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NLA News - home December 2003 Volume XIV Number 3

Wanderings & Gatherings

Travels of a Surgeon–Naturalist

Portrait of Dr George Bennett
Portrait of Dr George Bennett,
F.Z.S. [184–?]
lithograph print; 32.2 x 28.0 cm
Rex Nan Kivell Collection NK10170, Pictures Collection, nla.pic-an9455386

Jennifer M.T. Carter discusses the exploits of Dr George Bennett in the South Seas

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed … Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
From ‘The Chambered Nautilus’
by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1858)

The early decades of the nineteenth century were vibrant ones for natural science. Australia’s unique flora, fauna and landscape proved an irresistible magnet to ‘old world’ naturalists, and New South Wales figured on most expeditions’ itineraries. Some of these were officially funded, others were openly motivated by trade and, while numerous gifted and intrepid individuals still chose to ‘go it alone’, it was easier, cheaper—and certainly safer—to be part of a group.

The Young Cannibal
Frederick Tatham (1805–1878)
The Young Cannibal 1831
Inscribed: Sophia Elau …Drawn from life & on stone by Frederick Tatham, sculptor, June 1831
lithograph print; 34.7 x 26.8 cm
Pictures Collection, nla.pic-an9484719

Dr George Bennett knew this very well when, in 1829, he took service as surgeon–naturalist on board the Sophia’s exploring expedition to the Southern Pacific Ocean and Australia. (A Devon man, born in the seaport of Plymouth in 1804, his first voyage was undertaken at the age of 15 and took him as far as Sri Lanka.) The post of ‘surgeon–naturalist’ was a relatively new occupation. It enabled medical men with a love of science to travel the world widely and to be paid for observing its natural wonders. ‘Darwin’s bulldog’, Thomas Henry Huxley, served as assistant surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake (1847–50). The botanist Joseph Hooker was employed in the same capacity on board HMS Erebus (1839–43), enabling him to write accounts, published between 1844 and 1860, of the flora of Antarctica, New Zealand and Tasmania. (The botany of the Antarctic voyage of HMS Erebus and Terror in the years 1839–43, under the command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross, is part of the Library’s Rare Books Collection.)

Unlike Hooker, whose six-volume work, lavishly illustrated with no fewer than 528 coloured plates, was financed by the Lordships of the Admiralty, George Bennett had no patrons in high office. The two books he published: Wanderings in New South Wales, Batavia, Pedir Coast, Singapore and China; Being the Journal of a Naturalist in Those Countries, During 1832, 1833, and 1834 (1834) and Gatherings of a Naturalist in Australasia: Being Observations Principally on the Animal and Vegetable Productions of New South Wales, New Zealand, and Some of the Austral Islands (1860), were more than likely produced at his own expense. These, too, form part of the Library’s collections and, along with the articles he published in scholarly journals, they enable us to build up a picture of the doctor and his scientific activities.

Australian Boabab Tree
Australian Boabab Tree
(Adansonia Gregorii)
Reproduced from Gatherings of a Naturalist in Australasia: Being Observations Principally on the Animal and Vegetable Productions of New South Wales, New Zealand, and Some of the Austral Islands by George Bennett
(London: John Van Voorst, 1860)

An Account of Elau, A Malayan Papuan Child, Native of the Island of Erromanga, One of the New Hebrides Group, Southern Pacific Ocean (held in microform) eloquently, if callously, describes how the Sophia’s surgeon–naturalist took a seven-year-old native child from the New Hebrides, and how, in Singapore, he purchased a hapless Sumatran Ungka ape (Simia syndactyla). Both were charming and guileless—and doomed from the first moment of Bennett’s eager intervention. The ape, ‘although clothed in flannel’ (according to Wanderings), succumbed to dysentery on the return trip to England. Part of its ulcerated intestine was duly deposited in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons (of which Bennett was a member), while the skin, ‘properly stuffed and preserved in its natural erect attitude’, was consigned to one of the glass cases in the British Museum, where, the good doctor noted with satisfaction, ‘its general appearance was more natural than stuffed specimens usually are’.

Natives by a Bay
Thomas Henry (1825–1895)
[Natives by a Bay,
with Houses in the Distance]
watercolour; 23.5 x 33.7 cm
Pictures Collection, nla.pic-an6489822

Bennett’s other protegée fared no better. ‘It is a well-known fact that Asiatics and natives of the Polynesian Islands, we may say indeed most natives of tropical climates, on being brought to England become liable after a prolonged residence in its variable climate, to tubercular disease of the lungs, brain or intestines’, he stated in An Account of Elau, and so it proved. ‘Arrayed in a pink frock with the usually gay pink ribbons’, little Sophia Elau was paraded at one of the Royal Institution’s conversaziones, shown off to ethnologists (all of which treatment she endured with great aplomb) then sent to Plymouth where she died three years later in June 1834. As far as can be ascertained, her body did not suffer the same indignities as her erstwhile shipboard companion.

There was nothing unique about little Sophia or her former playmate. It was quite the thing, after all, to bring back primates of all kinds from foreign parts. The Sophia’s expedition did, however, provide Bennett with an indisputable coup. On the evening of 24 August 1829, while the Sophia was at anchor in Marakini Bay off the island of Erromanga, ‘something was seen floating on the surface of the water, at some distance from the ship; to many it appeared like a small dead tortoise shell cat, which would have seemed such an unusual object to be seen in this part of the world …’. To Bennett the truth was obvious. Here was no moribund moggy, but a living specimen of Nautilus pompilius, the chambered or ‘pearly’ nautilus, an elusive deep water cephalopod related to the cuttlefish, known to ancient civilisations but never before taken alive.

Rice Paper Plant
Rice Paper Plant (Aralia papyrifera)
Reproduced from Gatherings of a Naturalist in Australasia: Being Observations Principally on the Animal and Vegetable Productions of New South Wales, New Zealand, and Some of the Austral Islands by George Bennett
(London: John Van Voorst, 1860)

‘The lovely brown and white shell, the pearly nautilus, has fascinated humans for millennia’, writes Richard Arnold Davis, one of the contributors to Nautilus: The Biology and Paleobiology of a Living Fossil (1987), which is held in the Library. Indeed, the scientific study of Nautilus (Latin, from Greek nautilos, ‘sailor’) goes back to Aristotle (b. 384 BC), with the first ‘obvious description’ of the shell scribed by Pierre Belon in the 1550s. In 1705, Georg Everard Rumpf published ‘the first recognizable description and illustration of the Nautilus animal’, whilst his contemporary Robert Hooke in England linked the creature to ammonite fossils. By August 1829, the genus Nautilus had been formally erected but scientific studies were hardly more advanced. Bennett was about to change all that.

Struck by what might be termed ‘Bennett’s curse’, the creature he discovered—for so long a desideratum of natural science—did not stay alive for long: ‘The shell was shattered from having been struck with the boat-hook in capturing, as the animal was sinking it, and had it not been so damaged would have escaped.’ Nothing daunted, Bennett recorded a few observations, extracted the animal from what remained of the upper cavity and ‘preserved the soft parts immediately in spirits’.

Australian Water Mole
Australian Water Mole (Ornithorhynchus paradoxus)
Reproduced from Gatherings of a Naturalist in Australasia: Being Observations Principally on the Animal and Vegetable Productions of New South Wales, New Zealand, and Some of the Austral Islands by George Bennett
(London: John Van Voorst, 1860)

On his return to England he presented the jar to Richard Owen, assistant curator of the Hunterian Museum and an old friend, who would become the chief British comparative anatomist of his day. Owen’s Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus, is not, alas, present in the National Library’s collection, but there is a portrait of the anatomist in Nautilus: The Biology and Paleobiology of a Living Fossil. It is an imposing picture, full of gravitas and scientific symbolism, calculated to appeal to a public ready to take the outward vestiges of Nautilus (if not the innards) to their hearts. Empty shells washed up on Pacific beaches were available for sale and, Bennett noted, ‘pretty vases of antique form’ fashioned in Manila from the inner pearly shell were already ‘esteemed in Europe as ornaments for the mantel-piece’.

 Nautili reproduced from [Natural History Illustrations]
‘Nautili’reproduced from [Natural History Illustrations]
(London: R. Edwards, 1815–1816)
Pictures Collection, nla.pic-an7518180

His discovery of a living ‘pearly nautilus’ further ensured that it was cemented in the popular psyche. In time this unlikely love affair with a shellfish went further, further inspiring both poetry and prose. Oliver Wendell Holmes’ sentimental poem ‘The Chambered Nautilus’ appeared in 1858, and in 1870 Jules Verne wrote his Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, capturing imaginations worldwide with the enigmatic Captain Nemo in his seabed-hugging Nautilus submarine.

As for Dr Bennett, the discovery of Nautilus pompilius in its living state fuelled a lifelong collecting bug. In 1832 he returned to Australia briefly, setting off in immediate pursuit of a living ‘water-mole’ for Richard Owen (he had tried unsuccessfully on his earlier visit) and his chief claim to fame among a modern Australian readership is surely his work on the platypus. His indefatigable and lethal attempts to capture living specimens of this endearing little creature are described in both his Wanderings and Gatherings, with the platypus being further described by Richard Owen. Bennett returned to Sydney a third time in 1836, and this time stayed for good.

Frontispiece and title page of Wanderings in New South Wales
Frontispiece and title page of Wanderings in New South Wales, Batavia, Pedir Coast, Singapore and China; Being the Journal of a Naturalist in Those Countries, During 1832, 1833, and 1834 by George Bennett (London: Richard Bentley, 1834, vol. 2)

In his prime, ‘when his youthful blood was warm with ambition’, George Bennett was not a man to overlook. A portrait taken of him around the time he settled in Sydney (now in the Rex Nan Kivell Collection) reveals a handsome young man à la Byron, contemplative and at the height of his intellectual powers. Another, taken in old age, shows that the years had dealt kindly with Dr Bennett who, unlike so many of his quarries, survived to meet a peaceful end. He had been a force in Australian science for decades but, when he died in 1893 aged 89, his work was virtually unknown to a later generation. ‘Old age had already come upon him when most of us were young’, as his obituarist in The Sydney Morning Herald chose to put it. In an appreciation spanning numerous column inches, a single sentence dealt with Nautilus pompilius, the crowning glory of his scientific life.

Jennifer M.T. Carter is a Fellow of the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne

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