The Bahama expedition party consisted of 21 members. Nutting and his intructor-assistants, Henry Wickham and Gilbert Houser, led by a group of coed University students, most of whom had never before seen salt water, on an 83-day collecting foray.

It is doubtful if any skipper ever started on a three-months' cruise with a more inexperienced lot of landlubbers. . . Everything pertaining to the sea, the vessel, and marine life was novel, and the more experienced members of the party awaited developments with no little anxiety. (Nutting, 1895)

The expedition sailed from Baltimore on the Emily Johnson, a 95-foot, two-masted schooner. It was the first time that a vessel had been chartered by a university for the express purpose of giving its students a chance to work and study at sea. They sailed nearly 3,000 miles and collected over 15,000 specimens which were subsequently used in Professor Nutting's teaching laboratory and in museum exhibits.

Nutting took special interest in the hydroids. Other groups of marine invertebrates, including echinoderms, crustacea, and mollusks, were sent to the Smithsonian Institution and Yale University for further study. The expedition received particular acclaim for its success in gathering Pentacrinus--rare, stalked crinoid--with its primitive, hand-operating dredging equipment.