''Dana'' was a four-masted motor

schooner A schooner ( ) is a type of sailing ship, sailing vessel defined by its Rig (sailing), rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more Mast (sailing), masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than t ...

built for the Danish

East Asiatic Company The EAC Invest A/S, formerly known as the Santa Fe Group and East Asiatic Company ( or ''ØK'') is a multinational holding and investment company, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Originally founded by Hans Niels Andersen in 1887. It owned 5 subsid ...

(EAK) and launched in 1919. It was made available to the Danish marine biologist Johannes Schmidt, who used it for two expeditions to the

Sargasso Sea The Sargasso Sea () is a region of the Atlantic Ocean bounded by four currents forming an ocean gyre. Unlike all other regions called seas, it is the only one without land boundaries. It is distinguished from other parts of the Atlantic Oc ...

in 1920–1921. The main goal of the expeditions, named the first and second Dana expeditions, was searching for the spawning grounds of the

European eel The European eel (''Anguilla anguilla'') is a species of eel. Their life history was a mystery for thousands of years, and mating in the wild has not yet been observed. The five stages of their development were originally thought to be differe ...

. The ship was returned to service in EAK after the expeditions and sold to

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

in 1924, where it was renamed to ''Carina''. Later sold to Italy (1934) and renamed ''Giuseppina V'', it was lost 30 August 1941 during the bombing of Tripoli. Dana was succeeded by the research vessel ''Dana'' (II).

References

{{reflist Research vessels of Denmark