The Mystery of the Pacific Ocean's Bath Ducks

Modern rubber ducks were indeed made of rubber up until the 1950s after which they were manufactured from PVC plastic, most in commonly yellow but in a range of other colours as well. Historians acknowledge that the Rubber Duckie song sung by Ernie on Sesame Street in 1970 is the reason why the rubber duck, to the exclusion of other toys, has found its way into bathrooms all over the world. Until now, little was known of earlier duck-shaped bath toys.

Discoveries of small wooden ducks all across the South Pacific Ocean, on islands from Tahiti to Australia have baffled historians. While aware that Polynesians, Melanesians, Micronesians and Australian Aborigines had all adopted small wooden likenesses of ducks into their cultures at about the same time, historians were unable to offer an adequate explanation for this.

Volunteers at the Historical Society of London have found secret diaries kept by Captain James Cook during his three voyages to the Pacific Ocean and after detailed analysis the mystery of the spread of the small wooden ducks has been solved.

Captain James Cook was a renowned aficionado of duck-shaped bath toys and had amassed a huge collection which filled his home in the East End of London, much to the dismay of his wife Elizabeth and six children. Eventually, Cook's collecting habit became an obsession. He would not leave his home without his favourite wooden duck and would bore anyone he met with excruciating details of his collection.

Captain Cook's official journals were published when he returned from his voyages but made no mention of wooden ducks whatsoever. It is only his secret diaries which contain entries relating to his duck collection and have revealed a simple explanation for the mysterious spread of wooden bath ducks across the Pacific Ocean. It appears that on each of his voyages to the Pacific Ocean, Captain Cook took with him around five hundred ducks which he then presented to the indigenous people wherever he landed. Each presentation of a wooden bath duck was recorded in his diaries in great detail and it is clear that Captain Cook got much more pleasure out of writing about the ducks than his official duties.

In the light of these astonishing discoveries, the Historical Society of London and the Pacific Islanders Cultural Association are preparing an exhibition of Captain Cook's wooden duck collection which will include ducks from his home collection and those given away during his travels. The exhibition will be taken to ten different countries and during 2007 and promises to shed new light on one of the world’s most famous explorers.

Comments (1)

The Pluck and Luck of the Duck ... written by NakId on November 7, 2006 Do not be misled into thinking that Captain Cook was alone in using bathtub ducks as the world's most effective oceanographic survey tool. ateline: 10th January 1992, twelve containers were washed overboard from a ship on its voyage from Hong Kong to Tacoma, Washngton. Oceanographers around the world immediately sprang to attention as one container sprang open, releasing thousands of yellow plastic ducks, blue plastic turtles, red plastic beavers and green plastic frogs began to map the world's oceanic currents, on a scale not within most frugal scientific budgets. Months later, Alaskans began reporting the first arrivals on their coastline. Driven by currents and wind, most travelled north. Some drifted northeast and became frozen into the sea-ice of the Bering Sea. Today, oceanographers suspect some may even now be heading back into the North Pacific, or via the Arctic Ocean and Siberia, out into the North Atlantic. Is it just coincidence that the world's most famous duck, Donald, wears a sailor's outfit? Is it just a rumour that plans are underway at NASA to use the navigational prowess of plastic ducks to be part of the exploration of the outer reaches of the universe? Maybe the next time you are playing with your yellow duck in the bath ... you should be aware that you are sharing the water with one of the world's greatest ever explorers ... perhaps eventually destined to go where no man has gone before.

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