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BREWSTER-SANFORD EXPEDITION (1912-1917)

American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) trustees Leonard C. Sanford and Frederick F. Brewster hired Beck to lead an ambitious expedition around the coast of South America to expand the museum's sea bird holdings.

Beck prepares specimens below deck on the Leguri while in the Beagle Channel in December 1914.
Photo by Mrs. Ida Beck, from Murphy, 1936).
Close to 8,000 bird specimens were gathered during the expedition's systematic field work, along with associated data including nests, eggs, photos, and field notes. These specimens became the basis for Robert Cushman Murphy's Oceanic Birds of South America, published by the AMNH in 1936.A short autobiographical essay by Beck was included in the introduction to Oceanic Birds of South America, to which Murphy added:

These autobiographical notes reflect only a faint shadow of the energy, conscientiousness, and fearlessness with which Mr. and Mrs. Beck have faced long years of trying toil in the field. Only those who have worked in the cramped and stuffy quarters of small schooners, and have felt the heat and swelter of the tropics, can vaguely imagine more than two decades of such life.

Mr. Beck's words touch but lightly, moreover, the technique of marine collecting, which he has placed upon a totally new basis. His specimens of sea birds are noted for their faultless preparation, and even more for their standardization. A tray of Beck specimens presents as uniform an appearance as so many cigarettes in a box. The fact that he has himself made up within a single day as many as forty petrels of the size of a pigeon is proof enough that his fine workmanship has not been developed at the expense of a plentiful return in specimens. On the contrary, Beck collections are no less notable for their richness than for their perfection.

Speaking as one who has watched him at work and who has learned his methods, I may say that it would be impossible to imagine anyone preparing specimens of sea birds with more rapidity, vigor, and precision.

Rollo and Ida picnic among Rockhopper Penguins on one of the Falkland Islands
during the AMNH's Brewster-Sanford Expedition, c. 1915 (Rollo & Ida Beck Collection, CAS / Library)


Magellanic Penguins at York Bay, East Falkland, December 1915,
(photo by Rollo Beck from Robert Cushman Murphy's Oceanic Birds of South America: AMNH, 1936).
In the period between the expedition and the book's publication, Murphy spent four months in England cataloging and packing 280,000 of Lord Rothschild's bird specimens (including some collected by Beck), which were purchased by the AMNH in 1931.
See Mary LeCroy's Type Specimens of Birds in the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) for a detailed explanation of birds from Rothschild's collection that were sold to the AMNH.
Read ornithologist James Bond's article, "A Remarkable West Indian Goatsucker," that refers to Rollo Beck, from The Auk (Volume 45, Number 4, October 1928).
Read a literature review of Murphy's Oceanic Birds of South America in The Auk (Volume 53, Number 2, April, 1936).

BREWSTER-SANFORD EXPEDITION (1912-1917)

Exhibit Home | The Early California Years (1870-1896)
Collecting for Lord Rothschild (1897-1898) | Monterey Bay Collecting (1903-1910)
Academy Galapagos Expedition (1905-1906) | Collecting for Bent in Alaska (1911-1912)
Brewster-Sanford Expedition (1912-1917) | Whitney South Seas Expedition (1920-1929)
Back Home in Planada (1930-1950) | Bird Specimens at the PGMNH
Artifacts | Map of Beck's World Travels | Exhibit Credits | Links

Page created April 28, 2006. Last updated May 4, 2006.
Page copyright 2006 by the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History.