Chun proposed to the
Gesellschaft Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte (Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians), which was the German equivalent of the
Royal Society, that a German deep sea expedition be funded and equipped to explore the deep oceans. His proposal was well received and a resolution to approve the plan and recommend it to the German government was unanimously adopted on 24 September 1897. It was originally conceived as purely zoological expedition but
Friedrich Ratzel suggested that chemical and physical observations be included in the expedition's remit and this was accepted. The German government approved the proposal and granted the expedition 300,000 marks in initial funding with promises of further grants to cover the expenses of the expedition and the publication costs of its findings. The ship, the
SS Valdivia, was chartered from the
Hamburg-Amerikanischen Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG), which fitted the ship out with equipment such as dredging gear, specimen jars, deep sea traps and oceanographic equipment, also outfitting the laboratories, while also providing the crew and provisions, all for a sum equivalent to £17,000, a sum which covered the company's expenses but did not allow for any profit. Chun was the overall leader of the expedition. A captain of whaling ships, Adalbert Krech, was appointed the ship's captain while the navigator was Walter Sachse who was an employee of HAPAG's. The scientific staff was made up of the botanist Professor
W. Schimper of
Bonn, the zoologists
Carl Apstein,
Ernst Vanhöffen and Fritz Braem, the oceanographer Gerhardt Schott, the chemist Paul Schmidt and Dr M. Bathman who was a bacteriologist and the
expedition's doctor, who died on the voyage.
August Brauer and
Otto zur Strassen who were zoologists by profession and Fritz Winter who was an artist and photographer, but these had no official status recorded. ==The Voyage==