The Last Great Auks and the Collectors Who Killed Them

The Last Great Auks and the Collectors Who Killed Them On 3 June 1844, three Icelandic fishermen landed on the remote volcanic island of Eldey and killed the last confirmed breeding pair of great auks. The birds were strangled, their skins sold to a collector, and their egg cracked and abandoned. The species had survived ice ages and geological upheaval, but vanished within centuries of sustained human contact. What makes the extinction particularly stark is that it was not driven by necessity or ignorance. By the 1840s, naturalists and hunters alike knew the great auk was nearly gone, yet this rarity made specimens more valuable to museums and private collections, creating a market incentive that accelerated the final decline. Clare Vale explores this moment of documented extinction alongside other events from 3 June, including Chinese official Lin Zexu’s destruction of over a million kilograms of British opium in 1839, the 1969 collision between HMAS Melbourne and USS Frank E. Evans that killed 74 American sailors, and the founding of Barcelona’s Academy of the Distrustful in 1700, a scholarly society built on intellectual scepticism. Chapters The Last Two The extinction of the great auk on Eldey Island, Iceland, 3 June 1844. Three fishermen killed the last confirmed breeding pair for a museum collector. The species had survived ice ages but vanished within centuries of human contact, driven not by necessity but by the market value of rare specimens. Also covered: Lin Zexu’s destruction of British opium in China (1839), the HMAS Melbourne and USS Frank E. Evans collision (1969), and the founding of Barcelona’s Academy of the Distrustful (1700). Links https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/the-great-auk-extinction.html https://www.britannica.com/animal/great-auk https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/last-great-auks-are-killed https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lin-Zexu https://www.history.com/topics/china/opium-wars https://www.navy.gov.au/hmas-melbourne-ii https://www.naval-history.net/OW-US/Evans/USS_Frank_E_Evans.htm