Rocky Road: Sir Joseph Banks

Sir Joseph Banks

From "The Greening of the Empire: Sir Joseph Banks" by T.H. Watkins

As a boy, Joseph Banks rubbed his face with toads to dispel the myth that they caused warts. Wealthy by birth, Banks was not a diligent student, yet he possessed a passion for learning that lasted his entire life. While he was at Oxford, he spent much of his time managing his property and finances. He eventually left the university without a degree but then spent much of his time in the British Museum's reading room.

Banks took three major voyages. The first was to Newfoundland. The second was with James Cook on the Endeavour. The initial plan for that journey was to observe the Transit of Venus but weather interfered. On to the next set of plans, the travelers set out to discover Terra Australis Incognita, an undiscovered landmass rumored to exist in the far south. On that trip, the voyagers managed to see Tahiti, Bora Bora, New Zealand and Australia, Banks collected thousands of plant and animal specimens and took them back to Europe.

Long sea voyages were hardly a simple business in his day — of the eight men in Banks's company, only two came back alive. Even for those who survived, the experience could be awfully unpleasant, as Banks recorded in his journal.

Our bread indeed is but indifferent, occasioned by the quantity of Vermin that are in it, I have seen hundreds nay thousands shaken out of a single bisket. We in the Cabbin have however an easy remedy for this by baking it in an oven, not too hot, which makes them all walk off, but this cannot be allowd to the private people who must find the taste of these animals very disagreeable, as they every one taste as strong as mustard or rather spirits of hartshorn.

The privations Banks suffered at sea may have been somewhat compensated for when the travelers reached land, as he observed in Tahiti.

Love is the Chief Occupation, the favourite, nay almost the Sole Luxury of the inhabitants; both the bodies and souls of the women are modeled into the utmost perfection for that soft science idleness the father of Love reigns here in almost unmolested ease, while we inhabitants of a changeable climate are obligd to Plow, Sow, Harrow, reap, Thrash, Grind Knead and bake our daily bread . . .

Banks returned to England a celebrity, something that apparently went to his head. Soon after, he refused to sail on the Resolution when his requests for upgrades proved so extravagant that they had to be abandoned. He instead made his third major voyage to Iceland.

For someone so well traveled in his youth, Banks turned surprisingly sedentary later in life, weighed down with commitments and troubled by ill health. Despite this, he remained enormously energetic and generous, a good friend to many, regardless of nationality or social class. A man of no strong political beliefs and a member of the Republic of Letters, Banks enjoyed the ability to continue correspondence with overseas friends even during wartime. He managed to stay on good terms with both King George III and Benjamin Franklin during the American Revolution, and he maintained strong friendships with his French colleagues when, embroiled in its own revolution, France declared war on England. In the 1790s, as the English found the King's regime increasingly oppressive, however, Banks's reputation among the public was somewhat tarnished.

Settled in England, Banks oversaw the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and his achievements there were remarkable. When the Endeavour set sail, Kew cultivated only 600 species; in 1813, it had 11,000, thanks in no small part to his directorship. Somewhat less admirably, he lobbied to make Botany Bay — one of his most fruitful finds in Australia — a penal colony for British convicts. He became the longest serving, somewhat autocratic president of the Royal Society of London, probably the most prestigious scientific organization of the time. He gave financial and moral support to William Smith in making the first geologic map of England. And it was Banks who sent Captain William Bligh to collect breadfruit on the Bounty, now best known for the mutiny. But perhaps the most important legacy Banks left was the exchange of plants and animals between the Old World and the New. He made this possible through contacts with missionaries, naval officers, tradesmen and diplomats alike — forever changing the face of our planet.

For more information:
Joseph Banks: A Life by Patrick O'Brian
"The Greening of the Empire: Sir Joseph Banks" by T.H. Watkins in National Geographic Magazine, November, 1996 issue
Voyages of Discovery by Tony Rice
Nature's Government by Richard Drayton
Nature's Treasurehouse by John Thackray and Bob Press
"Joseph Banks: Pacific Pictures" by Patricia Fara in Endeavour Magazine, September 2003 issue
The Great Naturalists edited by Robert Huxley
The Map that Changed the World by Simon Winchester
Platypus by Ann Moyal
Cultures of Natural History edited by Jardine, Secord and Spary
Bursting the Limits of Time by Martin J.S. Rudwick
The First Scientific American by Joyce E. Chaplin
Putting Science in its Place by David N. Livingstone
Memoirs of William Smith by John Phillips
The Great Devonian Controversy by Martin J.S. Rudwick