by A collection of 18th-century shells from Captain James Cook’s third voyage, thought lost for more than 40 years, has been returned to English Heritage after it was saved from a ship in “nothing short of a miracle”.
The collection, which contains more than 200 specimens including extinct species and many believed to have been sent back from Cook’s ill-fated voyage, is to be put on public display for the first time in more than 100 years .
A university threw the items away, but a retired scientist managed to save them from the ship.
Bridget Atkinson (1732-1814) became passionate about the collection, which serves as a record of Britain’s role in world trade and colonial rule at the end of the 18th century.
She never left Britain, and rarely left Cumbria, but collected more than 1,200 shells from around the globe.
The collection was inherited by his grandson, John Clayton (1792-1890), before being sold with the Clayton estate in 1930.
About 200 of the artefacts were still on display at Chesters Roman Fort and Museum in Northumberland and were later loaned to the zoology department of Armstrong College, now Newcastle University.
But, in the 1980s, the shells were thrown away during an office cleaning at the university.
They were feared lost forever, but it has now been revealed that they were rescued from a ship by a departed lecturer, Dr John Buchanan.
They have now been given to English Heritage by the Buchanan family and returned to the museum, where they have been reunited with a giant clam that was previously the only piece left in the collection.
Dr Buchanan’s family said: “Our father was a marine zoologist and senior lecturer from 1958 until his retirement, based at the Dove Marine Laboratory in Cullercoats.
“He preserved the collection because he believed in conservation, and the shells remained in our family’s home for 35 years.
“After our mother’s death, we discovered that the shells were part of the Clayton Collection. We were delighted to return the collection to English Heritage for future generations to enjoy.”
Shells include spiny oysters (Spondylus americanus).
In a letter from 1804, Mrs Atkinson asked her son Matthew, who was stationed in Jamaica, to get her the shell.
Found along the Atlantic coast, from North Carolina down to the Caribbean and as far as Brazil, it is adorned with spines nearly 2in (5cm) long.
Others include a sun star turban or circular saw shell, Astraea heliotropium, endemic to New Zealand, which George Dixon sent back to Mrs Atkinson when he was armourer under Cook during his third voyage on HMS Resolution.
Another shell is the giant clam, Tridacna gigas, the world’s largest bivalve, which is now protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).
The shamrock nautilus shell (Nautilus pompilius) also appears in the collection.
According to English Heritage, it is one of the most popular natural history items for collectors.
The animal that lived inside this shell had about 90 tentacles.
He lived in the outer chamber of the shell and, as he grew, he created larger chambers, each time the empty one was sealed.
Dr Frances McIntosh, English Heritage’s curator of collections for Hadrian’s Wall and the North East, said: “We’ve always known about the Bridget Atkinson collection but believed it was completely lost.
“It is nothing short of a miracle to find that the shells not only survived but were kept safe and loved during this time.
“Bridget Atkinson was a wonderful woman, with a genuine curiosity about the natural world.
“At a time when women usually collected shells to decorate their furniture and dens, Bridget was collecting them for their scientific and geographical interest rather than their aesthetics.
“As well as being a testament to Bridget’s character and contacts, this collection is also a fascinating record of Britain’s role in world trade in the late 18th century, not to mention the human impact on the natural world.”
Dr Tom White, chief curator of non-insect invertebrates at the Natural History Museum, who has been helping English Heritage identify and catalog the shells, said the collection contains many rare species, including the extinct Distorsio cancellina and others.
He said: “These would have been very popular in 18th century Britain, during the golden age of shell collecting when individual specimens could sell for thousands of pounds.”
– The collection will be on display, for the first time in over 100 years, at Chesters Roman Fort and Museum in Northumberland from Wednesday 13 March.
