This paper will examine the growth of specific scientific maritime cultures onboard research ships during the twentieth century. In examining these unusual fieldwork spaces, this paper will chart the expansion of an oceanographic community and their interactions with the ships in which they carried out their research. Creating within their ships a space that was international, whilst remaining national, often thousands of miles from their homeports. These charged spaces forced scientist to work and live in extremely close proximity to one another for extend periods. This paper will argue that the oceanographic research ship and the Antarctic research station constitute a unique space for science. Using British case studies this paper will show how research ships changed from military spaces, (where the scientists were invited to enter to undertake their work) into spaces controlled and managed by the scientists themselves. The transformation from admiralty to Institute to research council control, allowed for the evolution of a scientific maritime culture. However as will be shown this conversion from military to civilian scientific culture was fraught conflict and the difficult adaptation of maritime traditions and the creation of new ones.