Towards the end of the 19^th century the eyes of the worlds explorers was drawn to the wild and desolate landscapes of Tierra del Fuego in Patagonia and beyond, towards the unexplored Antarctic.

At the turn of the century the Swedish explorer Otto Nordenskjöld undertook several long and hazardous expeditions in areas that, at the time, were only unexplored blank spots on the South American map. It was during his stay in Patagonia that Nordenskjöld began to plan an expedition to the Antarctic.

Although the interest from the scientific community was immense, Nordenskjöld had difficulty in gathering the necessary funds for his expedition. This was thought to be probably due to the frequent  controversies he regularly became embroiled in with other prominent polar explorers of the time and, as a result, Nordenskjöld could not find the means to acquire the well equipped polar expedition ship he had wished for.  Instead he was forced to settle for an old Norwegian whaler - The Antarctic.

The expedition finally set out from Gothenburg harbor, Sweden, on the 16th of October 1901 and set up a base camp at Graham land on the Antarctic peninsula.  The Antarctic, with its crew, then returned to the Falkland Islands for the winter. On its way back to base camp the following spring, The Antarctica was trapped in unexpectedly large quantities of pack ice and was over the ensuing days slowly pulverized and crushed by the slow moving ice. The crew, however, did manage to reach the nearby island of Paulet and It was on Paulet Island that the expedition found the amazing discovery for which it is now renowned. 

Lack of food was a huge concern on Paulet and during a desperate last ditch hunting expedition, The Antarctica´s Norwegian captain, Carl Anton Larssen spotted a bizarre creature frozen solid in the ice directly beneath his feet. The creature measured about three foot five and was described by Captain Larsson as being of similar appearance to “a small girl with the lower body of a fish”.  The creature was removed from the ice and when an Argentinean rescue expedition finally arrived it was shipped to the Nordenskjöld base camp at Graham land. Here the creature was examined by the expedition’s doctor, Erik Ekelöf, who using primitive methods managed to preserve the remarkable find. He continued to perform careful examinations and studies of the strange creature during the long voyage home. The crew later named the creature Paulet after the island on which she was discovered.

Upon arrival in London the expedition assumed that their astonishing discovery would attract a multitude of attention, but perhaps because Captain Samuel Barret Eades had already created a huge scandal during the 1820s with his own falsified mermaid, or perhaps because the infamous American con artist P. T Barnum was currently displaying his own artificial mermaid in his travelling circus, interest was limited. The Royal Swedish Academy of Science made it clear they wanted nothing to do with them or their discovery, and in the end the Nordenskjöld expedition decided to keep their mouths shut about their discovery until the creature had been thoroughly examined once more.

Strangely, however, no further examinations where documented and the strange mermaid from Paulet Island stayed in the possession of Doctor Erik Ekelöf, still concealed from the outside world until his death in 1936, when it was donated to Dr Cagliostro’s cabinet of curiosities.

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