Whitney South Sea Expedition (1920-1932)

Description

The Whitney South Sea Expedition was hailed as the longest ornithological voyage in history, and the botanical specimens collected were vital to understanding bird habitation patterns. In 1920, the American Museum of Natural History, with the financial aid of Harry Payne Whitney, funded this expedition to islands in the South Pacific. Dr. Leonard C. Sanford—a trustee for the American Natural History Museum—hired Rollo Beck to complete field work with Naturalists Ernst H. Quayle and Charles Curtis. Together they gathered approximately 40,000 birds, plants, and other faunal specimens from over 600 islands. Many articles written about the expedition have shown that “with the exception of certain specimens given to [the Smithsonian Institution and Bishop Museum]…all the specimens collected by the expedition were sent to the American Museum.” Beck, Quayle, Curtis, and the expedition team set sail for the Tahitian island Papeete to establish a base that would enable easier travel to the islands of Eastern Polynesia. Along the way, the naturalists mainly focused on collecting birds. However, after observing that the populations of native people and wildlife were dying off on certain islands, they began studying the flora in hopes of discovering an environmental pattern that could potentially lead them to the cause. No definite connection was found, but an incredible amount of plant specimens were collected. The success of the Whitney expedition provided the American Museum with the largest ornithological collection in the country. Whitney even donated an additional $750,000 to build a separate wing for the museum to house the collection. Beck’s overzealous collecting, however, led to the extinction of several species of birds. The botanical specimens did not create as much controversy as the ornithological specimens, but did provide future botanists with significant new information about the plants of the South Pacific.

Source

• Chapman, Mark. “The Whitney South Sea expedition.” Science 81 (January 25, 1935): 95-97
• California Academy of Sciences. “The Early Years of the Whitney Expedition.” The Pacific Voyages of Rollo Beck, n.d. http://researcharchive.calacademy.org/research/anthropology/rollobeck/rollo2.html.
• Murphy, Robert Cushman. “The Whitney South Sea Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History.” Science: 56 (December 22, 1922): 701-704.

Date Range

1920 - 1932

Topic

• Animals
• Birds
• Plants
• Botany
• Ornithology

Place

• Papeete
• Pitcairn Islands
• Tahiti
• French Polynesia

Form/Genre

Expedition name