Page 25 - Bulletin 2 1998

22

finally agreed to build him an aquarium at his chosen site on the sea-shore at St. James. In the

event, they were remarkably generous. They agreed to his design of a large room with display
tanks which could be open to the public and also house some of Gilchrist’s living material, a

research laboratory and, upstairs, living accommodation for Gilchrist himself. Water was

pumped from the sea through a heavy metal pipe held down by pittons embedded in the
rocks. The aquarium was built in 1902 and Gilchrist took up residence immediately. (Figs.

2.3 – 2.6.)

This involved a good deal of travelling, as his research vessel, the Pieter Faure, was stationed
in Table Bay. In addition, Gilchrist had accepted the honorary post of Curator of Marine

Collections at the South African Museum. In 1902, the same year in which the St James

aquarium was built, the Museum built him a laboratory in its grounds. The Pieter Faure
collections were housed there and Gilchrist spent much of his time describing new species

and genera and sorting collections for identification by experts overseas. By contrast, the St.

James aquarium was devoted to living material and much of that material came, not
surprisingly, from False Bay.

In some ways we may envy Gilchrist. Few marine biologists anywhere in the world had, in

those days, their own aquarium, plus control of a research vessel, plus two reasonably well-
equipped laboratories. Although we may envy Gilchrist in having all these facilities, in other

ways he was not so fortunate. In fact his professional life presented a marked contrast to that

of a marine biologist today. Nowadays research is done by teams, with the support of research
assistants, technicians and, frequently, postgraduate students. But Gilchrist was a one-man

show; he had no body of co-workers of assistants and, worst of all, no-one with whom he

could share his ideas or discuss his research. He worked alone from his appointment in 1896
for a full decade and a half. Yet he was undeterred, never slackening in his resolve or losing

enthusiasm for his task.

How did he see that task? The Cape Government had, of course, appointed him to investigate

the distribution of commercial fishes, but Gilchrist’s aims went far beyond that. It was his