The Fishy Smiths

by Mike Bruton

  Barnett (1953) described Margaret as follows:

  ‘She was of medium height, with a powerful, well-set body. Her face, untouched by cosmetics, was intellectual and strong, with heavy eyebrows, and eyes the colour of granite. She had a clear, sunburned skin. I learned later that she came from sturdy Scots-Afrikaner stock. … She was the youngest in the family and was made [to] rough it by her elder brother from the earliest days of childhood – invaluable origin and training, I found out later, for the prospective wife of an ichthyologist’ (Barnett, 1953).

  His description of JLB Smith is equally revealing:

  ‘He was not at all like my conception of a professor. The savant, as such, has always conjured up for me mental pictures of mild-mannered men with far-away looks. But Professor Smith was lean, he had a patriarchal visage, lean cheeks, and deep hollows at the temples; he seemed to me the epitome of perennial youth. He sat as straight as a guardsman; I felt that this man would retreat not an inch in compromise. His shrewd blue eyes were as clear now as in youth, and he gave the impression of great superiority over the uncertainties of smaller men. His movements were quick and decisive and his grey hair was short, in a brisk crew cut. He wore a light, off-white suit, and a black tie with a stiff white high-low collar. I had many times read, in novels, of gimlet eyes but this was the first time I had actually seen the real thing. They were blue, penetrating, and coldly speculative. They gave the impression of immense force of character, and single-minded purpose’ (Barnett, 1953).

  The interview was brisk and efficient. ‘The professor offered me a seat and questioned me. I knew that he was summing me up. He has a habit of not looking at you directly as he talks, but swings around suddenly, fixing his gaze on you. This has a startling effect, almost as if he has caught you not paying attention in class. … He is a master speaker, making his points with the practised ease of the professional lecturer’ (Barnett, 1953).

  Three weeks later Barnett received a letter from JLB Smith informing him ‘with no great enthusiasm’ that he would accompany the Smiths on the expedition. The Smiths and Barnett flew from Durban to Lourenço Marques on 29th May 1951 and then embarked on the motor vessel Lurio for Mozambique Island. The Lurio was a steel-hulled vessel with a shallow draught so that she could negotiate the many shallow sand bars that are typical of the inshore coastal waters of Mozambique.

  William Smith also participated in this expedition, at the age of 12, during his Standard 8 year at school.

  ‘William has good memories of his time on this expedition. The highlights were collecting a specimen new to science, Bathygobius william, riding turtles, coming face to face in the water with the massive grouper (National Geographic apparently had to cage the fish to prevent it from appearing in every picture) and missing 6 months of school’ (J Smith, pers. comm., 2017).

  Within the first day Barnett encountered Smith’s diligent approach to expeditionary work.

  ‘I soon found him to be an ingenious character, meticulous in detail and with a plan in everything he did. He never gave a direct order. He always passed an opinion and left one with the feeling that you could act to the contrary if you so desired. Disconcertingly he was usually right in his “opinions”. … Professor Smith, like Lewis Carroll, numbers every letter he writes, files everything, and had listed every article, down to the smallest box of pins, in the fifty-odd pieces of baggage that we took on the expedition. His list, for example, would read “Box 48; ¾ down right-hand side: extra forceps in metal sheath”’ (Barnett, 1953).

  The expedition also revealed many of JLB’s character traits. ‘It was never Professor Smith’s habit to praise because he said, “When a motor runs smoothly there is no need for repair – for comment. And when faulty, it has to be licked back into perfect running order”’ (Barnett, 1953). He was remarkably friendly and courteous to the local Mozambican people, both adults and children. When they arrived on the island of Ibo JLB Smith leaned down to talk to a young boy standing with his mother onshore, ‘whereupon with screams and babbling away in the native tongue he rushed around his mother’s skirts in an effort to escape. We learned later that the word he was screaming amounted roughly to “Cannibal”. It seemed he had been told that all white men ate human flesh. The professor’s interest convinced him that he was the chosen’ (Barnett, 1953). Smith also showed uncommon sympathy for the Portuguese lifestyle. They arrived at Ibo at about two o’clock but ‘the professor decided that to land immediately would be unfair as the officials were at siesta’, so they did some fishing.

  JLB’s relentless work ethic surfaced throughout the expedition, and he did not care for creature comforts in the field. He once caught Barnett relaxing briefly after lunch. ‘Have you any work to do?’ he asked. ‘Yes, I most certainly have, but I’ve just had lunch’, Barnett replied. ‘Relaxation?’ Smith fired back, ‘But you relax when you sleep, and you’ll relax forever when you’re dead. In the meantime we’ve got work to do.’ On another occasion Barnett dozed off while fishing. Suddenly he felt a sharp tug on the line and struck, only to find that the professor had pulled the line to wake him up.

  At other times Smith questioned his own work ethic and longed for a more leisurely lifestyle. In 1948 he wrote to a high-ranking friend in Mozambique, Commandante Tomas Vitar Duque, Port Captain in Lourenço Marques, ‘Sometime when life is not quite so full we intend to come to be able to enjoy some more leisurely things that you offer. I should love to idle for a few days on the beach at the Polana or at Inhaca, and not always feel work driving me away.’ Although this was a highly unlikely scenario, and never took place, it does reveal the mental conflict that he was experiencing at the time.

  Later in life JLB Smith was happy to acknowledge his weaknesses. In an article published when he was 59 years old, he wrote:

  ‘Advancing years have brought me solace, for with my relatively frail body my purely male pride is no longer outraged by having to acknowledge that my wife is physically more powerful than myself. Nevertheless it took years of skilful propaganda on her part to remove the hurt that she could handle weights beyond my lift and could row a boat under conditions where I would be helpless except at risk of serious internal strain’ (Smith, 1997, reprinted from 1956).

  Throughout the 1951 expedition Smith constantly admonished Barnett for his pipe and cigarette smoking. On one occasion, on a small coral atoll near Cabo Delgado, they were suddenly attacked by a swarm of malarial mosquitoes. As they fled along the beach, Barnett noticed something interesting: JLB himself took a few puffs in an effort to escape their tormentors. ‘The professor paused for one second to light a cigarette, puffing smoke wildly in a vain attempt to gas the mosquitoes, and gasping invective at how horrible it tasted.’

  Although it seems unethical today, Smith made extensive use of cigarettes as a means to encourage rural people to collect fishes for him. ‘He invariably kept tins of cigarettes to barter with fishermen for their catches’ (Barnett, 1953).

  In an article entitled ‘Magic Cylinders’, he extols the virtues of taking cigarette rewards on expeditions to remote parts of Africa:

  ‘The parts where we usually do our work are quite beyond the reach of ordinary supplies, and cigarettes are of far more value for our work than money, for fishermen and others will make an effort to give service and to bring specimens for cigarettes that hardly any money would tempt them to do.

  ‘It is most important to have entire uncleaned fish as specimens, and in hot climates it is very difficult to get fishermen to keep them like that for more than a short time. Cigarettes proved the only way. … Cigarettes are indeed the most potent means of maintaining discipline and constant willingness in the servant retinue, without obvious force, that we know. In Mozambique most of our natives are Government sailors or policemen, some excellent and intelligent. It is my policy to give regular rations of cigarettes and matches. There was rarely any misbehaviour, but when it occurred, it was pointed out. There was no scolding, the culprit was merely overlooked on ration day, a
nd it was never necessary to repeat the penalty’ (Smith, 1955b).

  In Old Fourlegs, Smith further comments, rather crudely, that he always took several hundred cigarettes with him when he travelled ‘… in wild parts. They are a wonderful open sesame to primitive hearts’ (Smith, 1956).

  The Smiths’ rigid exercise regime also impacted on Barnett’s laidback lifestyle:

  ‘I remembered how we had walked one afternoon to continue the filming of the San Sebastian Fortaleza [fort]. The professor and Margaret Smith walked fast, the theory being that not only is walking a means of transport, but one must also derive the benefit of exercise from the action so as not to waste time. … My fairly easy-going approach to life was not at one with Smith the martinet. This personality clash coloured and influenced our association even in the most mundane and normally unimportant matters.’

  Barnett (1953) also noticed that the Smiths did not enjoy their East Africa expedition in the way that most people would enjoy an outing into tropical Africa:

  ‘Enjoyment in their busy lives comes from the inner satisfaction of accomplishments and hardships that they endure willingly in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. … I felt that no matter what I did, I would become entrangled [sic] in the complexities of the professor’s will. However as we talked on and on, I began to understand a little more about this man, an extreme egotist, sublime in the certain knowledge of the supremity [sic] of his own intellect, which had been proved throughout his academic career in universities from Stellenbosch to Cambridge. Once he told me that he had known the Queen Mother personally when she was Lady Bowes-Lyon and how he had, as a young man, been driven down the Strand in a Rolls-Royce and not … allowed to alight to make a purchase. The chauffeur did that for him. “You see me now in rough khaki clothes, he said, and therefore find it hard to visualise such vastly different circumstances.”’

  On the island of Ibo, Barnett also learned about some of Margaret’s unusual interests:

  ‘We spent about an hour walking about this tiny island and discovered another fort. I have never met anyone so fond of forts as Margaret; she would walk for miles if she knew she would find some rambling remains over which to climb and speculate. I was never sure whether it was a love of history or an innate pugnacious spirit which brought forth her tirades on bloody battles of yore.’

  He said to her, ‘You would have made a fine general, or leader of those bands of Yugoslav girl guerrillas I knew during the war’. She smiled and said nothing (Barnett, 1953). Once he asked Margaret whether, as a scientist, she was also an atheist. She replied, ‘The world of nature is too ordered and the creatures I study too lovely to be created haphazardly, by mere chance’.1

  On this expedition Margaret explained JLB’s work ethic to Barnett:

  ‘The professor demands a standard of work and behaviour far above the capabilities of the normal man. Many of his former students are today successful men; they often come back to visit him, now as friends and to laugh over all they went through at his hands in their student days. His students fell into two distinct groups, those that liked him and those that didn’t. Those who liked him were, in his own opinion, those who WORKED. … He made things difficult for the others and would waste no time on them. Therefore if he is taking this trouble about you, he must see something worthwhile in you’ (Barnett, 1953).

  Of all their fish-collecting expeditions, probably the most rewarding was the extensive 1954 trip to Kenya, the Seychelles, Aldabra and Dar es Salaam. Smith (1957) describes their visit to Aldabra in revealing detail:

  ‘Probably because of the remoteness and difficulty of this region, Aldabra has received little attention from the marine biologist, indeed less than twenty species of marine fishes have been recorded from there. Three days were spent at Aldabra and we employed every possible moment in intensive collecting of fishes by every possible means, including explosives, poison, nets, spears and lines, by which means we obtained at least ten thousand specimens of numerous species and acquired a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the fish life of that area at the time of our visit.’

  Ten thousand fishes in three days! That is wholesale slaughter, by any measure. In a bizarre way ichthyologists are fortunate in that their quarry, among the lower vertebrates, tends to be lumped with the invertebrates, which entomologists and arachnologists don’t hesitate to collect by the thousands. This is in contrast to the other vertebrates, the amphibians and reptiles, and especially the birds and mammals, for which it would be difficult to justify collecting even a few dozen specimens. There is no doubt that the Smiths made optimal use of rare opportunities to collect fishes in remote places, often in bizarre ways, and went to great lengths to record and preserve the specimens for long-term study, but collecting on this scale, especially in areas like Aldabra that now enjoy strict protection, would be unthinkable today.

  The huge collections of fishes included many new range extensions and species unknown to science. Most importantly, the artists were able to record the live colours of many of them, which was essential for the major book on the sea fishes of southern Africa that Smith was planning. ‘An important conclusion that JLB reached at this time was that many fishes, even small, apparently feeble species that were previously only known from the Pacific Ocean, also occur off Africa and have a very wide Indo-Pacific distribution. On the basis of these findings an American ichthyologist concluded that the great Indo-Pacific ‘was just one little puddle after all!’ (MM Smith, 1969).

  Margaret (1959) later recalled working with William on this expedition:

  ‘In 1954 came the highlight of my underwater work. With a bit of feminine manoeuvreing I managed to have my 15 year old son, William, included as a member of our expedition to Kenya, Seychelles and the islands north of Madagascar. Six foot tall, strong and healthy, no phobias to overcome, well trained in our work, and loving it, he made an ideal diving companion. During this expedition for a month we lived aboard a small 40ft fishing vessel. We travelled close on 2000 miles through some of the loneliest seas of the world, where the only land in the vast open Indian Ocean is a few tiny specks of islands north of Madagascar. My son and I worked as a team, and we had many experiences and adventures. … The tide was rising fast, William and I had been hard at it for nearly three hours, and were just picking up the last few specimens before returning to the boat, when millions of tightly packed small silvery whitebait suddenly came along and surrounded us. … Within a minute or two we were surrounded by huge fish snapping up the silvery morsels … William and I sat spellbound. We were merely parts of the scenery, for fish of up to 20 to 80 lb. would come shooting straight towards us, and within inches of our masks suddenly veer away. It was a never to be forgotten scene: Kingfish, rock-cods, barracudas, tunnies and even a shoal of shy exquisite torpedo-shaped rainbow-runners’ (MM Smith, 1959).

  In all his field work JLB Smith was very ably assisted by Margaret who, without any prior training in the field, threw herself into the study of fishes and eventually, by force of circumstances, illustrated most of his publications. As fishes lose their colour soon after death, it is essential that the artist should be in the field with the fish-collecting team so that notes can be made of the live colours. Taking four fish artists plus Margaret and a photographer with him on his expedition to Mozambique in June/July 1946 underlines the importance that JLB Smith placed on illustrating fishes (Gon, 1996).

  Margaret illustrating fish and JLB examining specimens on the 1951 expedition to Mozambique.

  Glyn Hewson, who arrived in Grahamstown with his family on 1st March 1951 and lived next door to the Smiths in Gilbert Road, remembers helping Margaret after one of the early 1950s expeditions:

  ‘At one point during these early years, I had a vacation job for two weeks helping Mrs Smith classify and sorting the huge numbers of fish which she and her husband brought back from East Africa after each expedition. I have a cherished memory of those hours and hours of not very exciting work made so memorable because she knew so much
about so many of those fish. She would chat away with such excitement and humour lacing information with anecdotes and stories about the expedition … I was fascinated by her meticulousness and I had the feeling that there was just nothing which she could not do. I remember her talking about the frenzy when they had just received a whole lot of new fish; or just after there had been a controlled explosion. How fast and accurately she had to work to record colours and details for those masterpieces which she would then create. The consummate artist. Correct down to the last scale’ (G Hewson, unpublished memoir, 2004).

  He also remembered the readiness with which the Smiths shared information on their latest expeditions with the Grahamstown public:

  ‘Both she and JLB were wonderful lecturers. Invariably, after an expedition, there would be the chance to go down to the General Lecture Theatre and hear an enthralling account of months up the East coast with slides and maps and even displays on view. Margaret was exceptional on these occasions. I will never ever forget her ability to make her fish pop out of her talk and swim in front of you. She would chuckle and chat about them like intimate acquaintances, which of course they were: “now look at this fellow; what is so special about him is the shape of this fin …. And the reason for this is of course, that …” or “this little one is so beautiful but don’t be misguided, he can be very nasty; if you look closer …”.’