The Other 1940 Expedition to the Sea of Cortez: E. Yale Dawson

Introduction

The expedition of John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts into the Sea of Cortez in 1940 lasted only 6 weeks but became a landmark in exploration at a time when little was known of what was then a very remote region of North America’s Pacific Coast. The cruise was immortalized by a classic narrative of littoral literature and a taxonomic catalogue of creatures, Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research (1941), co-authored by Steinbeck and Ricketts. A little earlier in 1940 another less well-known but better-funded cruise also went into the Sea of Cortez. It included a Berkeley undergraduate with boundless energy and ambition to match. This fledgling biologist was E. Yale Dawson, whose passions were marine algae and cacti. He wrote a tome that, while not immortalizing his cruise, would provide a flora of the Sea of Cortez that was a parallel to the faunal taxonomic catalogue in the Steinbeck and Ricketts volume. Here, we give an overview of Dawson’s legacy and its relation to that of Ed Ricketts.

17 January –20 February 1940: Sea of Cortez, Mexico

A ship cruises this 800-mile arm of the Pacific Ocean that washes the coastline of mainland Mexico on the east and the desiccated peninsula of Baja California to the west. There are marine scientists on board and they have been meticulously scouring the littoral rocky crags and tide pools and nearby shallows, collecting and preserving the many species that thrive in this desert sea. They collect hundreds of specimens, many recognizable species and others that few but stray Mexican fishers and Comcaac (Seri) Indians have even seen, much less given a Latinized scientific name. The specimens are stored carefully on board, and copious notes are scribbled on labels and recorded in journals and in the ship’s log—locations, dates, substrate, water conditions, neighboring species, colors and shapes of the collected specimens that may change during preservation. A hefty scientific volume will be published later with the findings, during wartime; it will be part of an emerging wave of modern explorations in the Sea of Cortez. The ship’s collectors will continue their work, up and down the Pacific Coast and in landmark publications that are still read today. But a tragedy will befall one young collector, a life cut short by an accident still not fully understood. That, however, is years away. In this spring of 1940, the young biologist is energized by new discoveries, as the vessel sails southward out of the Sea of Cortez and then north, to home port in California, specimen treasures safely stowed.

Barely a month later, the Western Flyer, memorialized by John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts in Sea of Cortez, will enter this same arm of the Pacific Ocean. This ship will also bring a young scientist eagerly anticipating a chance for scientific collecting in the region, and the world-famous writer. The Western Flyer’s voyage comes close on the heels of the first, following an independent route that crisscrosses that of the earlier vessel. Only the Western Flyer’s journey will achieve widespread notoriety, but the two cruises are oddly complementary bookends to a remarkable year of discovery in the Sea of Cortez.

The less well-known cruise was that of the Velero III, sponsored and captained by George Allan Hancock and the foundation bearing his name (Meredith and Hancock 1939; Brusca 1980). On board was an ambitious, energetic, Berkeley undergraduate algal biologist named E. Yale Dawson. Dawson will bring back a store of dried, pressed seaweeds. Ricketts and Steinbeck would return with a trove of pickled invertebrate marine creatures. The two scientists apparently never met, and their ships did not pass in the night. Although Ricketts and Dawson will later correspond, and Dawson will thank Ricketts for providing some algal specimens for his PhD thesis, the report on the fauna from the Western Flyer and the account of the flora from Dawson’s collecting on the Velero III will...