For decades, one of Evansville’s strangest attractions looked like something out of a fever dream:
A replica of Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria. Filled with monkeys. Surrounded by a moat. With alligators in the water below.
It sounds like an Evansville urban legend.
It wasn’t.
The Monkey Ship at Mesker Park Zoo was a one-third-scale concrete replica of Christopher Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria. Built in 1933, the ship became one of the most unusual and memorable animal exhibits in the history of Evansville.
And decades later, it would inspire an even stranger local legend: that the alligators surrounding the ship eventually ate the monkeys.
That part of the story is considerably harder to prove.
A Ship Full of Monkeys
The Monkey Ship was constructed in 1933 with funding from the Evansville Rotary Club.
Unlike an ordinary cage, the exhibit consisted of a concrete ship sitting inside a water-filled moat. The idea was that the water would act as a natural barrier, allowing visitors to watch the monkeys without looking through bars.
The ship was approximately one-third the size of the real Santa Maria.
When it opened during the summer of 1933, 18 rhesus monkeys reportedly called the ship home. Other accounts place the number at approximately 20.
The opening even included a proper christening.
According to historical records preserved by the University of Southern Indiana, Georgia, one of Mesker Park Zoo’s chimpanzees, christened the Monkey Ship by breaking a bottle of orange juice over its bow.
Over the years, rhesus macaques, capuchin monkeys and lemurs lived aboard the ship.
But the monkeys weren’t the only animals there.
Yes, There Really Were Alligators
This is the part that sounds made up.
Young American alligators were kept in the water surrounding the Monkey Ship.
Visitors could therefore stand at Mesker Park Zoo and see monkeys climbing around a replica of a 15th-century sailing ship while alligators swam in the moat below them.
It was real.
And once you know that, an old Evansville rumor suddenly becomes a lot easier to understand.
Did the Alligators Eat the Monkeys?
For years, some Evansville residents have repeated a darker version of the Monkey Ship story.
According to the legend, monkeys occasionally ended up in the moat surrounding the ship.
And the alligators ate them.
Some versions of the story go considerably further, claiming that the alligators eventually ate all of the monkeys and that this was why the exhibit disappeared.
It is a fantastic story.
There is just one problem:
There is currently no reliable historical evidence that it happened.
Contemporary histories confirm that monkeys and alligators occupied the exhibit area, but no credible newspaper report, zoo history or archival source located so far documents the alligators killing all — or even a large number — of the monkeys.
In fact, monkeys continued living aboard the ship for decades.
The primates were eventually removed in 1991, when Mesker Park Zoo began moving animals into more naturalistic habitats.
So while the ingredients of the legend are remarkably real — the ship was real, the monkeys were real and the alligators were real — the alleged monkey massacre remains an Evansville urban legend.
Unless someone finds an old newspaper clipping that says otherwise.
The Mutiny on the Santa Maria
There was, however, at least one documented Monkey Ship incident that sounds almost as crazy as the legend.
On September 29, 1935, the Evansville Press reported that a female rhesus monkey named Sookie had started what the newspaper described as a “mutiny on the Santa Maria.”
Sookie discovered that she could leap approximately 15 feet from the ship to the wall surrounding the pond.
Then the other monkeys started trying it.
There was one significant difference:
Apparently, Sookie was the only monkey strong enough to actually make the jump.
Sookie escaped the exhibit and reportedly spent approximately three hours in a nearby grove of trees before her adventure came to an end.
Nearly 90 years later, the story remains one of the strangest documented episodes in Mesker Park Zoo history.
An Evansville Landmark
The Monkey Ship became a childhood memory for generations of Evansville residents.
By modern zoo standards, putting a colony of primates on a concrete ship surrounded by water — much less adding alligators to that water — would be an extraordinarily unusual exhibit.
Attitudes toward animal welfare and zoo design changed dramatically during the decades the Monkey Ship operated.
In 1991, animals were removed from the exhibit and transferred to habitats designed to more closely resemble their natural environments.
But the ship survived.
The concrete Santa Maria was later incorporated into a children’s bumper-boat attraction and has been restored over the years.
The Monkey Ship and Lolita
The Monkey Ship even found its way into American literature.
Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial 1955 novel Lolita contains a reference to an Indiana zoo where a large group of monkeys lived aboard a concrete replica of Christopher Columbus’s flagship.
The description is widely understood to refer to Mesker Park Zoo’s Monkey Ship.
That means one of Evansville’s strangest attractions became unusual enough to make its way into one of the most famous American novels of the 20th century.
Legend vs. Fact
TRUE: Mesker Park Zoo had a concrete replica of the Santa Maria filled with monkeys.
TRUE: The ship opened in 1933.
TRUE: Rhesus monkeys, capuchins and lemurs lived there over the years.
TRUE: Alligators were kept in the water surrounding the ship at one point.
TRUE: A monkey named Sookie escaped after making an approximately 15-foot jump in 1935.
TRUE: The Monkey Ship is apparently referenced in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.
UNVERIFIED: Alligators ate monkeys that fell into the moat.
URBAN LEGEND: The alligators ate all of the monkeys and caused the exhibit to close.
Legacy
The Monkey Ship occupies a strange place between Evansville history and Evansville folklore.
The actual story is bizarre enough that the legend hardly needed embellishment.
For decades, visitors really did walk into Mesker Park Zoo and encounter a miniature concrete version of Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria, populated by monkeys and surrounded — at least during part of its history — by alligators.
Then one of the monkeys really did stage a “mutiny” and escape.
Maybe that’s why the darker story survived.
Ask enough longtime Evansville residents about the Monkey Ship and eventually somebody will tell you about the monkeys and the alligators.
Whether an alligator ever actually ate one of those monkeys remains unproven.
But the fact that the story sounds completely believable might be the strangest part of all.
Location: Mesker Park Zoo & Botanic Garden, Evansville, Indiana
Built: 1933
Design: One-third-scale concrete replica of the Santa Maria
Original animals: Rhesus monkeys
Later animals: Capuchin monkeys and lemurs
Moat: At one point housed juvenile American alligators
Animals removed: 1991
Status: Structure survives
Local legend: Alligators ate the monkeys