Ruth Rose

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.

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.