Galapagos

The 1925 Arcturus Expedition’s Women Staff

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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 in 1925

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[+]

Shipboard work for a scientific artist

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This entry is post 10 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

Isabel Cooper wrote a long article, “Fish Portraits,” on her work illustrating fish, hoping to get it published in Asia Magazine. It was not published. This post offers excerpts of that article, focusing on the work and working conditions, and leaving aside her colorful observations on the different kinds of fish she worked with. The full article manuscript is here: Fish Portraits by Isabel Cooper 1925 in a PDF.

What follow are Isabel’s words.

___________________

The ship as a workplace

Our ship was exceedingly sturdy and staunch, and broad-beamed, and well adapted to the requirements of an ocean laboratory.

On the upper deck of the laboratory-proper, neatly wedged between a chart table and the ship’s laboratory, was my ‘studio’. This may sound a bit cramped and crowded; studios are supposed to be reasonably spacious, with plenty of swinging-room for brushes, at least. But I assure you that the more tightly a floating studio is wedged, the [more] beneficial for the work and nerves of the artist! These boundaries fore and aft, together with the wall on the port side, made three directions in which I could not roll.

Isabel Cooper at work on ship_Arcturus Adventure

Image from William Beebe, The Arcturus Adventure. New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1926

Possibly the most remarkable feature of my sea-going studio was the fact that it never remained quietly in one plane of space for longer than an instant….

By which mild and rather negative statement I really mean the gruesome fact that, in open ocean, the studio and its entire contents oscillated violently and almost continually through one, two, or three dimensions. This activity became really astounding at times. When the ship was merely slanting about, objects on my desk would develop the most interesting and intricate sorts of rhythm all their own. So you can see the necessity of keeping things as compact as possible. …

My immediate surroundings on the “Arcturus” were not bad at all, – if unusual. … To the starboard of my work-table was an open space which collected chairs and people, towards evening, and which was nightly rent asunder by the stress of arguments and discussions, – always the breath of life to me. And out of my wide, salt-splashed port there was continually to be seen the sea, – stormy Atlantic, or sparkling Caribbean, or slow, beautiful Pacific, with the comforting level of the horizon to furnish a refuge for my thoughts, at least, on tumultuous, busy days.

I had a great deal of trouble with my paints and inks and other rolling stock on board the ‘Arcturus‘. All these things would tend, in rough weather, to merge gradually into an indistinguishable mass, right before my eyes, – no matter how many new and fantastic tethering devices and halters and barricades I invented.

Imagine a desk which slants in almost any direction, or else revolves with a strange, shuddering corkscrew motion. And a working light which shines indiscriminately from east or west or north or south. And models who are mostly alive and swimming. And you will have a faint picture of my “Arcturus” studio. I am thinking especially of a wild morning in Mid-Atlantic, when I had definitely made up my mind that the elements were not to hinder me from finishing a special portrait. My desk had been long since hooked firmly to the deck. And I had worked out a complicated system of paddocks for microscopes, ink bottles, brushes, etc. My model was a very small and unprepossessing deep-sea fish, whose tiny aquarium was wired to the microscope slide. As far as I can remember my paints were safely sliding about in [a?] drawer. I was sticking to my chair in much the way that a rider sticks to a frisky horse, – a matter of knee pressure. But we struck a wave whose trough just fitted the wide sides of our ship. Which means that you roll as far as possible without actually turning over completely in the water. Whereupon I was projected across the room, several of my tools jumped the traces, a whole section of heavy scientific literature moved forward in a mass, and caught me amidship. A funny moment. I suppose the microscope must have looked like the Campanile in an earthquake, with a strange pale little fish spinning off through space like a lost soul.

I was obliged to study new phases and phenomena of gravitation which had never before troubled me. And not the least of these concerned the control of my subjects. In order to achieve sketches to suit the scientists’ purposes the fish had to pose alive. And they happen to be the most difficult models in the world. You cannot hold them still with any degree of comfort or success. They are nowhere near as easy to manage as my jungle models, the snakes and lizards and frogs of Demerara. Once you had a good firm grip on a snake’s neck the problem was solved. And some of the lizards and frogs would even sit still of their own accord and and look you angrily in the eye for minutes at a time.

Dealing with fish as subjects

There are just three ways to deal with fish. You can let them swim around in a glass tank, and regard them through the glass sides. Or you can have them flopping about in a pan of water. Or you can hold them up by the tail. If they swam, I considered myself lucky if they moved slowly and peaceably, allowing me a glimpse now and then of the pose which I wanted. But they were much more likely to whirl about in a panic, stirring up a terrific surf in the aquarium, and gulping great gulps of fear and dismay. Or they jumped right out of the water, and landed, slime and all, in the middle of my drawing or my face.

Arcturus Adventure IC plate vi yellow tailed surgeon fish
Yellow-tailed surgeon fish by Isabel Cooper. From The Arcturus Adventure

The most becoming pose a fish can take is in profile, – so that you may catch the full, charming contours of his deficient brain-case, the backward sloping forehead, and the definitely receding chin. But this profile view is almost impossible to get. They prefer to gaze at you head on, concentrating all the sadness and distrust of their bulging, jeweled eyes upon you through the glass, and biting feebly at nothingness, with their strange skeleton mouths.

A fish model who is reclining upon his side in a pan of water is far from satisfactory. He either flops appallingly, or else dies, which is just what must be carefully avoided. When you find yourself with a really adaptable and congenial fish you may be sure it is dead! I arrived long ago at the point where I was willing to hold a fish up by the tail, through they are damp, slippery handfuls at best. But it is not often that I have been able to keep a firm hold upon a living fish. They have the most slithering of contours, as well as a violent power in their flat tapering muscles, against which the strength of the most capable human hand would not function.

The element of speed enters into almost all my work from living creatures. There is always some very good reason why the sketches must be completed as soon as possible. This enforced absorption in my work is an excellent thing, particularly at sea, where it serves to keep my mind off some rather pessimistic reflections upon the activity of the ocean itself, and the very comparative pleasure of working on ships.

The pleasure of the scientific artistic work

Parti-colored bumpheads by Isabel Cooper. From The Arcturus Adventure
Parti-colored bumpheads by Isabel Cooper. From The Arcturus Adventure

I wonder whether I will be understood when I remark that the satisfaction of turning out accurate drawings of these diverse and beautiful creatures of the sea was only enhanced by the rather exceptional difficulties involved. This is quite true. There was an extraordinary pleasure in bringing the precision of fine pen and brush work to the many problems presented by silver scales, and transparent fish finds, and weird iridescence of sculptured fish faces. And all this amid wind and rain and tossing salt spray, in a tiny studio that swung and eddied through space, entirely without benefit of gyroscope!

Art for work, art for play

Isabel was ever the artist, so even when she was not doing her work, she drew and painted. She wrote about this to Charles:

“Island of Indefatigable, alias ‘Santa Cruz’.

My procedure in this harbor is to go ashore early and mess around with feeble landscape sketching ’till it gets too hot even for my sun-helmet, then return to the ship and work all day, except when I play hooky and read or talk or just keep cool in a bathing suit.”i

i Letter, IC to CDM, from Indefatigable, April 10, 1925.

“The diving helmet, a most enormous lark”

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This entry is post 8 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper
Beebe in diving helmet_Arcturus Adventure
Image: The Arcturus Expedition

William Beebe was keen on close observation of nature, an approach he began with the study of birds, and intensified in the jungles of British Guiana, where he’d map out a small patch of jungle so as to examine and catalog everything he found in it. He had the habit of laying on his stomach on the ground or on a rock to see the tiny details of plant, animal, and insect life most people wouldn’t notice or care to understand. Scuba hadn’t been invented, and other than glass-bottomed boats, and crude scopes for peering just below the surface, the diving helmet was the best way to bring that kind of observation under the water.

He commissioned several helmets for the 1925 Arcturus Expedition. Beebe wrote at length about his dives. But here we focus on the perspective of expedition artist Isabel Cooper, for her unique artist’s perspective, so below is mainly her reporting.

Isabel Cooper, expedition scientific artist, described for Charles Mahaffie the singular experience of going down in the diving helmet:

“I should like to hear what you would have to say about my latest amusement, I have been down in the diving helmet, a most enormous lark to my way of thinking, though I was pretty scared the first time. It is a nasty feeling, having the heavy contraption put over your head and weighted all around with about 60 lb. of lead. Then you begin to sink, while a trusty friend on the bank above pumps air and the water level rises slowly on the glass facade of the thing. You get an unpleasant thickish feeling in your ears, as if you were going through a bad tunnel. Also, the air keeps bubbling out around your shoulders. You can’t have the thing sealed on, because the most important detail is ducking quickly out when you see a shark and swimming to the surface. Sounds bright, doesn’t it. There doesn’t seem to be much of anything to prevent the sharks from coming around, except that they haven’t yet, and a good safe precedent is being built up.

“You feel as foolish as anything under water. After you’ve been down a bit your feet become very light, and you can’t keep them down. They simply waft about in an aimless way, as do the arms of Greek dancers. Also, everything gets distorted. Rock ten feet away looks as if you could touch it. You make a lunge toward it and find yourself flapping around like a jellyfish with an extremely swelled head.

“I went down first in a beautiful deep rock pool. Very outlandish. It gave me the creeps. Dorothy [Putnam] pumped the air for me. Everything looked spooky. Green and marvelously clear, with droves of fish sliding past. The silence is the most uncanny part. Also [the] fact that you can’t realize wetness. Funny-when your face is dry and you are out of touch with air you don’t seem to be able to feel water. Perhaps this is because the warm tropical water is just body temperature. But it seems merely like some strange dull flowing element, with broken light rays all through it, and a sort of molten silver mirror for its upper surface.

“Second time I went down they were trying to get moving pictures and kept poking me to signal about my next footstep etc. Also they got an idea that if they eased up on the pump there would be fewer distorting bubbles, whereupon the water in the helmet rose over my nose. Rather disturbing for a bit. Made me glad I had the end of the lifeline handy.

“…Dorothy went down. Don’t think she liked the idea at all, but of course she was a sport, as usual, and did it anyway. The pumping is a real job. You begin to realize just what concentration is. If you get absent-minded for a few seconds, the diver chokes.i

IC diving helmet Brooklyn Daily Eagle 101825
Fanciful view of Isabel in a diving suit, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 18, 1925

And in a newspaper profile, Isabel wrote:

“I wonder what a fish would think of us, if he could think, and could be fitted out with an invention that would keep his own beloved element flowing comfortably through his gills, and could manage somehow to flop about among our trees and meadows and hills. I wonder whether he would consider our natural backgrounds artistic, if slightly antique, and our expressions unnecessarily cheerful, and our motions unaccountably jerky and sudden, considering how much less pressure we have to contend with in the space about us. He would probably be most interested in the racket we make. A fish is one of the few creatures in the world who do not feel obliged to express themselves with any kind of noise.ii”

William Beebe too reflected, at length, on the fresh, humbling perspective he got using the helmet several times: “If I were asked to prescribe for the worst case of sophisticated world weariness imaginable, I would without hesitation write ‘One diving helmet.'”iii

i Letter, IC to CDM, April 18, 1925.

ii Isabel Cooper, “Artist at Large,” Atlantic Monthly, July 1926, p. 93.

iii “Love, or Life of Adventure?,” Springfield Sunday Union and Republican,” February 21, 1926.

Isabel Cooper’s Arcturus Expedition colleagues

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

BeebeNaturalist 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 Tee VanJohn 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 FranklinDwight 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 Franklinv]

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”

dickermanrevDon 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.

 

Otis_Skinner_&_Ruth_Rose_in_PietroRuth 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 SchoedsackErnest 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 Schoedsackvii]

 

 

Jay Pearson 1925Jay 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 BatesonGregory 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 Batesonviii]

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 dredgingix]

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.

DBPutnam St Lucie Co Hist SocDorothy 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

 

“I let too many girl pictures get by me”

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This entry is post 5 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

Rising to a crescendo with the Arcturus Expedition in 1925, press stories spilled out about the women naturalist William Beebe had with him on his Department of Tropical Research expeditions. George Palmer Putnam, who headed the Putnam publishing company, led in driving publicity for Beebe, and he was good at it. He was married to a strong, independent woman himself, and later promoted, and then also married Amelia Earhart. Both men recognized the value and potential of women.

Beebe women staff 072124 B Daily Eagle
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 21, 1924

The wrong kind of publicity?

In early 1925, the publicity for Beebe may have gone too far, making his work look less than scientific. One researcher, Gary Kroll, interpreted exchanges between Beebe and Putnam as showing Beebe was upset, or at least that George Putnam thought so:

“The extent to which Beebe made [the Arcturus sensationalism] an issue is unclear. Beyond doubt, however, was Putnam’s almost paranoid perception of Beebe’s concern. As the Arcturus neared home, Putnam sent a telling letter to Beebe that describes to what lengths the two might have gone to preserve the professional representation of the expedition.”

‘You are tremendously nice in your attitude towards me in this whole matter and I appreciate it. I know perfectly well that often I blunder and do things which don’t altogether please you. But in the long run I think you are in reasonably good hands. In the first place, I grant that I let too many girl pictures get by me in that first batch and I know you didn’t like it. Anyway, henceforward the feminine element has been soft-pedaled satisfactorily. Perhaps we will smuggle say Dorothy and David and one girl ashore in the tug. If that does not prove practicable I think a stern order should go out from you, the commander, that the women are to be as little in evidence as possible at the landing. Certainly that none of them is to talk beyond the absolute necessities. The girls should say to the reporters ‘Dr. Beebe will give out all the information.’ And then poor Dr. Beebe, whether he wants to or not, will have to calmly take half an hour and sit down with the reporters and answer every damn question they want to ask. You may as well face the realization of that necessity. And then the young ladies can all disburse in their several directions and we will all be there to cooperate in soft pedaling them as much as can be. Not that there is anything reprehensible in it, but that from your standpoint is wisdom.’i”

Gary Kroll took this letter at face value, but it looks more like Putnam was exaggerating, or having a bit of fun. Most signs in Beebe’s actions and further publicity and publishing show that he not only held high the accomplishments of his women’s staff, he celebrated them, with exhibitions of Cooper’s art, and chapters in his books by Ruth Rose. They did not sneak the women (and the boy, David Putnam) ashore.

i Gary Kroll, Exploration in the Mare Incognita: Natural History and Conservation in Early-Twentieth Century America, PhD. dissertation, University of Oklahoma, Norman Oklahoma, 2000, p. 212.

A mere “slip of a girl” becomes an explorer

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This entry is post 2 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper

In the 1910s it was unusual for a woman to be a recognized professional beyond established women’s work like school teaching, midwifery, or Vaudeville performing. But Isabel Cooper was unusual.

In 1917, at just 25 years old, this “mere slip of a girl,” as she jokingly described herself, became a scientific illustrator for the expeditions of naturalist William Beebe to the South American jungle. She had already established herself as a working professional artist, earning an independent living in New York City. This was rare for a woman.

Isabel traveled on eight of Beebe’s research expeditions between 1917 and 1925, including two journeys by ship which included the Galapagos Islands, and six seasons in the jungle in British Guiana (now Guyana) in South America.

She not only took up this work, she largely invented the techniques involved, since there was no training for it.

ICM Galapagos Snake head

Snake detail by Isabel Cooper from Galapagos: World’s End

Isabel also spent time doing medical illustrations for a dermatologist and syphilologist, Dr. John A. Fordyce, at City Hospital in New York City. There Isabel worked to capture skin conditions with the details of color, shape and texture her employer required.

With the New York Zoological Society, she perfected the art of detailed, color animal illustration from live specimens before color photography was available. Isabel’s sharp, clear, artistically-appealing, but scientifically-valuable work got attention right away from the scientists and philanthropists involved with New York City science and exploration, and her work went on exhibit at the Bronx Zoo.

As Beebe’s fame and publicity grew, attention came to the women he employed. Their stories caught notice beyond the science/exploration community. Dozens of newspapers profiled Isabel, the “Bryn Mawr girl” who was living this exotic life.

The story for popular consumption

The newspapers thought Isabel and the other women recruited by William Beebe for his expeditions were interesting because they were women, sailing to the tropics, living shipboard or in jungle camps to do scientific work.

Women plan to chart port of missing ships

Story in the lead-up to the Arcturus puts the whole adventure on the women. Winston-Salem Journal, November 16, 1924

The reporters looked for, and used, story angles based on that. One Brooklyn Daily Eagle story reveled in it as Beebe prepared his 1925 Arcturus Expedition to the Sargasso Sea and Galapagos:

“Not to be all work and no play”

“The expedition is not to be all work and no play. The Arcturus on its upper deck has a fine new dance floor and part of the ship’s equipment is a powerful radio receiving set. In the party are three women, all of whom, in addition to their scientific qualifications, can dance. After the day’s work of dredging and diving and looking through the microscope is over the party will tune in on the best jazz music program in New York and there will be dancing under a topical moon in the warm tropical climate.”i

For how could these lovely ladies manage without dancing?

Love or life of adventure

Springfield Sunday Union and Republican, February 21, 1926

Another reporter took up the “girl artist” angle. The story asked: “Where is a young woman most likely to find true happiness? On board a tramp steamer sailing the seven seas? Wandering along some far-flung shore where leaping waves whisper mystery and adventure? In unexplored jungles teeming with curious wild life? Or–in love and marriage–in a bungalow in one’s own homeland?

“These are questions that Miss Isabel Cooper has been trying to answer ever since her return to New York from the latest of her adventurous journeys to little known parts of the earth.

“Hidden away in every girl’s heart at twenty,” the article asserted, writing about a young “girl” who was now 33 years age, “are two dreams. One is a vision of far-off places where romance is supposed to lurk in waiting jut around every corner, where the world is always flooded with sunlight and where men are either great lovers or daring rascals. The other image is that of a model home, an exact replica of the blue and white kitchen in the window of the electrical store–a home where a perfect oven never burns the biscuits and where the embroidered guest towels are never unfolded, much less mussed.”

In fact, her letters tell the truth, she had already decided to end the journeying for the thrilling prospect of being with Charles Mahaffie, whom she had met just before committing to the Arcturus Expedition.

The profile ended with, “Choosing between love and a home and adventure is not an easy matter. Miss Cooper is still undecided whether she will be on the ‘Arcturus’ when it sails from New York again. If she is, it is whispered she will leave behind her a very disappointed young man.ii” This was referring to Charles, who was then 40 years old.

i “Scientists Will Spend Month on Mysterious Sargasso Sea,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 15, 1925.

ii “Love, or Life of Adventure?,” Springfield Sunday Union and Republican,” February 21, 1926.

Isabel Cooper at work in the Galapagos

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This entry is post 1 of 21 in the ongoing series Isabel Cooper
Scanned from WCS Photo Collection (DTR)
Scanned from WCS Photo Collection (DTR)

Here is Isabel Cooper, my grandmother, at work on one of the Galapagos Islands, or possibly on Cocos Island, which is in the Pacific five hundred miles northeast of the Galapagos. Madeleine Thompson of the World Conservation Society shared this picture after I visited her at the Bronx Zoo last week.

Isabel is drawing or painting a frigatebird. This is from when she worked for the naturalist William Beebe on his 1925 Arcturus Expedition as a scientific artist. Most of her scientific art was done shipboard, drawing and painting hundreds of animals, mainly fish, pulled out of nets or caught by the expedition’s staff.

The Arcturus sailed on February 10, 1925, and Isabel boarded the ship in Newport News, a few days later. The expedition’s work included investigating the Sargasso Sea in the central Atlantic, and the Galapagos Islands and Cocos Island and the seas around them, including the Humboldt Current, in the Pacific. Isabel returned home to New York from Panama on July 1, 1925 after almost five months at sea. It was her second ship-based scientific expedition, and her seventh overall. The others took her to the jungle of British Guiana.

In her letters and other writing, it’s clear she liked sitting on a rock or stump, and drawing or painting her subjects. She wrote to Charles from off Indefatigable Island (Santa Cruz), “My procedure in this harbor is to go ashore early and mess around with feeble landscape sketching ‘till it gets too hot even for my sun-helmet, then return to the ship and work all day, except when I play hooky and read or talk or just keep cool in a bathing suit.” [Letter, Isabel Cooper to Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr., from Indefatigable Island, Galapagos, April 10, 1925.]

With the intense work she did over several months on board the Steam Yacht Arcturus, this may be a picture of her taking a break from illustrations of fish, her main work.

For a nice balance, here is a casual painting Isabel made for herself on the Arcturus Expedition also of frigatebirds. This is from the scrapbook she put together on her career.

ICM Frigate Birds Cocos 1925

[Our family curator, my niece Joanna Church, of the Baltimore Jewish Museum, likely will now clutch at her heart having noted the Scotch tape across the top and bottom of this family artefact. Born in 1892, Isabel thought Scotch tape, paper towels, and, of course, sliced bread, were marvels of civilization. I think she would have quite liked PostIt notes, too.]

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