Albatrosses have always featured in art, literature and science from their very first description by early sailors. Scientists identified each new species as it was discovered, poems were written and the name albatross was given to some of man’s best technical achievements. This timeline picks out the highlights over the last 400 plus years.

1593
Sir Richard Hawkins describes seabirds seen on his voyages ‘certain great fowles as big as swannes, soared about us... from the poynt of one wing to the point of the other, both stretched out, was about two fathoms’

1672
John Fryer recorded ‘albetrosses’ during a voyage to India: ‘We met with those feathered Harbingers of the Cape... Albetrosses. they haue great Bodies, yet not proportionate to their Wings, which mete out twice their length.’

1747
George Edwards’s Natural History of Birds features an accurate drawing of an albatross

1798
Samuel Taylor Coleridge publishes The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere and amends the tile to the more familiar one, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in a later edition.

1856
The ‘Albatros’ glider constructed by French sailor Jean Marie Le Bris.

1882
August, US marine research vessel Albatross launched. The first research vessel of its kind, it was steam-driven and equipped with electric lights.

1915
German biplane Albatross first manufactured - used by Baron von Richthofen

1928
WG Alexander’s Birds of the Ocean published, the first guide to all of the world’s seabirds containing 13 albatross species

1937
De Havilland passenger plane DH91 Albatross first flown

1949
Short-tailed albatross declared extinct (prematurely!)

1966
IUCN publish their first Red Data list of the world’s endangered birds, including one albatross species: short-tailed

1968
November 22, Fleetwood Mac release their hit single Albatross

2004
IUCN publishes Red List with 19 albatross species listed as critical, endangered or vulnerable