by Mike Bruton
Dr EI White, FRS, the pre-eminent fish palaeontologist in Britain who was Keeper of Geology and then the first Keeper of Palaeontology at the Natural History Museum in London, became a thorn in JLB’s side at this time as he ridiculed the colonial amateur’s efforts. Smith was particularly infuriated when White pre-empted by one week the publication of his first description of the modern coelacanth in Nature by publishing a popular article entitled, ‘One of the most amazing events in the realm of natural history in the twentieth century’, in the Illustrated London News on 11th March 1939 (White, 1939), in order to snatch some of the glory6. White also appeared to belittle remote scientists with some colonialist one-upmanship: ‘The report of this discovery was made some time ago, but was treated with scepticism by the experts – they are only too familiar with deliberate hoaxes or the misplaced enthusiasms of the uninformed to place credence in such reports until supporting evidence is available’. The international media nevertheless went into a feeding frenzy over the coelacanth discovery and it received banner headlines from New York to Sri Lanka, London to Buenos Aires. The Auckland Star in New Zealand headlined their front-page article, ‘Loch Ness Outdone’.
JLB Smith had to rely on the nomenclature developed by palaeontologists for the bones of coelacanths when he described the first and second specimens of the modern species, and soon realised that there were different schools of thought as to the names of the different bones. He decided to avoid the ‘battle of the names’ and followed an alternative course – he gave the bones numbers, and allowed others to fight over their names. This did not diminish scientific respect for his work. Many years later, in 1953, when the eminent Danish coelacanth palaeontologist Dr Jürgen Nielsen visited Grahamstown, the Smiths suggested that he should visit the East London Museum to view the first coelacanth. Nielsen’s response, ‘Quite unnecessary. The descriptions and photographs of the various structures in your monograph on the first coelacanth are more than adequate. I have no need to see them for myself’ (M Smith, 1969).
Others, too, heaped praise on Smith and his discovery. Michael Lagios and John McCosker (1969) labelled him an ‘adventurer and ichthyologist’ and stated that ‘no living organism has so dramatically affected the public consciousness and scientific imagination as Latimeria chalumnae. For scientists it provided a unique opportunity to gaze backward at evolution, through its living tissues, at a lineage dating to the early Devonian.’ A prominent American ichthyologist wrote to Smith, ‘Now I can die happy for I have lived to see the great American public excited about fish’ (Smith, 1956).
In his later writings and interviews Smith (1956) stated that he immediately recognised the fish depicted in Marjorie’s rough sketch (by the combination of unusual characters, rather than by any one character) as a member of a long-extinct group of fishes, the coelacanths. Others dispute this claim, calling it ‘a created myth’, saying that he would not have had sufficient knowledge of extinct fishes at the time to make this positive identification, especially at his holiday home in Knysna and away from his library. They argue that he would have had to consult palaeontologists in Grahamstown (or Cape Town) before he could be sure. What they ignore is Smith’s intellect and his photographic memory – and the fact that he also had a library in Knysna. He had, in fact, previously read extensively about fossil fishes.
Alan Hodgson and Adrian Craig (2004), in a history of the Zoology Department at Rhodes University, state:
‘Van Hille [Dr JC van Hille] always considered that Alice Lyle never received credit for her achievements. He also believed that she played a critical role in the identification of the first coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) in 1938. In a letter to Miles dated 30 April 1980 van Hille wrote: “The zoo lecturer you refer to was Alice Lyle, she was a dear! It was actually she who identified the coelacanth. Miss Latimer, of the East London Museum saw that it was something quaint and kept it in formalin in her bath [sic]. She sent a little sketch to J.L.B. who was on holiday in Knysna and was slow in reacting. Eventually he took the sketch to Omer-Cooper [Head of Zoology at the time] who also had no idea. Alice came in to bring them tea and saw it and said ‘I have seen it before’. She studied in Bloemfontein (Grey University College, which became the University College of the Orange Free State) where the emphasis was on vertebrates. Omer was more of an Entomologist and Smith a Chemist. So Alice got the Cambridge Natural History from the library and there was a good picture of the coelacanth. I [van Hille] have this story from Omer and always think of it when in all the books and articles it mentions that J.L.B. identified the coelacanth.”’
This unfortunate allegation, which questions the credibility of JLB Smith as a scientist, can easily be dispelled as the East London Museum, JLB Smith Institute of Ichthyology (now SAIAB) and the Rhodes University Archive have copies of the correspondence between Smith, Courtenay-Latimer and Barnard from early January 1939, in which it is clear that Smith suspected from the outset that the specimen was a coelacanth. When he received Woodward’s Catalogue of the Fossil Fishes in the British Museum from Barnard (before leaving Knysna for East London via Grahamstown), he was able to confirm his suspicion. Furthermore, the original letter from Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer to JLB Smith was forwarded unopened from Grahamstown to Knysna, so staff in the Zoology Department would not have seen it before Smith. There is no record of Smith showing the sketch to Omer-Cooper while in Grahamstown, in transit to East London, but it is possible (though unlikely) that it eventually found its way to the Zoology Department where Lyle may have seen it, and later commented that she recognised the drawing.
This does not mean that Smith, who was a practising ichthyologist with a superb memory and a first-class intellect, had not recognised it first himself. Peter Jackson, an undergraduate in Zoology at the time who later became an ichthyologist, remembers Lyle ‘as very knowledgeable about zoology in general and an excellent undergraduate teacher’ (Hodgson & Craig, 2004), but she was not a fish specialist and there is no reason to believe that she would have been more likely to recognise the coelacanth than JLB Smith.
The Smiths did call in at Grahamstown en route to East London (Smith, 1956; SATV documentary, 1976) and it is likely that during this stop-over JLB consulted books on fish palaeontology in the Department of Ichthyology and possibly the Albany Museum to confirm his hunch, which would have been the normal thing to do. For instance, Gunther’s History of Fishes was in the Albany Museum library then (N Tietz, pers. comm., 2017). In fact, he and Margaret were delayed in Grahamstown for a week as heavy rain had made the unpaved road to East London impassable (Smith, 1956; Bell, 1969), so he had plenty of time to consult the relevant literature.
At the time, the Professor of Geology at Rhodes University College (RUC) was Edgar Mountain (from 1929 to 1949). JLB might have spoken to him, and he might also have spoken to Professor JVL (‘Jack’) Rennie, who joined the Geology Department at RUC in 1931 and founded the Geography Department in 1936, lecturing on palaeontology to third-year students (John Rennie, pers. comm., 2016). However, it seems unlikely that JLB would have consulted with faculty members, both because he had fallen out with the Zoology Department, and there were no experts on fish palaeontology in the department at that time.
Jack Rennie in 1934.
Jack Rennie carried out research on fossil plants from the upper Devonian portion of the Witteberg Group, largely from a black shale layer in the Witpoort Formation, and published this work with Edgar Mountain in 1942 and 1967 (R Gess, pers. comm., 2016). Interestingly, this is the same rock formation in which Robert Gess of the Albany Museum later found fossils of an extinct estuarine coelacanth that he named Serenichthys kowiensis (Gess & Coates, 2015). Jack Rennie appears (with his son, John) in some of the photographs of the second coelacanth when it was returned to Grahamstown on 31st December 1952 in the military Dakota, as he was a family friend (W Smith, pers. comm., 2016) and was invited to be present.
Kirk-Spriggs (2012) further perpetuated the allegation, in an obituary on Brian Stuckenberg,
ex-Director of the Natal Museum:
‘While an undergraduate he [Brian Stuckenberg] undertook considerable work for James Leonard Brierley Smith (1897–1968), the renowned South African ichthyologist accredited (probably bogusly, see Hodgson & Craig 2005: 5) with the identification of the first extant coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae Smith).’
He then makes a comment that would appear to draw attention to Smith’s eccentricity, and so, perhaps, his credibility:
‘When summoned to tea with “Fishy Smith” (as he was known to his students) one day, Brian [Stuckenberg] found him barefoot, up a tree eating fruit and was invited to join the feast!’ (Kirk-Spriggs, 2012).
In his recent history of Rhodes University, Paul Maylam (2017) states, ‘Van Hille believed that Lyle played a critically important role in identifying the coelacanth early in 1939 and was never given due recognition for this’. The problem with this argument is that, although Alice Lyle joined the Zoology Department at RUC from the University of Fort Hare in the late 1930s, and was Acting Head in 1936, JC (‘Bob’) van Hille joined the Zoology Department only in October 1940 (Hodgson & Craig, 2004) and had not as yet arrived in Grahamstown in early 1939; this means that he could not have been a witness to the event and his views would have been based on hearsay7.
Perhaps this is a case of lingering jealousy on the part of the Zoology Department, that one of the greatest zoological finds of the 20th century was made on their doorstep by an amateur zoologist employed in the Chemistry Department. It is difficult to believe that a man of Smith’s integrity and intellect would (together with his wife) have fabricated the conversation that he had with Margaret when he received Courtenay-Latimer’s first letter on the coelacanth in Knysna, and which he relates in detail in Old Fourlegs (Smith, 1956), in numerous other publications, as well as in several radio and TV interviews. And it is a pity that this allegation has been perpetuated in the histories of Rhodes University, which JLB Smith served with such distinction. He was not only an award-winning chemistry researcher but also brought international recognition to the university through his epochal research on the coelacanth and other marine fishes.
After the death of Hendrik Goosen in January 1990 the Sunday Times reported Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer as saying:
‘… the dates of the dramatic events which followed the “discovery of the century” were altered to cover up Professor Smith’s delay in identifying the fish’. She claims in this article that “she never blamed Professor Smith for it was Mrs Smith who faked the account of the coelacanth’s discovery. In the book [Old Fourlegs – The Story of the Coelacanth], most of which I believe she wrote, it was stated that I got the first wire from JLB Smith on January 3. It wasn’t, it was January 9. I have my original notebook to prove it.”’
For the record, Margaret Smith stated emphatically in the early 1980s that she did not write one word in the Old Fourlegs book; it was all JLB Smith’s work. Margaret also admitted that, compared to her husband, she found writing difficult, and it is inconceivable that she would have been able to record JLB’s first-hand experiences in Old Fourlegs with such emotion and detail. It is also regrettable that some of Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer’s comments in later life do not accord with the written record.
JLB Smith (1956) later said that he had anticipated that there would be an ‘initial storm of scorn and disbelief’ when he announced the discovery of the coelacanth, even though he had already established himself as a respectable ichthyologist in the international community by 1938. As it turned out, his announcement of the capture was accepted by most foreign scientists, except the previously mentioned EI White of the British Museum (Natural History) in London, but was met ‘with complete disbelief’ by local scientists and some members of the general public and the media. ‘One prominent American scientist wrote to say that he had been called up late at night by the editor of an important paper who told him that they had got a report from South Africa that a live Coelacanth had been found. He supposed it was just hot air. This man asked who had said so. He replied “a man named Smith”. “J.L.B. Smith?” “Yes.” “Well, then, I think you should be safe to go ahead and publish”’ (Smith, 1956).
When Smith wrote in confidence to Keppel Barnard at the South African Museum on 7th January 1939 about the coelacanth, Barnard’s reply was ‘couched in such incredulous and facetious terms that it served only to increase my fears of the reactions from a wider field’ (Smith, 1956). But when Smith sent him further information 10 days later, Barnard’s reply ‘was now really startled and no longer facetiously incredulous’ (Smith, 1956; Summers, 1975). In the meantime, Barnard had mentioned Smith’s letters in confidence to the Director of the South African Museum, Dr ED Gill, who had himself worked on fossil fishes and published an important paper on extinct lungfishes. Gill was apparently of the opinion that Smith was ‘dangerously deluded’ (Thomson, 1991).
When the Smiths triumphantly visited the Albany Museum to share the excitement of their discovery with the Director John Hewitt, an expert on spiders, scorpions, reptiles, amphibians and archaeology, they ‘… were met with a stony face – how could JLB have made such a terrible mistake. When JLB asked, “Have you seen its picture?”, Hewitt replied, “Yes, of course, that’s just a Kob with a regenerated caudal”’ (MM Smith, 1979). This was the man who had originally encouraged Smith to pursue his studies on fishes. The next day the Smiths met Cornelius Liebenberg, a botanist in the Albany Museum, who ‘… was most upset, placed his hands on my husband’s shoulders and said, “What on earth made you do this dreadful thing? … This coelacanth nonsense. You’ll never again be able to hold up your head in any scientific community”. “But it is a Coelacanth”, Smith insisted, to which Liebenberg replied, “No, man, it can’t be. Old Hewitt says it isn’t, and if he says it isn’t, then it can’t possibly be one”’.
These responses were disconcerting to the Smiths as Hewitt was a respected zoologist, who had already been Director of the Albany Museum for 29 years, and would continue in this post for another 20 fruitful years. Liebenberg eventually recanted and was an important link in the chain that led to Smith being invited to write The Sea Fishes of Southern Africa, as he knew that Smith had already started writing a book that would help anglers to identify their catches (MM Smith, 1969). It seems that any animosity between Smith and Hewitt was soon repaired as JLB later served on the Council of the Albany Museum during Hewitt’s reign as Director.
After the coelacanth saga JLB also developed cordial relationships with the East London Museum and, in his capacity as Honorary Curator of Fishes, attended the official opening of the museum’s new building by the Administrator of the Cape, JG Carinus, on 28th November 1950, together with Dr Jack Rennie of RUC (G Morcom, pers. comm., 2017). According to Nancy Tietz (pers. comm., 2017), Smith was an effective Honorary Curator at the museum who visited and regularly corresponded with Marjorie on fish and museum issues into the late 1960s. Susan Jewett, then Research Associate, Division of Fishes, Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, who visited the East London Museum in October 2003, commented that it had one of the best collections of displayed fish that she had seen anywhere, partly a consequence of the collaboration between Courtenay-Latimer and Smith.
On 7th June 1939 the Director of the South African Museum (now the Iziko South African Museum) in Cape Town, Dr Edwin Leonard Gill, offered the services of their expert taxidermist, James Drury, to re-preserve, restore and re-mount the first coelacanth specimen, as well as to create a mould from which further castings could be made. This was necessary as the first mount by Robert Center in East London had not been satisfactory, and there was a risk that the fish would rot. Gill offered this service at no cost as the Museum was content with ‘the honour of being entrusted with the job and the first right to do a good replica’ (Summers, 1975). This offer was accepted by Courtenay-Latimer and Smith and the fish was despatched by train to Cape Town on 19th August 1939, with Marjorie as escort. Gill tactfully asked Marjorie not to ‘watch over Drur
y’s doings all through, for he dislikes even more than I do having people watching him at work’ (Summers, 1975). Marjorie returned to East London on 3rd September 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany, but amid all the chaos and fear of that time she was thankful that the coelacanth was in safe hands in Cape Town.
Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer and Hendrik Goosen with the Drury mount of the first coelacanth in the East London Museum, ca 1940.
After months of painstaking work Drury completed the new mount and the coelacanth was returned to the East London Museum in December 1939, where ‘the Board of Trustees expressed great pleasure at Drury’s work’ (Summers, 1975).8 Drury’s mount is still on display in the East London Museum. Astonishingly, the mould of the coelacanth, which Marjorie had claimed from the outset, was only returned to the East London Museum 14 years later in 1953 after years of correspondence (Summers, 1975).
Inevitably, after the announcement of the discovery of the first coelacanth off East London, other prior sightings of the prehistoric fish came to light. Margo and George Branch (pers. comm., 2016), highly respected marine biologists from the University of Cape Town, revealed that Margo’s uncle, Arnold Lundie, a professional biologist, had once caught a large blue fish with white spots and lobed fins off the Transkei coast near Umtata Mouth in the 1920s. Arnold was from a family of scientifically astute botanists, medical doctors and experienced anglers, but none of the family members recognised the fish as anything special. They cooked and ate it, noting that it had an oily flavour, like a shark. Years later, when the capture of the first coelacanth was announced, they realised that ‘their fish had been a coelacanth with the typical shape and colour’.
