The Whitney South Sea Expedition (1920 - 1941) to collect bird specimens for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), under the initial leadership of Rollo Beck,Whitney South Sea Expedition. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Retrieved 22 December 2014. was instigated by Dr Leonard C. Sanford and financed by Harry Payne Whitney, a thoroughbred horse-breeder and philanthropist. It was administered by a committee at the AMNH and became a focus for attracting funds for research on the biota of the Pacific islands.
The expedition visited islands in the south Pacific region and eventually returned with over 40,000 bird specimens, many plant specimens and an extensive collection of anthropological items and photographs.
Using the 75-ton schooner France,Murphy, Robert Cushman The Whitney South Sea Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History, Science, pp. 701-2. Science. Retrieved 22 December 2014. with many different scientists and collectors participating over more than a dozen years, the expedition visited thousands of islands throughout Oceania, Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia. The France was sold in 1932 when funds ran out.
Specimens from the expedition were displayed in a hall at the AMNH funded by Harry Whitney.
Aims of the expedition The expedition's main aim was to collect birds from various South Pacific islands and the Pacific Ocean, on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History. The AMNH cooperated with the Bishop Museum in Hawaii and the United States National Museum, exchanging specimens and data. Museum officials were aware that research in the Pacific was urgent, as species were becoming extinct through various causes: introduced mammals such as pigs, dogs, cats and mongooses; spread of introduced birds including the myna; human activities such as copra processing, pearl diving and beche-de-mer fishing and lifestyle changes brought on by modernisation.
The expedition collected not only bird skins, but also nests, eggs, whole birds preserved in alcohol, and bird stomachs from the skinned birds. Lizards, other reptiles, turtles, small mammals such as bats and rodents, and plants were collected for the AMNH and the Bishop Museum. Expedition members also took many photographs and notes about the wildlife, vegetation, topography and lifestyles of the local people they encountered.
Expedition members
The expedition was led by Rollo H. Beck (1920–1928), Hannibal Hamlin (1928–1930), William F. Coultas (1930–1935), Lindsay Macmillan (1935–1940), and G. Reid Henry (1941).
Beck, an expert bird collector himself, hired Ernest H. Quayle to assist with collecting, including the botanical specimens collected by the expedition. Quayle was a Stanford University graduate with a geology degree.Quayle, Ernest H., 1891–1956, Social Networks and Archival Context, socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu Beck, his wife Ida and Quayle based themselves in Papeete in 1920, and in 1922 Charles Curtis, who had been working on a plantation in Tahiti, joined the expedition as Beck was readying to leave Tahiti in the France. Curtis spent five months with the expedition before returning to his previous job.
José Correia and his wife Virginia joined the Whitney South Sea Expedition in 1922 to replace Ernest Quayle, with Correia acting as expedition leader for six months in 1923 while Beck was away in New York. Correia was a cooper by trade. While on a trip to the Antarctic as a cooper in 1911, he had met Dr Robert Murphy of the AMNH, who taught him how to prepare bird specimens. Correia then took part in other AMNH expeditions as a bird collector. The Correias left the Whitney expedition at the end of 1926 after contracting malaria, and were replaced by Frederick Drowne.
Edwin Bryan, an entomologist from the Bishop Museum in Hawaii, joined the expedition in 1924. He spent ten months collecting plant and insect specimens before returning to his work in Hawaii.
Dr Frederick P Drowne joined the Whitney Expedition as a field researcher in December 1926. He was a medical doctor and ornithologist from Rhode Island, with connections to the AMNH. He had taken part in several scientific expeditions previously, and had first met Beck during an expedition to the Galapagos Islands. Drowne left the expedition in 1928 due to illness. In June 1930, depressed about his ongoing ill health, he shot himself.
In September 1927, Hannibal Hamlin and Guy Richards, both recent Yale graduates, arrived in the Solomon Islands to join the expedition while Drowne was unwell. Richards left the expedition in 1929 and became a journalist. Hamlin became the expedition leader from March 1928 when Beck left, until January 1930. Coultas then took over and Hamlin left the expedition in August 1930. He returned to Yale and became a neurosurgeon.
William Coultas and his friend Walter Eyerdam arrived to join the expedition at the end of August 1929, and in January 1930 Coultas took over from Hamlin as leader. Walter Eyerdam was a mineralogist and skilled collector of molluscs, plants, birds and mammals. He left the Whitney expedition in mid-1930, later taking part in other expeditions. Coultas returned to New York in 1935 to work for the AMNH, and also took part in other expeditions before joining the US Naval Reserve Force in 1942.
Ernst Mayr from the Berlin Museum joined the expedition on its trip to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in 1929, after Hamlin had replaced Beck as leader. He left the expedition in February 1930 to return to Germany. Mayr was hired by the AMNH to curate the Rothschild collection in 1933, and he continued to work up the material that returned to the AMNH from the Whitney expeditions. He continued at AMNH until 1953 as curator of birds.
John Boyd ("Jack") Riddall, born in England in 1905, joined the expedition as a bird collector and skinner at the Solomon Islands in May 1930. He had until then been working as a clerk at Lever Brothers plantation on Gavutu.https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C252141 Riddall left the expedition in 1932, lived in Australia and in 1942 enlisted as a flight lieutenant in the Royal Australian Air Force.
Thomas Lindsay Macmillan became leader of the expedition in 1935 after Coultas left. He was a farmer, born in Vanuatu to an Australian father, and had lived in both countries. Macmillan and his wife Joy collected and processed birds for the expedition in New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, Papua New Guinea and Queensland, Australia. Macmillan left the expedition in 1940 to join the Australian navy. In later life he and Joy ran a mission station in the Australian outback.
G Reid Henry led the expedition for a short time in 1940–1941 and was based in Australia.
The France At first, the expedition was based in Tahiti and used trading vessels to get around the Pacific, but Beck wanted to be free of other people's schedules. He bought the France in December 1921. The France was a 75 gross ton schooner with a 60 hp motor, built in Papeete around 1918 and previously used in the copra trade. The ship was 71 feet long, 25 feet wide and had a draught of 6 feet. Between 1922 and 1932, the expedition used the France to travel all over the Pacific. When the France left Papeete on 1 February 1922 the crew consisted of the captain, mate, engineer, cook, three sailors and a cabin boy, as well as Beck, Quayle and Curtis. Crew members came from around the Pacific.
Captains of the France during the expedition included Marten Nagle (1922–1924); E A Stenbeck (1924–1926); J W R Richmond; William Henry Burrell (Nov 1929-July 1930), A J D McArthur (1930–1932), and Thomas R Lang.
In 1932 funding for the expedition ran out and Dr Murphy of the AMNH wrote to Coultas to confirm that the France must be disposed of. The ship was sold to WR Carpenter and Co. Renamed Dawaun, she was wrecked when she ran aground on a reef off the Carteret Islands on 29 October 1936.
Specimen collection
The expedition travelled between island groups by ship, either getting passage on local vessels, using the schooner France that they had purchased, or chartering other vessels such as the Pato, a schooner hired by Coultas in 1933. Bird specimens were collected by various methods. On the ocean, the expedition's ship might pass by a flock of birds which could be shot from on board. On reaching an island, expedition members would go ashore by rowboat to shoot birds along the coast, or walk and climb into the interior of the island to seek out and shoot land birds and other specimens. On inhabited islands, the team would consult the local people to find out about the types and habits of various birds, and would employ local guides to take them to nesting areas. Local people were also paid to collect specimens for the expedition. Specimens had to be processed quickly before they decomposed. Sometimes the expedition members would set up a base on land and process the birds there, but otherwise skinning was typically done by the light of benzine lamps in the hold of the France. Supplies needed for processing birds included arsenic, alum, benzine, cornmeal, needles, bone cutters, cotton wrapping and labels. "It is certainly an art to accomplish it the way it ought to be done, that is to say removing the skeleton, bones, flesh, intestines and fatty parts, leaving the wings and feathers properly sewed for mounting or museum reference". "One can wash plumage quite well if blood is removed with water, then the benzine, and dry in corn meal, and this was our usual procedure". Coultas described how an adult cassowary specimen was prepared: This bird kept us busy most of the night, skinning and degreasing. Several natives assisted us by holding the skin while we scraped and worked. Once cleaned we washed the whole thing in gasolene, then inserted sticks and bamboos in the neck and body to hold the skin apart so that it might dry more quickly. One cassowary is an 18 hour job for two people. Once cleaned we simply hung it under the roof to dry as expediently as possible.Formaldehyde, salt brine or methyl spirit were used to preserve specimens such as frogs and snakes. Expedition members were expected to work from early morning until late at night collecting and processing specimens. Sundays, supposedly a day off, were the only time available for typing up notes, making sketches, preparing labels and getting ready for the week ahead.
Along with supplies for processing specimens, the expedition needed to carry photography equipment, medical supplies, numerous guns and copious amounts of ammunition in various sizes. Calico, tobacco and other items were carried for use as trade goods. Local boys and men were employed to carry packs, do chores around camp and also as "shoot boys", helping to hunt land birds. Some of the ship's crew of Pacific Islanders also became adept at skinning and processing collected specimens.
Processed specimens were shipped back to the AMNH when the expedition's vessel arrived at a port. Mail was collected and sent, food and other supplies were stocked up and maintenance would be carried out on the ship. Funds for supplies and for paying the ships crew and shoot boys were organised as well.