Cornelius Vanderbilt Crane (June 29, 1905 - July 9, 1962) was an American explorer and philanthropist.

Early life

Crane was the son of Florence ( Higinbotham) and Richard Teller Crane Jr., and grandson of

Richard T. Crane Richard Teller Crane I (May 15, 1832 – January 8, 1912) was the founder of R.T. Crane & Bro., a Chicago-based manufacturer, later Crane Co. Biography Richard T. Crane was born on May 15, 1832, in Paterson, New Jersey (on the Tottoway Road, ...

, founder of

Crane Co. Crane Co. is an American industrial products company based in Stamford, Connecticut. Founded by Richard Teller Crane in 1855, it became one of the leading manufacturers of bathroom fixtures in the United States, until 1990, when that division ...

His maternal grandfather was Harlow Niles Higinbotham.

Career

He is best known for the Crane Pacific Expedition of 1928–1929, which he funded, and which took place aboard his yacht ''Illyria''. The expedition was sponsored by the

Chicago Museum of Natural History The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educationa ...

and staffed by a number of scientists and specialists. It left Boston Harbor on November 16, 1928, stopped at

Port-au-Prince Port-au-Prince ( ; ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Haiti, most populous city of Haiti. The city's population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2022 with the metropolitan area estimated at a population of 2,618,894. The me ...

Haiti Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...

, and then at the

Panama Canal The Panama Canal () is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. It cuts across the narrowest point of the Isthmus of Panama, and is a Channel (geography), conduit for maritime trade between th ...

. It departed the canal on December 30, 1928, for stops at the

Cocos Islands The Cocos (Keeling) Islands (), officially the Territory of Cocos (Keeling) Islands (; ), are an Australian external territory in the Indian Ocean, comprising a small archipelago approximately midway between Australia and Sri Lanka and rel ...

and Galapagos Islands, where it made extensive collections of local fish and birds. It then continued to the

Marquesas The Marquesas Islands ( ; or ' or ' ; Marquesan: ' ( North Marquesan) and ' ( South Marquesan), both meaning "the land of men") are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southern Pacific ...

group, the

Tuamotu Archipelago The Tuamotu Archipelago or the Tuamotu Islands (, officially ) are a French Polynesian chain of just under 80 islands and atolls in the southern Pacific Ocean. They constitute the largest chain of atolls in the world, extending (from northwest to ...

Tahiti Tahiti (; Tahitian language, Tahitian , ; ) is the largest island of the Windward Islands (Society Islands), Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France. It is located in the central part of t ...

Bora Bora Bora Bora (French language, French: ''Bora-Bora''; Tahitian language, Tahitian: ''Pora Pora'') is an island group in the Leeward Islands (Society Islands), Leeward Islands in the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific. The Leeward Islands comprise the we ...

Fiji Fiji, officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about ...

New Hebrides New Hebrides, officially the New Hebrides Condominium () and named after the Hebrides in Scotland, was the colonial name for the island group in the South Pacific Ocean that is now Vanuatu. Native people had inhabited the islands for three th ...

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands, also known simply as the Solomons,John Prados, ''Islands of Destiny'', Dutton Caliber, 2012, p,20 and passim is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 1000 smaller islands in Melanesia, part of Oceania, t ...

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

Borneo Borneo () is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world, with an area of , and population of 23,053,723 (2020 national censuses). Situated at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, it is one of the Greater Sunda ...

, and onwards, in what was ultimately a circumnavigation of the globe.

Personal life

On the expedition, Crane met Cathalene Isabella Parker Browning (1904–1987), step-daughter of the marine superintendent of the Panama Canal. They married in 1929, at which time he adopted his wife's daughter, Cathalene Parker Browning (1923–2005), from her previous marriage. After the couple divorced in 1940, he disinherited his daughter (she later gave birth to American actor and comedian

Chevy Chase Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase (; born October 8, 1943) is an American comedian, actor, and writer. He became the breakout cast member in the first season of ''Saturday Night Live'' (1975–1976), where his recurring ''Weekend Update'' segment b ...

), and his ex-wife subsequently married the Austrian painter Rudolf Anton Bernatschke. Crane remarried in 1955 to Minescule "Miné" Sawahara in a Shinto ceremony in Japan; she later established the Mrs. Cornelius Crane Scholarship at the

Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a Private university, private performing arts music school, conservatory in New York City. Founded by Frank Damrosch as the Institute of Musical Art in 1905, the school later added dance and drama programs and became ...

. Crane died in July 1962.

Legacy

Cornelius Crane is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of lizard, ''

Sphenomorphus cranei ''Sphenomorphus cranei'', also known Common name, commonly as Crane's skink and Crane's forest skink, is a species of lizard in the Family (biology), family Scincidae. The species is Endemism, endemic to the Solomon Islands. Etymology The Specif ...

''. Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). ''The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . (Crane, p. 61).

References

External links

Crane Family Collection
The Trustees * ''Birds of the Crane Pacific expedition'',

Ernst Mayr Ernst Walter Mayr ( ; ; 5 July 1904 – 3 February 2005) was a German-American evolutionary biologist. He was also a renowned Taxonomy (biology), taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, Philosophy of biology, philosopher of biology, and ...

and Sidney Camras, Field Museum of Natural History, 1938. * ''Fishes of the Crane Pacific expedition'',

Albert William Herre Albert William Christian Theodore Herre (September 16, 1868 – January 16, 1962) was an American ichthyologist and lichenologist. Herre was born in 1868 in Toledo, Ohio. He was an alumnus of Stanford University, where he received a Bachelor of ...

, Field Museum of Natural History, 1936

Cornelius Crane (1905-1962)
Smithsonian Institution Archives. {{DEFAULTSORT:Crane, Cornelius Vanderbilt 1905 births 1962 deaths 20th-century American explorers 20th-century American philanthropists