Mrs Churchill and the Komodo Dragon

Komodo Dragon on the island of Rinca
September 2016

The expedition cruise on which Clementine Churchill was a guest of Walter Edward Guinness, Lord Moyne, on board his luxury vessel Rosaura arrived off Komodo on 18 March 1935. The  plans to obtain new specimens of Komodo Dragon for London Zoo have been well documented and I have written about that part of the expedition previously HERE. In brief, Moyne was a council member of the Zoological Society and a trap to use on Komodo was made in the Zoo’s workshop to take to Komodo.

Mrs Churchill wrote to Winston about the time spent there:

This has been an enchanting bewildering & exciting week - I meant to keep this letter in the form of a diary adding to it day by day but failed to do it - In this way I could have made you feel the excitement the suspense the heat the repeated disappointments the fearful smell of the decaying baits - (which of course had always to be approached and watched with the wind blowing towards one). Side by side with all this "big game' 'Boys Own Annual' world is the enchantment of this island which is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen & is perhaps one of the loveliest wildest strangest spots in the world. It is deeply indented with bays and lagoons. It has innumerable paradise beaches - some of the finest sand (there is a pink one of powdered coral) some of wild rocks with coral gardens far lovelier than at Nassau, & accessible. That is if you are not afraid of being observed by a giant polyp or tickled by a sea snake 12 foot long.

Three of the lizards captured were selected to take home. They were around 4 feet long. On board, one disappeared, presumed lost overboard, after the carpenter lightened the lids of their crates by adding a wire-netting panel—which proved to be no great barrier to a dragon on the move.

Rosaura off Cape Brett, New Zealand,

photographed by Lady Vera Broughton.

From Lord Moyne's book

Walkabout: A Journey in the Lands Between the Pacific

and Indian Oceans, Heinemann, 1936

Winston Churchill sent a car and a lorry to Southampton to collect Clementine from Rosaura after she docked on 30 April 1936. Along with her luggage (by now swollen with souvenirs) there was her pet pigeon from Bali (a Zebra Dove possibly) and. I read, a pair of Black Swans for the Chartwell estate, presumably to add to the ones already there. The Black Swans caused Winston considerable anguish as he tried to protect them from the local foxes. Some of her ethnographic souvenirs were later given to the British Museum.

The Society’s Report for 1935 shows that the two lorries sent by the Zoo a day after Rosaura docked brought back with them: 1 Highland's Long-tailed Tree Mouse, 1 Ceylon Pit Viper, 4 Green Pit Vipers, 3 Brown Spotted Pit Vipers, 9 Helmed Lizards, 1 Indian Changeable Lizard, 3 Fan-footed Geckos, 1 Delande's Gecko, 4 Ceylon Terrapins, 5 Blue-rumped Parrots, 2 Tuatara [then spelt Tuatera as was common at the time], 2 Komodo Dragons, 2 Kagus. In zoo asset terms the last three species were the crown jewels.

What has puzzled me since first reading about this trip is: who looked after the animals on the Rosaura? I still do not know but I suspect it was not an ideal arrangement because on the next trip in 1935-36—as we shall see in the next article—there was an expert on board.

Newspaper recorded the problems of housing Komodo Dragons in wartime. The London Evening News reported in July 1941 that the dragons had an egg each for the first time since eggs were rationed. A visitor to the Zoo provided them. In 1944 the glass was blown out of half their cage in the Reptile House. Permission was granted by the Ministry of Works, which controlled the use of building materials, and the Zoo’s own workmen did the repairs. By contrast, repairs to houses damaged on nearby Prince Albert Road had to wait. 

The two—a pair—Komodo Dragons lived until 1946. Accounts differ as to their size when they died: 6 to even 8 or 9 feet according to which newspaper you read, compared with 4 feet on arrival 10 years earlier. The female was recorded of having died from retained necrotic ova, so her size matched her obvious sexual maturity. I wonder if she had access to soft earth in which to lay her eggs?

Soames M. 2002. Clementine Churchill. Revised and updated edition. London: Doubleday.

Stanley N. 2016. 'Some Friends Came to See Us’: Lord Moyne's 1936 Expedition to the Asmat. London: British Museum ISBN 978 086159 206 7 ISSN 1747 3640.

Thompson N. 2022. How London Zoo acquired its second pair of Komodo Dragons. Bartlett Society Journal 30, 19-32.