Department of Tropical Research Archives

The 1925 Arcturus Expedition’s Women Staff

February 19, 2026November 5, 2023 by John B. Mahaffie

This entry is post 6 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

The picture below is a press photo from July 1925 showing the five women scientists and artists who staffed the Arcturus Expedition led by William Beebe, February to July 1925. My grandmother, Isabel Cooper, is at the right.

Marie P. Fish, Ruth Rose, Helen Tee Van, Lillian Segal, and Isabel Cooper, July 1925, upon their return from a six-month scientific expedition on the *S S Arcturus* to the Sargasso Sea, Panama, and the Galapagos Islands. They are holding a stuffed albatross

More about the five women
A lot more about Isabel Cooper may be found found here. More about each of Isabel’s Arcturus colleagues is in this post from a few years ago. Also, each of the five has an Wikipedia entry. Isabel’s is here.

The S S Arcturus and the expedition

The wooden steam yacht S S Arcturus, fitted out for oceanographic study, left New York on February 10, 1925 and sailed into the Atlantic Ocean. It found its way to the mid-ocean Sargasso Sea where explorer and naturalist William Beebe (1877-1962) and his staff sampled water and sea creatures at various depths.

Gear on the ship could sample as deep as three miles. Doing so meant spooling out a half-inch cable from where it was wound in drums for three hours. It took three more hours to bring up the sample. The women artists and ichthyologists aboard set to analyzing and illustrating the samples immediately. Here is a post on Isabel Cooper’s work as a ship-board scientific illustrator on the Arcturus Expedition.

The ship discovered some of the first (very) deep sea fish species. One of the reasons to have artists along was that color photography had not yet been perfected, and fish could change in color, shape, and condition once brought out of the water, an issue particularly for fish evolved to live at extreme deep-sea atmospheric pressures. So the artists painted and drew them immediately on the ship.

The expedition continued to Panama, and passed through the Panama Canal, sailing into the Pacific Ocean to the Galapagos Islands for further exploration. It returned to New York City at the end of July 1925.

Why all the women?

William Beebe favored hiring women for his tropical research stations and ship expeditions. My grandmother, Isabel Cooper, worked for him in the late 1910s through much of the 1920s.

Hiring women and recognizing them for their professional expertise was not typical then. I’ve often wondered why Beebe not only hired women, but seemed to prefer to do so. It’s hard to avoid wondering whether Beebe also had a romantic interest in some of the women.

I’ve posted before on Beebe and the women he employed in this post: “I let too many girl pictures get by me”. But I think there is more to explore.

Prior to the Arcturus Expedition, William Beebe gave an above-board reason to employ women staff. He noted that he “preferred working with women and that ‘If it were feasible I would have my entire scientific party made up of them…Fine minds are as necessary in modern research exploration as fine courage. It is easier to find fine women than fine men.’” ¹⁾From: Cohen, Gene (November 21, 1924). “Women plan to chart ‘port of missing ships’ and to strip Sargasso Sea of its secrets”. Americus Times-Recorder. (Americus, Ga.) . He wrote another time that it was what was “above the ears” that mattered; knowledge, intelligence, and judgment.

It’s likely he first saw the professional competence of women through his collaborations with his first wife, Mary Blair Rice. They collaborated closely in studying pheasants and publishing treatises on birds.

For Beebe, the women collaborators at his first research outpost in Kalacoon, British Guiana (now Guyana) strengthened his perspective on women as colleagues. He recruited more women colleagues as he grew his work exploring nature with research stations in South America, and ship expeditions.

By the time he was planning the Arcturus Expedition, he had found a number of leading-edge experts in fish and other wildlife, and in the artistic illustration of animals. Most of them were women.

Were there affairs among the staff?

That Beebe later had an affair with an expedition colleague (while he was married) suggests that affairs among these colleagues happened. But like my father, Isabel Cooper’s son, before me, I am left without a conclusion about whether Beebe and my grandmother ever had one.

The men and women of Beebe’s staff were young, educated, progressive, modern people. There could have been and almost certainly were multiple shipboard affairs and romances on Beebe’s expeditions. And they didn’t have to just involve Beebe.

What matters most is that throughout Beebe’s years of research and exploration, women contributed centrally to his work and were vital to the expeditions’ success. Nothing that happened socially on his expeditions should in any way reduce what happened scientifically and professionally. In other words, if there were affairs, good for them.

References[+]

References
↑1	From: Cohen, Gene (November 21, 1924). “Women plan to chart ‘port of missing ships’ and to strip Sargasso Sea of its secrets”. Americus Times-Recorder. (Americus, Ga.)

“Dad, can I get a monkey?”

February 19, 2026September 12, 2015 by John B. Mahaffie

This entry is post 15 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

“Dad, can I get a monkey?”
“Why not?”
“Monkeys are awesome!”
“It could be my service animal”

Versions of this echo in homes everywhere. And Dad or Mom keeps saying no.

But in our house, there was a hitch. On our living room wall are watercolor portraits of two monkeys done by Isabel Cooper, my grandmother, both from her visits as a scientific artist to British Guiana. One is a marmoset, named Sadie Volvisch, painted in 1921. The other is a spider Monkey, named Mishkin, painted in 1922. Russia, or maybe immigrant New York City, was the go to place for pet monkey names for the New York Zoological Society’s Department of Tropical Research staff.

Mishkin, by Isabel Cooper

Sadie Volvisch, by Isabel Cooper

My son didn’t just ask for a monkey once, it became a refrain. At some point he started, when he said it, to glance over at the pictures. And in a moment of failed parenting, I mentioned, “your great grandmother had monkeys, those are some of them.”

Monkeys entertained Isabel and her colleagues in the jungle camps of the New York Zoological Society’s Department of Tropical Research, and on the ships they sailed on. One, Sinbad (sometimes spelled Sindbad), was especially a star. He was a black spider monkey, acquired in Panama by the 1923 Harrison Williams Expedition to the Galapagos. William Beebe bought Sinbad in the streets of Panama, where he had found the monkey being mistreated by locals. Sinbad proved to be affectionate, smart, inquisitive, and fun-loving. He was the first monkey that she ever knew that laughed, wrote the expedition historian Ruth Rose.ⁱ

William Beebe also bought Chiriqui, a cebus or capuchin monkey–the type used by organ grinders, when the 1925 Arcturus expedition visited Panama on its exploration of the Galapagos.

And it turns out that Isabel kept a monkey, a red spider monkey, possibly Mishkin, pictured above, in her New York City apartment. This was likely when she lived at 136 West 65th Street, now the site of Lincoln Center.

But her spider monkey proved a bad fit as a house pet. Before long, Isabel’s apartment house neighbors complained about the “fog horn” they were hearing. It was the monkey, and it was late at night. She had to evict him to go live at the Bronx Zoo. I like imagining Isabel stepping out on Columbus Avenue and hailing a cab, the monkey at her shoulder.

I’ve tried to be clear on this last point my son, but I don’t think he’s convinced a monkey can’t be a good pet. His great grandmother had monkeys, and besides, monkeys are awesome!

__________________

ⁱ Ruth Rose, quoting a book by William Beebe, Bulletin of the New York Zoological Society, Vol. 27, No. 1, January 1924.

It pays to go to parties

February 19, 2026September 12, 2015 by John B. Mahaffie

This entry is post 14 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

In the mid-late-1910s, Isabel Cooper was living in Greenwich Village and working at artistic odd jobs, looking for something different.ⁱ [For that part of her story, see: “Resisting the homely snout of commercialism“]

Chance led her to find her way to entirely new experiences. And her story carries a lesson: you don’t know whom you’ll meet who might deliver you opportunity, adventure, or love. People Isabel met socially and through her work led her to all of those. It pays, it seems, to go to parties.

Isabel Cooper (r) with Ruth Rose in British Guiana about 1922

Isabel Cooper (r) with Ruth Rose in British Guiana, about 1922

Isabel was an artist, raised well-off and well-educated by Victorian aunts on the Upper West Side of New York City. At 21, she set off to make her own way, and worked in different design and art jobs in the city. But by 25 she was living for months at a time in jungle camps, painting reptiles for the naturalist William Beebe’s scientific expeditions.

How did this happen? Isabel recalled “an odd assortment of men and women to be instruments of fate” in her memior she wrote when she was in her 80s. William Beebe is part of that chain of seven who led her to meet her future husband, Charles Mahaffie on Christmas Eve, 1924.

The memoir gives thumbnails about of these drivers of fate, but she does not name them. Here is the sequence. Some we can identify, and their names are here:

“A quaint little painter…who couldn’t paint” — likely Alon Bement, who taught at Columbia and led summer art institutes at Old Lyme, Connecticut. He also taught Georgia O’Keeffe.
“A flighty young woman with one blue and one brown eye,” whom she met in the summer art class.
“A visionary–a philosopher way ahead of her time, incomprehensible, whom I came to appreciate and understand as the years went on.”
A man “notable for one thing,” he introduced her to:
“A debonair character who seemed to have no special occupation or means of support
“A famous biologist, part scientist and park faker…” “Faker” is a strong word, but William Beebe was more adventurer than credentialed scientist.
Dorothy B. Putnam, “a festive lady who loved people, giving parties, and matchmaking.” Dorothy and her husband George P. Putnam introduced Isabel to Charles Mahaffie, who became her husband.

But first, Isabel had nine years of adventures in the tropics, living a life nearly unique for her times, let alone for young, single woman. Isabel met Beebe just as he was mounting the first his Department of Tropical Research scientific expeditions. Experienced with nature exploration, he knew the value of a gifted artist to his work.

Isabel knew of Beebe’s incredible knowledge of nature and was fascinated with his globe-spanning exploration. And “he was an enthusiast, and he cared nothing about money,”ⁱⁱSo he could help her move her are clear of excess commercialism.

Isabel had told an American Magazine interviewer, “You must be enthusiastic,” she says; “it’s the enthusiasts who do things.”ⁱⁱⁱ She saw that in Beebe, and surely he saw it in her.

Having met him, “one word led to another,” and Beebe hired Isabel to bring her skills along on his 1917 expedition to British Guiana. She ultimately traveled as scientific artist with Beebe on nine expeditions, including seven to British Guiana and two to the Galapagos. The adventures she had colored her interests and her art from then forward.

____________________

ⁱ John Monk Saunders, “Jungle Creatures ‘Sit’ for Her in Their Own Back Yards,” American Magazine, February 1926, Vol. 101, p. 26.

ⁱⁱ John Monk Saunders, “Jungle Creatures ‘Sit’ for Her in Their Own Back Yards,” American Magazine, February 1926, Vol. 101, p. 26.

ⁱⁱⁱ John Monk Saunders, “Jungle Creatures ‘Sit’ for Her in Their Own Back Yards,” American Magazine, February 1926, Vol. 101, p. 26.

Isabel Cooper’s Arcturus Expedition colleagues

February 19, 2026July 29, 2015 by John B. Mahaffie

This entry is post 7 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

Naturalist William Beebe assembled a rich mix of talents and personalities for the Arcturus Expedition. His staff showed a focus on the practicalities of a scientific expedition, with skills and scientific knowledge in place to explore and gather for a range of interests from microscopic plankton to deep ocean animals to sea birds. But in the mix too were a few distinctly interesting people who may have been along in part because he knew them as gregarious, fun, and adventurous.

The expedition staff numbered about eighteen. There were scientists, artists, a cinematographer, a historian, and several men brought along because they could build, fix and catch things. Some of the scientists were guest professors from universities, and others were from the New York Zoological Society staff.

Two staff were avid pirate enthusiasts. More on them [here]. Another became the president of the University of Miami. Two others later helped make make King Kong.

Here is the rundown, in places with an insight on their colleagues from William Beebe, expedition artist Isabel Cooper, or 12-year-old David Putnam.

John and Helen Tee Van

Beebe’s close assistant was John Tee Van of the New York Zoological Society. John had started working at the New York Zoological Society at age 14. He later became its general director.

Helen Tee Van, married to John, was one of the scientific artists. She was the daughter of Walter Damrosch, conductor of the New York Symphony. She and John were long friends of Isabel Cooper’s after her scientific work ended. Isabel wrote in 1928, that Helen was one of her dearest friends.ⁱ The Tee Vans had also been part of the earlier Department of Tropical Research expeditions with Cooper.

William Merriam

William Merriam is variously described on Beebe’s expeditions as “Chief Hunter” and “Field Technician.” In Galapagos: World’s End, about the earlier expedition to the Galapagos, Beebe calls him “Our hunter in chief…the most enthusiastic and ingenious worker who ever outwitted fish, flesh or fowl…ⁱⁱ”

David Putnam, the teenager who traveled on part of the journey, wrote that “In the forward part of the ship there are two rooms fitted out as shops, one belonging to Bill Merriam, the general handy man, who always mends the nets, shapes a new dredge, puts another seat in one of the rowboats, makes a lobster pot, or fixes the motor boats.ⁱⁱⁱ”

Dwight Franklin

Dwight Franklin, a trained artist, is noted as “Assistant in Fish Preparation,” modeling plaster casts of some of the specimens, and painting them in their natural colors. Dwight Franklin was a sculptor and model maker. David Putnam summed up Franklin’s Arcturus work: “Dwight makes wax moulds and plaster casts of fishes and preserves them, as well as making drawings and paintings.^vi” [Image: Dwight Franklin^v]

Elizabeth Trotter

Elizabeth Trotter, “Assistant in Fish Problems,” was also an expedition artist. She was from a wealthy Philadelphia family and Beebe acknowledged William Trotter, her father, as an expedition benefactor. Isabel wrote Charles about Elizabeth from Newport News before she got on the ship, “I have been very bright and have arranged to room with the nicest girl in the outfit, the Philadelphia ‘horse-woman,’ as the papers say, who has a nice look-neat, intelligent, and all that sort of thing.^iv”

Don Dickerman

Don Dickerman was an artist, entrepreneur and a noted personality in the Greenwich Village community of the late 1910s and 1920s. Dickerman continued a long career after the journey as an entrepreneur, with pirate themed clubs in multiple U.S. cities.

Ruth Rose

Ruth Rose was a former stage actress. She served multiple roles for William Beebe, but chiefly was an recorder, historian and wrote about the journey for Beebe, authoring several chapters in his books. [Image: Ruth Rose with Otis Skinner in Pietro, Criterion Theater, 1920]

Ernest Schoedsack

Ernest Schoedsack upgraded the Department of Tropical Research’s film capability to a full documentarian’s level, serving as cinematographer. The year after the journey, Ruth Rose and Schoedsack married, and she joined him in filmmaking, working as a screenwriter. He was an established documentarian, but went on to make King Kong (1933), Mighty Joe Young (1949), and other films. [Image: Ernest Schoedsack^vii]

Jay F. W. Pearson

Jay F. W. Pearson was a 23-year-old ichthyologist who later was the second president of the University of Miami (1952-62). His expedition title was “Assistant in Microplankton”.

William K. Gregory

Dr. William K. Gregory was noted as “Associate in Vertebrates”. He was with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and also taught at Columbia.

Gregory Bateson

Gregory Bateson was British, a 20-year-old, freshly degreed in biology from Cambridge, who later was noted for his work in Anthropology, and studied by most undergraduate anthropology majors. [Image: Gregory Bateson^viii]

Serge Chetyrkin

Serge Chetyrkin was an immigrant from Russia, who joined as the taxidermist and “preparateur”. Isabel wrote: “The old Russian…Eats no meat, eggs, milk or butter. Used to act like that last year in South America, but we thought it was just his little way of avoiding monkey stew.” The real reason, she noted, was that the expedition’s perishables were in an increasingly unreliable chiller.

Lillian Segal

Dr. Lillian Segal was a biological chemist. She was on the trip “for the specific purpose of studying the methods by which the light [of deep sea fish] was produced…”^x. Her expedition job title was “Assistant in Special Problems.” [Image: Dr. Lillian Segal (L) with Mrs. C. J. Fish, inspect the fruits of a dredging^ix]

Marie Poland Fish

On the staff list for the Arcturus expedition, Marie Poland Fish is listed as “Assistant in Larval Fish,” though her husband C. J. Fish was on the ship, she was a marine scientist in her own right.

C. J. Fish

Dr. Fish was “Associate in Diatoms and Crustacea,” on loan from the United States Bureau of Fisheries.

D. W. Cady

Cady was the expedition’s doctor, but participated also in the exploring and collecting. Isabel Cooper wrote that he let her help with some of the ministering to cuts and scrapes the staff got during their work.

Dorothy Putnam

Dorothy B. Putnam, the wife of Beebe’s publicist George Palmer Putnam, and her 12-year-old son David, joined the expedition in Panama for its exploration of the Galapagos Islands, Cocos, and the Humboldt Current in the Pacific. They were noted as among a small number of “Guests of Honor” who joined for part of the journey. [Image: Dorothy Putnam]

David B. Putnam

David Putnam, was the son of Dorothy and George Palmer Putnam. His publisher father sent him on the journey in part so he could publish a children’s account by David, which was published soon after the trip as David Goes Voyaging. [Image: David B. Putnam from David Goes Voyaging]

ⁱ Letter IC to CDM, February 18, 1928.

ⁱⁱ William Beebe, Galapagos: World’s End, 1924.

ⁱⁱⁱ David Binney Putnam, David Goes Voyaging, New York, G. P. Putman and Sons, 1925, p. 7.

^iv Letter, IC to CDM, February 13, 1925.

^v Image from askart.com

^vi David Binney Putnam, David Goes Voyaging, New York, G. P. Putman and Sons, 1925, p. 7.

^vii Image: Findagrave.com

^{viii Image: http://www.genmedhist.info/reports/bateson_album/3200.jpg/view}

^ix Wild Things, Blog of the World Conservation Society, www.wcsarchivesblog.org

^x The Literary Digest, Vol. 86, 1925

“Well, I’ve lived near eighty years and I’ve read about it, but I never seen a woman in pants before”

February 19, 2026July 26, 2015 by John B. Mahaffie

This entry is post 4 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

In the 1910s and 1920s, the Naturalist William Beebe worked with men and women and to a great extent, treated them equally. The women were adventurous, bold, and progressive in their outlook on their gender during a time when the liberation of women was just emerging. These were professional women, recruited to Beebe’s expeditions for their professional skills.

Beebe employed a number of women as specialists for the Department of Tropical Research. At least one reporter asked Beebe about this.

“What does [William Beebe] think of women in exploration?

“‘If it were feasible I would have my entire scientific party made up of them, just as readily as not,’ he smiles in reply. ‘Fine minds are as necessary in modern research exploration as find courage. It is easier to find fine women than fine men.'”ⁱⁱ

But of course Beebe favored women for more than just their scientific work. He married several, and between and during his marriages had affairs with several more. He loved to dance and hold and attend parties and was a distinctly sociable man.

In his account of the Harrison Williams Expedition, Beebe wrote: “From behind a crag of grey-blue tufa, came one of the girls, swimming lazily, surrounded by all the marvelous fish, with herons and gulls watching her from the nearby lava, and frigates dipping low in flight t see what new fellow islander this was. It was a surprise to realized that she was a mere human, and not what the pool demanded–a mermaid.ⁱⁱⁱ”

Here we can only speculate which one of the girls he meant. Perhaps it could have been any of them.

They dressed the part, favoring, trousers for the practicality, and as the men did, when suitable, bathing suits for work in hot climates and water.

Trousers were unusual on women then. A old British resident of San Cristobal Island (then called Chatham Island) visited the staff on the Noma in 1923. On disembarking, he said, “Well, I’ve lived near eighty years and I’ve read about it, but I never seen a woman in pants before.ⁱ”

ⁱ William Beebe, Galapagos: World’s End, New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1923, p. 189.

ⁱⁱ Gene Cohn, “Women Plan to Chart Port of ‘Missing Ships’ And Rob Sargasso Sea of Secret,”Winston Salem Journal, November 16, 1924.

ⁱⁱⁱ William Beebe, Galapagos: World’s End, New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1923, p. 326.