Harriet (tortoise)

Harriet (formerly Harry; c. 1830 – 23 June 2006) was a Galápagos tortoise (Chelonoidis niger, specifically a western Santa Cruz tortoise C. n. porteri) who had an estimated age of 175 years at the time of her death in Australia. At the time of her death, she lived at the Australia Zoo which was owned by Steve and Terri Irwin. Harriet is one of the longest-lived known tortoises, behind Tu'i Malila, who died in 1966 at the age of 188 or 189; Jonathan, who remains alive at an age of 192, and possibly Adwaita, who died in 2006 at an estimated age of between 250 and 255 years.

Harriet was reportedly collected by Charles Darwin during his 1835 visit to the Galápagos Islands as part of his round-the-world survey expedition, transported to England, and then taken to her final home, Australia, by John Clements Wickham, the retiring captain of the Beagle. However, doubt is cast on this story by the fact that Darwin had never visited Santa Cruz, the island that Harriet originally came from.

In August 1994, a historian from Mareeba, Ed Loveday, published a letter in the local newspaper about two tortoises he remembered at the Botanic Gardens in 1922 and that the keepers of the time were saying that the tortoises had arrived at the Gardens in 1860 as a donation from John Clements Wickham, who was the first lieutenant (and later captain) of HMS Beagle under Fitzroy during the voyage of the Beagle in 1835.

Wickham actually brought three tortoises (named Tom, Dick and Harry) to Australia when he arrived after retiring from the Royal Navy in 1841; these lived at Newstead House from 1841 to 1860. Records show that the tortoises were donated to the Botanic Gardens in 1860 when Wickham retired as Government Resident of Moreton Bay (now Brisbane) and left Australia for Paris.

Some researchers claim that Wickham was in Australia in 1841 and did not visit England that year to pick up the tortoises. This differs from information published by Dr. C.G. Drury Clarke and others, who list him as being in England in 1841. Furthermore, the British Hydrographic Department published maps of Wickham's surveys in 1841, indicating that he was in London that year. In addition, John Lort Stokes, who assumed command of Beagle after Wickham, explicitly states in his book Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 that Wickham departed to England after resigning his position as captain.^{[citation needed]}

There is evidence from letters that Charles Darwin was aware that Wickham had these tortoises, as he sent a letter to Huxley in 1860 informing him that he should speak with Wickham in Paris about the last of the tortoises from the 1835 expedition because he had them. This makes it at least possible that the three tortoises at the Brisbane Botanic Gardens were personally collected by Darwin.^{[citation needed]}

It is thought that as many as 40 tortoises were stowed aboard Beagle. Some were slaughtered for food, others were kept as souvenirs by crew members, a few as scientific specimens. Once Beagle returned to England, the care of these large creatures became burdensome, so they were adopted by a local museum. There is no evidence that Darwin kept any of them as a pet in his home.^{[citation needed]}

Darwin definitely collected tortoises on San Cristobal, San Salvador, and Santa Maria; however, the species on Santa Maria (C. n. niger) was already nearing extinction when Darwin visited the islands, having been killed and eaten by prisoners on the prison colony there. The tortoises he collected there had been taken by the prisoners from other islands for food, and Darwin collected some of them before they could be eaten. Hence they were a mixture of subspecies from a number of islands. Harriet, as a C. n. porteri, is from Santa Cruz. One of the other tortoises (Tom) is still in the Queensland Museum and has been identified as a C. n. chathamensis (from San Cristobal).^{[citation needed]}