Adventuring with Beebe

by William Beebe

A selection of different writings from William Beebe.

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Numerous expeditions of Charles William Beebe, American naturalist, explorer, and author, include a record oceanic descent in a bathysphere, which he helped to design in 1934.

William Beebe worked as a marine biologist and entomologist. For the zoological society of New York, he conducted his deep dives, and people remember his prolific scientific writing for both academic and popular audiences.

He also wrote under the names Charles William and C. William Beebe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...

Reviews

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adventuring With Beebe: Selections From the Writings of William Beebe by William Beebe (Duell, Sloan and Pearce 1955) (591.9) (3856).

Author William Beebe was the Director Emeritus of the New York Zoological Society’s Department of Tropical Research. He was a naturalist, an explorer, a marine biologist, a hands-on field researcher, and a very prolific author. He was a celebrity adventurer in the same vein as Robert Ruark and Frank Buck. Beebe’s marine exploration predated Jacques Cousteau’s eventual fame in that field, but he and Cousteau labored in the same farm patch, so to speak.

Adventuring With Beebe excerpts selections from seven of Beebe’s books about his travels and adventures and is sort of a “best of Beebe” collection.

The book’s first section reprints excerpts from the author’s Atlantic Ocean trips. He speaks at length of the manners and methods traditionally used to collect marine specimens. According to Beebe, the original collection method (a hand net) gave way to the use of a trident which was succeeded by primitive spearguns. Beebe enthusiastically endorsed two amazing new methods (this was in the 1930s) of marine specimen collecting that he relied upon: (1) the introduction of plant poison (derris root (Derris eliptica), which is used as an insecticide and which stuns and stupefies fish) to a section of reef, and (2) the use of dynamite (which Beebe called “bong-bonging”).

Beebe explains the use of dynamite by fish collectors: “The most successful method of individual collecting…is with a fish pole and a dynamite cap at the end…[T]his underwater shooting which we have invented elevates the collecting of fish into the realm of true sport.”(Adventuring With Beebe, p. 21).

According to the author, while the explosion of dynamite caps stunned small fish, the collection of larger fish specimens demanded “...every bit of my [hunting] skill - the search for the discovery of some desired species, the cunning stalk over the sand and reef, … and the instant pursuit and capture of the upturned fish…With this sport and that of shooting flying fish from the bow of a launch, no game-bird hunter away from his coverts or preserves or jungles need be bored.” (Adventuring With Beebe, p. 22).

Beebe may or may not have evinced more bloodlust than most scientists of his day, but his “sport” of choice and his collecting methods often appear brutal to twenty-first century sensibilities. For instance, Beebe writes wonderingly about albatrosses (he shotgunned them), whale sharks (he harpooned one and shot it twice in the head with his revolver), and army ants (they ate him up).

Other items which captured Beebe’s interest included cormorants, pelicans, frigate birds, blue footed boobies, turtles, herons, macaws, insects, Mexican villages and peasants, spider monkeys, butterflies, crocodiles, hoatzins, and boa constrictors.

One interesting note concerned Beebe’s report of attempting to kill a whale shark. He notes wonderingly that these creatures had only been seen by humans on eighty occasions. Beebe describes these largest members of the fish family as “gentle and inoffensive.” He states that the Japanese refer to whale sharks as “Baba” (Japanese for “old woman”) because of the whale sharks’ toothless appearances. Nevertheless, he spent much more time explaining how they had harpooned, shot, and wounded this amazing creature in an attempt to kill it only to watch it break off and swim away, hopefully with non-fatal injuries.

In one short sentence, this book is instructive, but it is also brutal.

My rating: 7/10, finished 8/25/23 (3856).