Willoughby Lowe (1872-1949) was a highly-praised collector for the Natural History Museum in London as well as an all-round naturalist. Counting just birds he added over 10,000 specimens to the Museum. Lowe wrote two books on the various expeditions of which he had been part and there are summaries available online on what he did and where he went. However there is little of his life and background. He travelled with interesting, important and infamous people in pursuing the zoology of the day. In an endeavour to provide a fuller picture of Lowe I have scoured family trees (often inaccurate or incomplete), original material available on genealogy websites (again thanks to clerical errors sometimes inaccurate) and the like. There are still important gaps and I hope readers will contact me if they have more information. To make that job more manageable, I am splitting Lowe’s life into parts. This is the 5th part. Links to the other articles can be found at the end.
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| Not 1910 but April 2025. The view Willoughby Lowe would have had of Cape Town and Table Mountain to sail north |
On Guy Fawkes Night 1910, the Union-Castle liner RMS Walmer Castle left Southampton bound for South Africa. Willoughby Lowe was setting off for his first ‘official’ collecting trip for the British Museum (Natural History). Furthermore he was doing so in order to join a Royal Navy vessel, HMS Mutine, at the invitation of its captain, Captain Ernest Charles Hardy RN (1866-1934) who had an interest in natural history. HMS Mutine—an unfortunate name perhaps for a naval vessel perhaps—was one of a line of ships of that name, the original having being captured from the French during the Napoleonic Wars, coincidentally by another Hardy, Lieutenant Thomas Hardy, later immortalized by Nelson’s dying words “Kiss me Hardy”. This Mutine (1900-1932), a sloop, became a survey ship in 1907. On this voyage Mutine was to do a magnetic survey of coastal waters on the western side of Africa from Cape Town to Sierra Leone.
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| RMS Walmer Castle |
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| HMS Mutine |
Earlier in 1910 Willoughby Lowe’s third child and second son, John Patrick Willoughby Lowe, was born, not in the family house ‘Gorsemoor’ on the edge of Dartmoor but in Bournemouth. It appears that the Lowes had rooms at a property in Bournemouth since on 2 April 1911 (when Willoughby was shown on board HMS Mutine) the Census recorded Annie living in three rooms at 6 Richmond Hill along with her daughter, the eight-month old John and a servant. The Lowe’s other son was a boarder at Downside, the Roman Catholic school in Somerset. There was clearly a connexion with Bournemouth since Annie’s aunt (Charlotte Aikenhead, a widow) lived there and both Annie and John were with her for the 1921 Census.
Willoughby Lowe described his trip in the Trail That Is Always New. He covered the birds he had seen off the coast of South Africa, producing a list almost identical to that we had seen from the Hebridean Sky last April. Hardy met him in Cape Town where they spent a few days as tourists and getting the permits necessary to shoot wildlife. Accommodation for both people and goods on the small warship was tight and Hardy lent Lowe his cabin together with its chests of drawers for the storage of specimens.
London was short of birds of the South African coast and Lowe soon set about his work. He took a rowing boat out and was able to get gulls, terns, petrels, a shearwater, cormorants, gannets, albatrosses and penguins.
On 30 November Mutine sailed for Ichaboe Island off the coast of what was then Namibia. This small island lies in the nutrient-rich (and bitingly cold) Benguela Current and is, therefore, an important for nesting seabirds. In 1910 it was under British control and administered from South Africa. The reason it came under British control in 1861 is the ‘Great Guano War’. In 1828 guano deposits over seven metres deep were discovered and a rush to gather the guano and ship it off for vast profits reached a peak in the 1840s. There were shanty towns for thousands of diggers, and hundreds of ships offshore. Competition was fierce and there was murder most foul. Two British warships were sent to sort things out. Ichaboe has been a nature reserve since 1987 and part of Namibia since 1994.
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| Luderitz in 2025 |
Lowe made a mistake in describing this part of the voyage. The sea was rough and for a decent night’s rest the ship took shelter in a harbour. Lowe called it ‘Swakopmund’ but that town is over 250 miles north of Ichaboe. From the description and name in Portuguese it was clearly the German town of Lüderitz. He also noted that before reaching Ichaboe he had 37 large birds skinned and preserved—scraping fat and oil from the skins took hours on the rolling ship.
In order to land on Ichaboe visitors from the Mutine had a take a ‘surf-boat’ which is carried on the crest of an incoming breaker and thrown onto the shore. All the passengers had to leap out and pull the boat up the beach before the next breaker arrived. He did not say how the surf boats got them off.
Ichaboe was packed with nesting birds. Much to the surprise of the man in charge Lowe had a permit to collect but not to shoot. He soon filled a large basket with birds and eggs. Walking was highly unpleasant because of the guano dust—so unpleasant and thick that the officers left ashore at night to take star sights could not see the stars, although the fogs that develop along this coast would not have helped.
While shooting was banned on Ichaboe, Lowe decided that trapping was not and thereby caught a pair of White-breasted Cormorants. He also noted that penguin eggs make good eating and that eggs from Dassen Island off the coast of South Africa generated an income of £25 per week—a huge sum in the 1840s—for the sellers.
After Ichaboe the ship headed for another bird-rich island, Mercury, but the sea was too rough for a landing but did manage to visit another one, Hollam’s Island. Then it was into Walvis Bay, then Walfisch Bay and a British enclave surrounded by the German colony. Walvis Bay was then very different from the prosperous port we have visited twice, in 2004 by land and in 2025 by sea. Lowe wrote:
There were a few iron shanties on the dreary waste of sand, a German store and a church whose foundations were the most unusual I have ever seen; they were entirely composed of whisky bottles…
Walvis Bay has a lagoon and a spit of sand that are full of birds. Lowe took the German storekeeper with him in the mistaken belief that he would be good with guns. However, using Lowe’s shotgun he fired both barrels at the same time. The kick was so fierce that the stock hit his nose and made it bleed. Having boasted that Germany would soon be at war with Great Britain and that Walvis Bay would be quickly taken (he was right but then Germany lost not only Walvis Bay but the whole of their colony) Lowe seems to have regarded the storekeeper’s bloody nose as a case of ‘Oh dear; What a pity; Never mind’.
Lowe only found Lesser Flamingos in residence. In 2004 there were Greaters with a few Lessers. In April 2025 there was just a small flock of Greaters. In addition to flamingos Lowe shot pelicans, terns, skuas, avocets, gulls and plovers. He also grumbled how the fine sand worked its way into the mechanism of his gun and about the smell of the place. Its name gives the clue: the whole place smelt strongly of whales with carcasses left decaying on the beach. Part of that beach now contains a terminal for large cruise ships as well as for our very small one.
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| Greater Flamingos in the lagoon at Walvis Bay April 2025 |
Some of the whales which gave Walvis Bay its name were seen from Mutine. He had never seen a whale breach before:
I had never realised how active these creatures were, nor would I have believed that an animal weighing so many tones would have cut such capers.
Angola was next; they arrived on 13 December. HMS Mutine docked without the usual formalities because Angola was in the aftermath of the coup in Portugal which overthrew the monarchy. Lowe was going around the harbour in a boat shooting more cormorants and two larks. The he found some old Portuguese sailors who spoke some Spanish. Lowe had acquired sufficient of that language during his years in Colorado to have a conversation and they all ended up setting off into the hills on a collecting expedition. Shrikes, hornbills and parrots made their way to London as skins.
A day was spent on the island of Annobon, then Spanish. where Lowe obtained a specimen of the endemic paradise flycatcher. They left on 18 December for Sekondi in what is now Ghana, a place visited by Lowe on his first and last collecting trips as an official collector. Five days late HMS Mutine moved to an area off the coast of Liberia for survey work. They anchored a long way off shore ‘so as to be free from mosquitoes’. Lowe found the day-and-night process of depth sounding trying:
It is surprising how monotonous the heaving of lead becomes, as one hears the record shouted out hour by hour and day by day; the sample of the sea bed is brought up on a disc of soap, and the result is entered in the log-book, so many fathoms, sand, shell or rock as the case may be. It is extraordinary how long it takes even with machinery to wind up the plummet in really deep water. Then there were the small boats and launches, which went amongst the dangerous reefs in shallow water. This was very trying work in the full heat of the tropical sun, on this surf-beaten shore, but most necessary as this coast had never been properly charted. I always had to go ashore very early, either in one of these boats or with a "tide watcher," who also had rather a dull job, watching the rise and fall of the tide on a pole.
We had specially made boats, which are always used on the West Coast to land amidst the breaking surf; the landing here is always exciting for there are generally submerged reefs, partly or completely hidden by the water. We had a native Kru man to pilot us in until we knew the course well; it is wonderful how these men will land in only a frail dugout canoe whilst they paddle and keep time to some native chant.
Lowe landed at a time the Kru were at war with the Liberian government, the former resenting repatriated former slaves taking over swathes of their land. Lowe found it astonishing when shown the demands being made for ‘peace’ by the government that freed slaves should be demanding slaves. Because of the ‘war’ the sound of Lowe’s guns caused all sorts of panic. They did, however, help remove a snake from a house.
His collection was not confined to birds. A local fish trap had some strange fish and by swapping tobacco they were off to the Museum. Described by Boulenger as Polypterus lowei, the species has since been lumped into P. palmas, the Shortfin or Marbled Bichir, often these days seem in tropical fish shops.
Back on board, Lowe prepared the skins from his extensive collection. However, he had problems from an unexpected direction. He worked at night on a table under a ‘powerful electric light’. Petrels, attracted by the light, settled on the table. He selected specimens from the three species landing and launched the rest back into the air. But they kept returning and when handled emitted their foul smelling oil in protest.
The final place for survey work was Axim in what is now Ghana. Sixteen days were spent there and Lowe remarked but on the beauty of the Emerald Cuckoo. Then, on 28 February 1911, Mutine set off for the return voyage, calling at Luanda and Lobito in Angola, and Walvis Bay for coal on the way to the naval base at Simon’s Town. He left Simon’s Town on 10th April. Hardy must have jumped the gun a bit in filling in the census form due on 11 April. Lowe wrote:
It was with many regrets that I sided with goodbye to the Mutine and her officers, who had been so helpful and kind during my pleasant voyage in the ship.
It had been Hardy’s intention for Lowe to remain on board for a further survey up the eastern side of South Africa. However, because the chance of landings was remote because of the rough seas at that time of year it was decided to call it a day at the Cape. The seemingly unplanned early departure may explain why Lowe travelled Second Class and not his usual First on the return to Southampton on Walmer Castle; he must have obtained a passage within the few days before departure. He arrived, listed as a ‘naturalist’ on 29 April 1911. The voyage was not without incident. A Swiss assistant cook aged 23 was declared dead having disappeared at sea.
Further background to the trip is provided by David Armitage Bannerman (1886-1979) in his paper in The Ibis. Hardy had invited the Curator of Birds at the Museum, William Robert Ogilvie-Grant (1863 –1924) or a nominee—in this case Lowe—to join him on Mutine.
Bannerman listed 207 species collected during the trip. He included field notes by Lowe where appropriate and Lowe himself wrote an addendum on Ichaboe Island. Bannerman wrote:
The collection includes examples of three new species, Sylviella lowei, Sylviella hardyi, and Cinnyris kruensis (which have already been described in the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club)…
Bannerman named the Lemon-billed Crombec after Hardy but in both publications appears to have referred to the genus as Sylviella rather than Sylvietta. Both Bannerman and his boss, Ogilvie-Grant, made the same error and I suspect it came from the misreading of an earlier paper. Ogilvie-Grant named Sylviella lowei after Lowe. It appears in the Museum’s accession register with that name but is indexed as Sylviella lowii. I am completely confused since I can find virtually no mention of this bird other than that it has been lumped into the Long-billed Crombec (Sylvietta rufescens). However, Lowe collected it in Luanda, Angola, a place the Long-billed Crombec does not occur.
Hardy’s Crombec fared little better. It was lumped into the Lemon-billed Crombec (Sylvietta denti) and sometimes listed as a subspecies. Hardy himself fared better. He was Assistant Hydrographer of the Navy between 1914 and 1919. He retired on 1 February 1921 having been promoted to Rear-Admiral the day before. On the retired list he was promoted to Vice-Admiral in 1926. In retirement he lived near Ashford in Kent. A local newspaper obituary noted that he devoted himself to natural history.
What I have not been able to find out is under what capacity was Willoughby Lowe working. Was he operating as a ‘gentleman’ collector or was he being paid from Museum funds? I suspect the former. The specimens he collected were entered in the catalogue as being presented by Captain Hardy. Perhaps accounts of his later trips will provide further information.
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| Itinerary and Map of the voyage from Bannerman's paper in The Ibis The map was drawn by Captain Hardy Collecting sites were underlined in the original. I have added the red lines |
Bannerman DA. 1912 On two new species of birds from West Africa (Sylviella hardyi and Cinnyris kruensis). Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 29, 23-24.
Bannerman DA. 1912. On a collection of birds made by Mr. Willoughby P. Lowe on the West Coast of Africa and outlying Islands; with field-notes by the collector. The Ibis 29, 23-24.
Lowe WP. 1932. The Trail That Is Always New. London: Gurney and Jackson.
LINKS
Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus. Finding Miss Waldron
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