientist to voyage to the Galápagos Islands had stayed only a couple of days, sketched one or two of Darwin's finches, and then left.
The ship has lately been repurposed to become a touring vessel for a British organization with a mission to "foster dialogue about the climate crisis by bringing together artists and climate scientists" on voyages to the Arctic, where the effects of global warming are readily apparent.
And as you trek through it, you do feel a bit like the scientists in "Fantastic Voyage".
In summer, the scientists sailed on voyages of research and discovery, bringing their finds back to San Francisco.
