Royal Navy's Zoo
Written by Godfrey Dykes
© RN Communications Branch Museum/Library
There are several bits on the WWW showing (or mentioning) details of the Royal Navy's Zoo which was sited on Whale Island Portsmouth in the famous naval gunnery school. In its day it was much visited and had many wonderful animals, many of them buried on the Island. Quite a few of them were transferred to the Zoo from ships, kept on board until they were too large, at a time when it was a cruel act to keep them incarcerated with little room for exercise, not to mention the ever present danger of the animal hurting somebody. This picture is the sole copyright of the IWM.
It shows a polar bear called Barbara greeting old shipmates. She was rescued as a cub from drifting ice off Greenland and was for some time the ship's mascot, until she became too large for the mess decks of a light cruiser and moved to a new home at Whale Island. The picture text suggests that the bear recognises two of her old ship mates, and true or not, that is a lovely thought and story. Hopefully the bear would have gone on to live a good and long life, growing to a stand-up height of approximately 8 feet for a female (10 to 12 feet for a male). I suggest that it is cruel to keep such an animal in captivity (although better than than dying at sea on a slowly melting ice-island) for they are known to wander far and wide in their natural environment, so this tiny restrictive cage must be depressing for her.
This snippet is not on the WWW and comes from the newspapers. Naval Zoo. The Zoo started in 1893 and this cutting comes from a 1921 edition.
There were lots of additions and sadly deaths, and this is just a typical one, without giving you a whole host of other examples. This comes from May 1936 one of the last arrivals at the zoo. The Zoo had closed come 1940 and the animals had been relocated to other zoo's around the country, especially to Zoo's away from large town's and cities which would be obvious target for German bombs.
That became one of the overriding factors in the decision to dispose of the naval zoo at Whale Island. The Germans would very quickly start to bomb military/naval targets especially high profile targets like a naval dockyard which came to fruition in the earliest months of the war. Apart from the welfare of the animals in the zoo, what would happen were the animals to escape after bombs had destroyed their cages, pens and secure areas? This article was designed to assure people living near zoo's that all would be well.
