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WHITNEY SOUTH SEAS EXPEDITION (1920-1929)

In 1920, the AMNH again called on Rollo Beck to lead a collecting expedition--this time to the tropical Pacific Ocean to study island birds. Funded by Harry Payne Whitney and his family, the expedition took the 70-ton power schooner France among thousands of islands, collecting avifaunal, botanical, and other specimens.


Beck photographs a frigatebird on Christmas Island on February 14, 1921,
during the AMNH's Whitney South Seas Expedition
(photo from the October 1925 National Geographic Magazine)
The bird specimens were added to the AMNH's collections; the main set of botanical specimens was sent to Hawaii's Bishop Museum; and a duplicate set was sent to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's (BBG) herbarium. See BBG's account of the expedition here.

On Mangareva, Beck (at center, wearing tie) and the France's engineer
(second from left) enjoy boar's head, breadfruit, poipoi, and other local delicacies.
From the October 1925 National Geographic Magazine.

Beck's wife, Ida Menzies Beck, went along on this voyage. While visiting the islands, the Becks gathered cultural objects for their personal collection, and not as part of the AMNH-funded expedition. These items were retained in the Beck's personal collection for many years, and now nearly 500 objects collected by the Becks are housed in California Academy of Science's (CAS) anthropology department. The CAS database of Rollo Beck items can be seen here.

About 250 more items were sold by the Becks to the Burke Museum at the University of Washington in the early 1930s. A database of Burke Museum ethnology objects collected by Beck is available here.


Descendants of the famous Bounty mutineers row a whaleboat from Pitcairn
Island to greet the Becks and the crew of the schooner France
(photo by Beck in the October 1925 National Geographic Magazine)
Rollo Beck's photographs from this South Seas expedition accompanied an article by Robert Cushman Murphy in the October 1925 issue of the National Geographic Magazine.

A sloop is laden with copra (made from coconuts) with the schooner France in the background,
at Tuamotu Archipelago (photo by Beck in the October 1925 National Geographic Magazine).
After the Becks finished their voyage on the France, they went to New Guinea to collect birds of paradise for the AMNH. This part of their journey was highlighted in a 1929 article by Beck in Natural History magazine (see link below to read this article).


Read Rollo Beck's 1929 article, "A Collector in the Land of the Birds of Paradise: Collecting Brilliantly Colored Birds Among the Mountains of New Guinea—The Problems and Difficulties of an Ornithologist in the Savage Interior of One of the Greatest of Islands" on Natural History's Pick from the Past webpage.
Visit CAS' Pacific Voyages of Rollo Beck webpages, which detail the France's journey through Oceania.
See Mary LeCroy's Type Specimens of Birds in the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) for a listing of AMNH.
Search the botany databases at the Bishop Museum for specimens collected during the Whitney Expedition.
Read Robert Cushman Murphy's "Birds collected during the Whitney South Sea Expedition" from American Museum novitates; no. 115 on the AMNH website.
Read Ernst Mayr's "Birds collected during the Whitney South Sea Expedition. 55, Notes on the birds of northern Melanesia." from American Museum novitates; no. 1294 on the AMNH website.

WHITNEY SOUTH SEAS EXPEDITION (1920-1929)

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 11, 2006.
Page copyright 2006 by the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History.