Before Errol Flynn owned the Zaca the ship had an adventurous life. All recorded here in ZACA VENTURE …
The Zaca is a two masted black diesel schooner, one hundred and eighteen feet over all, with a gross tonnage of eighty four; Templeton Crocker is her owner, tanned a pleasant ochraceous tawny, five feet ten over all, with a refined tonnage of about twelve stone. The two, in juxtaposition, with a hand-picked captain and crew, set themselves to aid and abet a scientific expedition. The Invitation was to spend two months on the Zaca in the Gulf of California; the Acceptance materialized as the Twenty-fourth Expedition of the Department of Tropical Research of the New York Zoological Society; the Route included Cedros Island, Cape San Lucas, Guaymas, Inez Bay, the Banks of Punta Arena and Gorda, Mazatlan, and Clarion Island; the Chronology was the year nineteen hundred and thirty six from March twenty fifth to May twenty fifth, San Diego to San Diego; the Personnel included Templeton Crocker, Master and Owner, Alfred Pedersen, Captain, three members of my Staff, John Tee Van, General Associate, Jocelyn Crane, Technical Associate, George Swanson, Artist, myself, and a crew of fifteen, French, Norwegian, Latvian, Irish, Swedish, German, and Samoan. And there was also Toshio Asaeda, Japanese artist, photographer, preparateur; a walking, sleepless incarnation of the word Work. Our trip took on the character of the spoor of a drop of water meandering down a dusty windowpane, in that we made decisions suddenly as to the details of the exact route, and adapted our plans to contingencies and the incidence of favorable locations. From our basic plan we never swerved, which was to spend as little time as possible in disconnected and uncorrelated dredging, seining, and diving, but to concentrate our researches in two or three zoologically interesting places. These proved to be the Inez Bay region, Cape San Lucas and the adjoining Banks, and Clarion Island. Whatever of value may accrue to our published scientific results will be due to this course of action. (From the Preface)
— David DeWitt
