Kitabı oxu: «Planting the World»

Illustrations

PEOPLE

Joseph Banks, oil portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, after 1795. (© Trustees of the British Museum)

Archibald Menzies, oil portrait by E.U. Eddis, 1836. (Linnean Society of London)

Francis Masson, oil portrait by George Garrard, 1887. (Linnean Society of London)

John and Alexander Duncan. (Courtesy of Cathy and Andrew Duncan)

Allan Cunningham, oil portrait, c.1835. (National Library of Australia PIC Screen 51 #R88)

Portrait of Sir John Barrow (1764–1848). (Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International CC BY 4.0)

Matthew Flinders, c.1800, watercolour miniature portrait. (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales)

Captain William Bligh. (GL Archive/Alamy Stock Photo)

Robert Brown. Line engraving by C. Fox, 1837, after H. W. Pickersgill. (Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International CC BY 4.0)

George Macartney and George Staunton. Pencil, pen and ink, wash and watercolours. Images taken from Album of 372 Drawings of Landscapes, Coastlines, Costumes and Everyday Life Made during Lord Macartney’s Embassy to the Emperor of China. Originally published/produced in 1792–1794. (© British Library Board. All rights reserved/Bridgeman Images)

Daniel Charles Solander. Lithograph by Miss Turner after J. Zoffany (Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International CC BY 4.0)

Arthur Phillip, oil portrait, 1786, by Francis Wheatley. (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales)

THINGS

Drawing of a flat peach made in Canton by John Bradby Blake and Mok Sau c.1773. (Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Upperville, Virginia)

Sketch by William Bligh of the plant nursery on HMS Bounty, 1787. (Sir Joseph Banks Collection, SS 1:1, Sutro Library, California State Library)

Sketch of plant cabin on HMS Guardian, 1789. (Sir Joseph Banks Collection, G 1:5, Sutro Library, California State Library)

The mutineers turning Lieutenant Bligh and part of the officers and crew adrift from HMS Bounty, painted and engraved by Robert Dodd, 1796. (Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales)

HMS Providence and HMS Assistant at the Lizard, 1791, watercolour by Lieutenant George Tobin. (State Library of New South Wales, SAFE/PXA 563)

William Alexander’s watercolour drawing of an opuntia and cochineal from Rio de Janeiro, 1792. (Sir Joseph Banks Collection, En 1:20, Sutro Library, California State Library)

Breadfruit, 1792, watercolour by Lieutenant George Tobin. (State Library of New South Wales, SAFE/PXA 563)

White peony by an unknown Chinese artist, c.1794–6. (Courtesy of Cathy and Andrew Duncan)

A view of Funchal, Madeira, oil painting by William Hodges (1744–97). (Art Collection 2/Alamy Stock Photo)

Transplanting of the bread fruit trees from Otaheite, painting by Thomas Gosse, 1796. (Historic Images/Alamy Stock Photo)

PLACES

The library at the home of Joseph Banks, Soho Square, undated drawing attributed to Ralph Lucas (1796–1874). (Natural History Museum)

Kew Gardens: the Pagoda and Bridge, 1762, oil painting by Richard Wilson. (Yale Center for British Art, B1976.7.172, Paul Mellon Collection)

Cape Town, 1791, watercolour by Lieutenant George Tobin. (State Library of New South Wales, SAFE/PXA 563)

Adventure Bay, 1792, watercolour by Lieutenant George Tobin. (State Library of New South Wales, SAFE/PXA 563)

Point Venus, Matavai Bay, 1792, watercolour by Lieutenant George Tobin. (State Library of New South Wales, SAFE/PXA 563)

Presidio at Monterey, c.1792, watercolour by William Alexander (after John Sykes). (Edward E. Ayer Digital Collection, Newberry Library)

Friendly Cove, Nootka Sound, c.1792, watercolour by William Alexander. (Edward E. Ayer Digital Collection, Newberry Library)

Qianlong’s court (showing George Thomas Staunton on one knee in front of the Emperor), 1793, watercolour by William Alexander. (Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. Gilbert Davis Collection)

A scene at Tientsin, 1793, engraving by William Alexander, The Costume of China, 1805.

View of Sir Edward Pellew’s Group, Gulf of Carpentaria, c.1802, oil painting by William Westall. (ZBA7944, © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)

The European factories, Canton, 1806, oil painting by William Daniell. (Yale Center for British Art, B1981.25.210, Paul Mellon Collection)

The road to the home of Baron von Langsdorff on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, 1817–18, watercolour by Thomas Ender. (HZ 13845, Graphic Collection Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)

A panorama of São Paulo, 1817–18, watercolour by Thomas Ender. (HZ 13309, Graphic Collection, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna)

Dramatis Personae

Clarke Abel (1780–1826). Surgeon to the Amherst embassy to China 1816–17

Adam Afzelius (1750–1837). Botanist, student of Linnaeus, Swedenborgian, hired by Sierra Leone Company and Banks’s plant collector in Sierra Leone 1792–6

William Aiton (1731–93). Head Gardener Kew 1759–93, Banks’s main contact at the royal garden

William Townsend Aiton (1766–1849). Son of the above and Head Gardener Kew 1793–1841, taking over his father’s duties and contact with Banks

William Alexander (1767–1816). Artist to the Macartney embassy to China 1792–4

John Allen (1773–1806). Lead miner, Banks’s appointed mineralogist on HMS Investigator 1801–3

William Amherst (1773–1857) 1st Earl Amherst of Arracan. Leader of the third British embassy to China (Amherst embassy) 1816–17, Governor-General of India 1823–8

James Anderson (1738–1809). Physician General East India Company Madras, naturalist, first person to bring cochineal to Banks’s attention in 1786

George Austin (?–1790). Banks’s appointed gardener on HMS Guardian 1789

Joseph Banks (1743–1820). Botanist, President of the Royal Society

Sarah Sophia Banks (1744–1818). Sister of Joseph Banks

(Lady) Dorothea Banks (1758–1828). Wife of Joseph Banks

Francis Baring (1740–1810). Banker, head of Baring and Co. London’s chief merchant bank, Director 1779–1810 and Chairman East India Company 1792–3, responsible for the Company’s role in the Macartney embassy to China 1792–4

Francis Louis Barrillier (1773–1853). Army officer, surveyor in New South Wales 1800–3

John Barrow (1764–1848). Comptroller on Macartney embassy to China 1792–4, Secretary to George Macartney Cape Colony 1797–1804, Second Secretary to the Admiralty 1804–45

Henry Bathurst (1762–1834) 3rd Earl Bathurst. Politician, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies 1812–27

Nicolas Thomas Baudin (1754–1803). Naval officer, commander French exploration vessel Le Géographe on its intended circumnavigation of Australia 1800–3, met Matthew Flinders in present-day South Australia in April 1802

Franz Bauer (1758–1840). Botanical artist active at Kew

Ferdinand Bauer (1760–1826). Botanical artist, brother of the above, Banks’s appointed artist on HMS Investigator 1801–3

Lord Beauchamp. See Francis Seymour Conway

Andreas Berlin (1746–73). Botanist, student of Linnaeus, plant collector in Sierra Leone alongside Henry Smeathman 1773

Charles Blagden (1748–1820). Physician, Secretary to the Royal Society 1784–97, Banks’s confidant

John Bradby Blake (1745–73). Supercargo East India Company Canton 1770–3, co-producer of hybrid Chinese-British botanical drawings

William Bligh (1754–1817). Naval officer, commander HMS Bounty and HMS Providence 1787–9 and 1791–3 respectively, Fourth Governor of New South Wales 1806–8

Essex Henry Bond (1762–1819). Naval officer, commander East India Company ship Royal Admiral

Jacob Bosanquet (1755–1828). Director from 1782, Deputy-Chairman Court of Directors 1797, 1802, 1810, Chairman Court of Directors 1798, 1803, 1811 East India Company

James Bowie (c.1789–1869). Gardener, Banks’s plant collector in Brazil 1814–16 and at the Cape 1816–23

William Broughton (1762–1821). Naval officer, commander HMS Chatham 1791–3

Robert Brown (1773–1858). Botanist, Banks’s plant collector in Australia on HMS Investigator 1801–3, Banks’s librarian 1810–20

Earl of Buckinghamshire. See Robert Hobart

Charles Bunbury (1740–1821). Politician, Chairman Bunbury Committee on crime and punishment 1778–9

David Burton (?–1792). Gardener, Banks’s plant collector in Australia

George Caley (1770–1829). Gardener, botanist, Banks’s plant collector in Australia 1800–10, Superintendent St Vincent Botanic Garden 1816–22

John Call (1731–1801). Engineer, politician, promoted transportation and the establishment of penal colonies

Duncan Campbell (1726–1803). Merchant, shipowner, contractor for transportation and for the provision of convict hulks

Lord Castlereagh (1769–1822). Politician, President of the Board of Control 1802–6

Charles Cathcart (1759–88). Military officer, politician, leader of the first British embassy to China (Cathcart embassy) 1787–8

Henry Chamberlain (1773–1829). Diplomat, British consul-general in Brazil, an important contact for James Bowie and Allan Cunningham while plant collecting in Brazil

John Clarkson (1764–1828). Naval officer, abolitionist, Governor of Sierra Leone 1792, responsible for bringing the first settlers from Nova Scotia

David Collins (1756–1810). Military officer, judge advocate of New South Wales 1788–96

James Colnett (1753–1806). Naval officer, fur trader, commander merchant vessel Prince of Wales 1786–8

Francis Seymour Conway (1743–1822) Lord Beauchamp. Politician, headed the Beauchamp Committee hearings into transportation 1785

James Cook (1728–79). Naval officer, explorer, commander HMS Endeavour 1768–71, HMS Resolution 1772–5, 1776–9

John Cranch (1758–1816). Naturalist on HMS Congo 1816

John Crosley (1762–1817). Astronomer on HMS Investigator 1801–3

Allan Cunningham (1791–1839). Gardener, Banks’s plant collector in Brazil 1814–16 and Australia 1816–31

Alexander Dalrymple (1737–1808). Cartographer, First Hydrographer of the British Admiralty 1795–1808

Nathaniel Dance (1748–1827). Naval officer, commander East India Company ship Earl Camden 1802–4 engaging French fleet in the Battle of Pulo Aura 1804

William Devaynes (1730–1809). Politician, merchant, banker, Chairman East India Company 1770–1807 passim

James Dickson (c.1738–1822). Botanist, nurseryman in Covent Garden

George Dixon (1748–95). Naval officer, fur trader, commander merchant vessel Queen Charlotte 1785–8

Jonas Dryander (1748–1810). Botanist, Banks’s librarian 1782–1810

Alexander Duncan (1758–1832). Surgeon to the East India Company Canton 1788–97, Banks’s plant collector in Canton during this period

John Duncan (1751–1831). Brother of the above, Surgeon to the East India Company Canton 1783–8, Banks’s plant collector in Canton during this period

Henry Dundas (1742–1811) 1st Viscount Melville. Politician, Treasurer of the Navy 1782–1800, Home Secretary 1791–4, President Board of Control 1793–1801, Secretary of State for War 1794–1801, First Lord of the Admiralty 1804–5

Hinton East (?–1792). Planter, botanist, Receiver-General of Jamaica 1779, Banks’s important contact in Jamaica

John Ellis (c.1710–76). Naturalist, early proponent and supporter of the Linnaean classificatory system

Richard Cadman Etches (1744–1817). Merchant, entrepreneur, formed the King George’s Sound Company the first British company to trade for furs in the Pacific Northwest 1785

Matthew Flinders (1774–1814). Naval officer, commander HMS Investigator 1801–3

George III (1738–1820). King of the United Kingdom 1760–1820

Hugh Gillan (?1745–98). Physician to the Macartney embassy to China 1792–4, plant collector in Brazil and China on this mission

Peter Good (?–1803). Gardener, Banks’s plant collector in Calcutta 1794, Banks’s appointed gardener and plant collector on HMS Investigator

William Goulburn (1784–1826). Politician, Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies 1812–21

Erasmus Gower (1742–1814). Naval officer, commander HMS Lion conveying members of the Macartney embassy to and from China 1792–4

Charles Green (1734–71). Astronomer on HMS Endeavour 1768–71

William Grenville (1759–1834) 1st Baron Grenville. Politician, Home Secretary 1789–91

Charles Francis Greville (1749–1809). Politician, antiquarian, collector

William Hamilton (1730–1803). Antiquarian, collector, British Ambassador to Naples 1764–1800

George Harrison (1767–1841). Civil servant, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury 1805–26

Lord Hawkesbury. See Charles Jenkinson

Robert Hobart (1760–1816) 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire. Politician, President of the Board of Control 1812–16

James Hooper (?–1830/1). Gardener, Banks’s plant collector in China on the Amherst embassy 1816–17, head gardener Buitenzorg (now Bogor) Botanic Gardens 1817–30

John Hope (1725–86). Physician, Professor of Botany and King’s Botanist University of Edinburgh 1761–86

Anthony Pantaleon Hove (?–1830). Gardener, Banks’s plant collector in southwest Africa 1786, Gujarat 1787–8

John Hunter (1737–1821). Naval officer, Second Governor of New South Wales 1795–1800

Charles Jenkinson (1729–1808) Lord Hawkesbury. Politician, President of the Board of Trade 1786–1804

Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770–1828) 2nd Earl of Liverpool. Politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1812–28

William Jones (1746–94). Jurist, philologist, orientalist, judge Supreme Court Calcutta 1783–94

Engelbert Kaempfer (1651–1716). Naturalist, physician to the Dutch East India Company Nagasaki 1690–2

Paul Ke (c.1752–?). Missionary, Chinese interpreter to Macartney embassy to China 1792–4

William Kerr (1779–1814). Gardener, Banks’s plant collector in Canton 1803–10, Superintendent Ceylon Botanic Garden 1810–14

James King (1750–84). Naval officer, commander HMS Discovery on James Cook’s Third Voyage 1779–80

John King (1759–1830). Civil servant, Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Home Department 1791–1806

Philip Gidley King (1758–1808). Naval officer, Third Governor of New South Wales 1800–6

Johan Gerhard Koenig (1728–85). Pharmacist, physician, botanist, plant collector on India’s Coromandel Coast 1768–85

Robert Kyd (1746–93). Military officer, Superintendent Calcutta Botanic Garden 1787–93

David Lance (c.1755–1820). Supercargo East India Company in Canton 1775–89 and 1803–4

Baron Georg Langsdorff (1774–1852). Physician, naturalist, diplomat in Brazil 1813–30

William Elford Leach (1791–1836). Zoologist, assistant librarian British Museum 1813–22

James Lee (1715–95). Nurseryman, joint owner Vineyard Nursery Hammersmith 1745–95

Jacob Li (c.1752–?). Missionary, Chinese interpreter to Macartney embassy to China 1792–4

James Lind (1736–1812). Astronomer, physician, accompanied Banks to Iceland 1772

Carl Linnaeus (1707–78). Botanist, physician, Professor of Medicine Uppsala University 1741–72, Rector Uppsala University 1750–71, established modern botanical nomenclature

Charles-Alexandre Linois (1761–1848). Naval officer, commander of the Marengo and the French fleet during the Battle of Pulo Aura 1804

Lord Liverpool. See Robert Banks Jenkinson

David Lockhart (1786–1845). Gardener, Banks’s plant collector on HMS Congo 1816, Superintendent Trinidad Botanic Gardens 1818–45

Israel Lyons (1739–75). Botanist, mathematician, astronomer, an early exponent of Linnaean taxonomy and nomenclature, taught (1764) and inspired Banks

George Macartney (1737–1806). Diplomat, Governor of Madras 1781–5, leader second British embassy to China (Macartney embassy) 1792–4, Governor of the Cape Colony 1796–8

James Main (c.1765–1846). Gardener, plant collector in China 1790s

William Marsden (1754–1836). Orientalist, First Secretary of the Admiralty 1804–7

Nevil Maskelyne (1732–1811). Mathematician, Astronomer Royal 1765–1811

Francis Masson (1741–1805). Kew gardener, plant collector at the Cape, the Atlantic and Caribbean, the Mediterranean and North America.

James Matra (1746–1806). Sailor, diplomat, promoter of settlement in New South Wales 1783–5

Murray Maxwell (1775–1831). Naval officer, commander HMS Alceste on the Amherst embassy to China 1816–17

Archibald Menzies (1754–1842). Assistant surgeon Royal Navy, gardener, botanist, Banks’s plant collector in the Pacific on the Prince of Wales 1786–9 and on HMS Discovery 1791–4

Anne Monson (c.1727–76). Botanist and plant collector

John Montagu (1718–92) 4th Earl of Sandwich. First Lord of the Admiralty 1748–51, 1763, 1771–82

Dan Moowattin (c.1790–1816). Dharug guide with George Caley in Australia 1805–10

Thomas Morton (?–1792). Secretary to Court of Directors East India Company 1783–92

David Nelson (?–1789). Gardener, Banks’s plant collector on HMS Discovery 1776–80 and on HMS Bounty 1787

Evan Nepean (1752–1822). Administrator, Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department 1782–94, First Secretary to the Admiralty 1795–1804

August Nordenskjöld (1754–92). Chemist, Swedenborgian, hired by Sierra Leone Company

Franz Pehr Oldenburg (1740–74). Soldier, plant collector in the Cape meeting Banks, Solander and Masson 1771–3

Mungo Park (1771–1806). Surgeon, Banks’s sponsored explorer in West Africa 1795–7

Sydney Parkinson (c.1745–71). Banks’s appointed botanical artist on HMS Endeavour 1768–71

William Paterson (1755–1810). Military officer, botanist and explorer in Australia 1791–1810, Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales 1801–10

Robert Peel (1788–1850). Politician, Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies 1810–12

James Pendergrass (1766–1851). Naval officer, commander East India Company ship Hope to and from Canton 1805–6

Arthur Phillip (1738–1814). Naval officer, commander HMS Sirius First Fleet to New South Wales 1787–8, First Governor of New South Wales 1788–90

Constantine Phipps (1744–92) 2nd Baron Mulgrave. Naval officer, explorer, Banks’s close friend for over thirty years

William Henry Pigou (fl.1775–83). Supercargo East India Company in Canton

William Pitcairn (1712–91). Physician, botanist, President Royal College of Physicians 1775–85, owner of substantial garden in Islington

William Pitt (1759–1806). Politician, Prime Minister of Great Britain 1783–1801, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1801, 1804–6

Home Popham (1762–1820). Naval officer, Rear Admiral 1814–20, politician 1804–12 passim

Nathaniel Portlock (c.1747–1817). Naval officer, commander merchant vessel King George 1785–8, commander HMS Assistant 1791–3 to Tahiti

John Pringle (1707–82). Physician, President of the Royal Society 1772–8

Puankhequa I (1714–88). Principal Hong merchant in Canton

Puankhequa II (1755–1820). Son of the above and principal Hong merchant in Canton

Qianlong Emperor (1711–99). Sixth Emperor of the Qing dynasty China 1735–96

William Ramsay (fl.1771–1814). Secretary, Court of Directors, East India Company c.1792–1806

John Reeves (1774–1856). Assistant inspector of teas East India Company in Canton, Banks’s plant collector in Canton 1812–20

John Rennie (1761–1821). Civil engineer involved in assessing the steamboat HMS Congo 1815–16

Matthew Riches (1755–?, fl. 1791–1814). Naval officer, commander of the East India Company ship Thames to and from Canton 1806–7

Edward Riou (1762–1801). Naval officer, commander HMS Guardian 1789–90

Henry Roberts (1756–96). Naval officer, Lieutenant HMS Discovery 1776–80

William Roxburgh (1751–1815). Surgeon, botanist, Superintendent Calcutta Botanic Garden 1793–1814

Patrick Russell (1727–1805). Physician, naturalist to the East India Company in the Carnatic 1785–91

Friedrich Sello var. Sellow (1789–1831). Gardener, botanist, plant collector in Brazil 1814–31

Granville Sharp (1735–1813). Lawyer, abolitionist, proponent of the settlement of Sierra Leone 1787–9

Henry Smeathman (1742–86). Naturalist, entomologist, plant collector in Sierra Leone for a consortium including Banks 1771–5

Christen Smith (1785–1816). Banks’s botanist on HMS Congo 1816

Christopher Smith (?–1807). Banks’s appointed gardener on HMS Providence 1791–3, Banks’s appointed gardener on the Royal Admiral 1794, Superintendent Penang Botanic Garden 1805–7

James Smith (?–1789). Banks’s appointed gardener on HMS Guardian 1789

James Edward Smith (1759–1828). Botanist, President of the Linnean Society of London 1788–1828

Percy Smythe (1780–1855) 6th Viscount Strangford. Diplomat, British Envoy to Portugal (Brazil) 1806–15

Daniel Solander (1733–82). Botanist, student of Linnaeus, Keeper Natural History Department British Museum 1773–82

Anders Sparrman (1748–1820). Botanist, student of Linnaeus, naturalist on HMS Resolution 1772–5

George Spencer (1758–1834) 2nd Earl Spencer. Politician, First Lord of the Admiralty 1794–1801

George Leonard Staunton (1737–1801). Physician, diplomat, Secretary to George Macartney on the Macartney embassy to China 1792–4

George Thomas Staunton (1781–1859). Son of the above, sinologist, East India Company employee 1798–1816

Philip Stephens (1723–1809). Politician, First Secretary of the Admiralty 1763–95

John Stuart (1713–92) 3rd Earl of Bute. Politician, Prime Minister of Great Britain 1782–3, adviser to Augusta Dowager Princess of Wales concerning Kew 1751–72

George Suttor (1774–1858). Market gardener, plant collector in Australia 1800–20 passim

Olof Swartz (1760–1817). Botanist, student of Carl Linnaeus the younger, Banks’s close friend

Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). Mathematician, engineer, visionary

Lord Sydney. See Thomas Townshend

Edward Thompson (c.1738–86). Naval officer, commadore of the Africa Station Royal Navy 1782–6, commander HMS Grampus 1785–6

Thomas Boulden Thompson (1766–1828). Naval officer, commander HMS Nautilus 1785–6

Henry Thornton (1760–1815). Politician, banker, abolitionist, Chairman Sierra Leone Company 1791–1808

Carl Peter Thunberg (1743–1826). Botanist, student of Linnaeus, surgeon to the Dutch East India Company Nagasaki 1775–6

Thomas Townshend (1733–1800) 1st Viscount (Lord) Sydney. Politician, Home Secretary 1783–9

George Tripp (1752–1830). Naval officer, commander HMS Grampus 1786, commander HMS Sphinx 1790–1

James Kingston Tuckey (1776–1816). Naval officer, commander of HMS Congo 1815–16

William Tudor (?–1816). Comparative anatomist on HMS Congo 1816

George Vancouver (1757–98). Naval officer, commander HMS Discovery 1791–5

Gerard De Visme (1726–97). Merchant based in Lisbon 1746–91

Carl Bernhard Wadström (1746–99). Industrialist, abolitionist, promoter of the colonisation of West Africa

Samuel Wallis (1728–95). Naval officer, commander HMS Dolphin 1766–8

James Watt Jr. (1769–1848). Mechanical engineer, businessman, consultant to the navy regarding the steam engine on HMS Congo

William Westall (1781–1850). Banks’s appointed landscape artist on HMS Investigator 1801–3

Whang at Tong (fl.1774–96). Linguist, scholar and businessman in Canton, visited England 1774–?81 and accompanied Banks in and around London

William Wilberforce (1759–1833). Politician, abolitionist, Director Sierra Leone Company

James Wiles (1768–1851). Banks’s appointed gardener on HMS Providence 1791–3

George Yonge (1731–1812). Politician, Secretary at War 1782–94

Prologue

When I first thought of writing this book, I had in my mind an image of Joseph Banks that I had pieced together from the various biographies that had been written about him in the twentieth century and supplemented by other accounts in which he appeared as a major character. The image I formed was of a man who was an autocratic administrator; a man of great personal wealth who manipulated his powerful connections at the highest level in order to make Britain the greatest nation on earth and its empire second to none; a man who used science for these ends; a man who could be seen and caricatured as a powerful spider at the centre of an enormous web.

This was the image I brought to my research, but as I began reading through Banks’s voluminous extant correspondence – letters to and from him – and the endless amount of scribbled-on paper, in the form of notes, lists, draft reports and memoranda – the image of the powerful spider at the centre of the web began to dissolve, to be replaced by a radically different impression, that of someone who was less authoritarian, less one-dimensional and less in control; who was more responsive and less manipulative; someone whose relationships were more personal and informal; and who was more appealing, in short, more human. Ultimately, Banks was a figure who represented the culmination of an era that was on the wane, an era when an individual could still, by amassing a great library and mastering its contents, provide critical aid and information to a great variety of projects in the wider world.

This book is not a biography although I do provide a biographical sketch in the introduction. I am focusing on just one of Banks’s many interests, albeit the central and most fervently held, his love for plants. This passion combined the scientific study of plants and his personal dedication to supplying King George III’s garden in Kew with the finest examples of the world’s botanical bounty.

As a young man, Banks had gone as a naturalist on three important scientific voyages, one of which was an unprecedented circumnavigation of the globe lasting almost three years. Yet, after he was thirty, he never went to sea again; it is tempting to see his enthusiasm for sending other men to collect and move plants across the seas on his behalf as a vicarious reliving of his earlier experiences.

Many of these collectors were gardeners who had worked at Kew, but others, mostly from Scotland and the European continent, were trained botanists; a few were ship’s surgeons and government officials, and others who having no specifically relevant occupation had become fascinated by natural history. Banks chose some of these men to travel and collect on his behalf; but many others contacted him to volunteer their services.

The twenty-two chapters in this book, based primarily on Banks’s correspondence and jottings, tell the stories of these collectors: the different ways in which they entered Banks’s life, their practices and problems across the world – how they interacted with their shipboard companions, especially the ship’s captain; how they decided which plants to gather; how they found them and how they tried to move them by ship across the oceans. Banks referred to these activities as his favourite project and to himself as a projector: his role, he once explained, was no more than to facilitate their execution. Though the projects did not always begin with botany in mind, nor for that matter were they necessarily even initiated by Banks, once he became involved, either by being invited or by just joining in, he gave them a botanical twist.

Building chronologically and across the world, layer by layer, each chapter reveals how and when Banks became involved; what he did to give the projects a botanical direction, and with what consequences. At the same time, it recounts, where possible in their own words, how collectors pursued their instructions, how they conducted themselves far away from home, how they interacted with their environment, local materials and particularly local people. The results were not always satisfactory: collectors, like their plants, often did not survive the ordeals that beset them.

Banks, like his contemporaries, took it for granted that plants were there for the taking. They did not concern themselves with questions of ownership; at the same time, they were also generally unaware of the consequences of transplantation and the introduction of foreign species into new habitats. They assumed it was beneficial.

Banks was immensely curious, and it is his desire for knowledge that drives the narrative of the book. People and plants were the motivating force for his actions and sent his mind and his collectors exploring the world and its oceans.

Introduction

Joseph Banks and Kew

‘If I am to do all to write all to direct all & to pay for all & no human being feel inclined to thank me I shall I fear in due time feel as sulky as an old sow who has lost her scrubbing Post . ’ [1]

Who was Joseph Banks?[2] He was born on 13 February 1743 in London to William and Sarah Banks, the couple’s first and only son.[3] William entered Middle Temple, London, but is not known to have pursued any legal career. Though he and his wife, who was from Derbyshire, spent some of their time in the St James’s area of London at their Argyll Street home, most of their life was lived at their country estate at Revesby Abbey, Lincolnshire. Here, William, now also a Member of Parliament for a Cornwall constituency, devoted himself to the Lincolnshire estates which he had inherited from his father in 1741.

Joseph’s formal education began at the age of nine at Harrow School but four years later he was transferred to Eton, where he followed a curriculum primarily in Latin, Greek and English literature, which he studied dutifully but without much enthusiasm or success. Towards the end of his stay, he was also instructed in algebra, geography and French.

Next was Christ Church, Oxford, which he entered as a gentleman-commoner on 16 December 1760, aged seventeen. During his first year at the university, Joseph’s father William died aged forty-one. When he came of age in 1764, Banks inherited his father’s Lincolnshire estates and thus became an extremely wealthy young man.

Banks continued to attend university and during his time there he became intensely interested in natural history. As a boy, he had collected plants and insects like many others of his age and class but now he wanted to study botany seriously. To get some kind of formal instruction in botany – the subject was not on the curriculum at Oxford – Banks, who now had money, and with the support of Humphrey Sibthorp, the Sherardian Professor of Botany (who did not teach the subject), paid to be present at a set of lectures delivered during the summer of 1764 to a group of sixty enthusiastic students by Israel Lyons, a Cambridge botanist and astronomer.[4]

Lyons was one of the earliest exponents of the new Linnaean system in Britain and shared his understanding of and passion for it with Banks. In 1735, Carl Linnaeus, who was born in southern Sweden in 1707, published a new, simple and radical classification system based on the sexual characteristics of plants (the number of stamens and pistils).[5] The nomenclature he devised consisted of a binomial description of genus followed by species. At Uppsala University, where he taught medicine and botany, Linnaeus educated a large number of devoted students, many of whom travelled abroad searching for plants and spreading knowledge of his botanical system.[6] Although Banks wanted to meet Linnaeus, he never did (Linnaeus died in 1778) but his close associates, Daniel Solander and Jonas Dryander, were both educated by Linnaeus, as was one of his collectors and many others in his circle.

Lyons and Banks became close friends and their association worked to both men’s benefit over the coming years until 1775, when Lyons died at the age of thirty-six.

Banks left Oxford without a degree shortly after Lyons’s lectures. He could have done anything he liked – gone into the law, Church, or the City – or simply enjoyed himself as a wealthy young man about town, but his great enthusiasm was for plants. As soon as he could he moved to Bloomsbury close by the newly opened British Museum, to which he obtained a reader’s ticket on 3 August 1764, and there threw himself into the study of botany, helped by its world-famous herbaria, illustrations and texts.

At that time, the British Museum was the only public space in London where natural history could be studied. While he was there, Banks became acquainted with others like himself, and through his new contacts and friendships, he was elected in his absence at age twenty-three a Fellow of the Royal Society on 1 May 1766.

Like every enthusiastic naturalist, Banks went out and about botanising, observing and collecting living specimens in their habitat. A rare chance to botanise beyond Europe came Banks’s way in April 1766, when an old school friend, now Lieutenant Constantine Phipps, invited him to join HMS Niger bound for Newfoundland and Labrador, on fisheries protection duty.[7] Banks eagerly accepted the opportunity.

The Niger, with Banks aboard, was away from England for nine months, from 22 April 1766. Six of those months were spent in and around Newfoundland and Labrador. Coming home by way of Lisbon on 26 January 1767, Banks landed with a substantial haul of new natural specimens – plants, birds, insects and fishes – all of which needed to be classified and some of which were illustrated as well, for which task he principally employed the great and highly established Linnaean artist, Georg Ehret, and the young Scottish artist, Sydney Parkinson, to whom Banks had just been introduced by James Lee, the part owner of the famous Vineyard Nursery in Hammersmith.[8]

Exciting as this adventure was, it paled into insignificance when compared to the next one. Not only was it a longer expedition and to a part of the world that only a few Europeans had ever been to, but it would be partly sponsored by the Royal Society, of which he would become one of its most famous Fellows. This epic voyage to the South Pacific would become a defining moment in Banks’s life and interests.

There are many beginnings to the voyage of HMS Endeavour but a significant one took place on 15 February 1768 when King George III received a ‘Memorial for Improving Natural Knowledge’ from the Royal Society.[9] The Society was appealing to the King for his financial support to send two men to the South Pacific somewhere in a rectangle bounded by a latitude ‘not exceeding 30 degrees [south] and between the 140th and 180th degrees of longitude west’, as defined by Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, to observe the transit of Venus, predicted to be visible there on 3 June 1769 – an event that would not occur again until 1874.[10] The Royal Society had been discussing since at least June 1766 how they would contribute to observing and recording this rare but crucially important astronomical occasion, from which it was hoped they could calculate the size of the solar system. On 19 November 1767, the Society’s newly constituted Committee for the Transit had agreed the general plan of sending observers on a ship to the Pacific that would need to be rounding Cape Horn no later than January 1769.[11] Time was running out for adequate preparations to be made. ‘The Royal Society’, the memorial pleaded, ‘was in no condition to defray this Expence [which they had estimated at £4000, not including the cost of the ship], their Annual Income being scarcely sufficient to carry on the necessary business of the Society.’ Time was of the essence. Several other European powers (the memorial pointed to France, Spain, Denmark and Russia) were already making their own preparations for the event and Britain, in the forefront of astronomical science, simply could not afford to be a bystander. The memorial was signed by James Douglas, Earl of Morton, the Society’s president, and fourteen Fellows including Benjamin Franklin and Nevil Maskelyne.[12]

By late February 1768, the King had consented to defray the costs of sending observers to the southern hemisphere and, at the same time, he ordered the Admiralty to provide a suitable ship to take them to their destination.[13] By the end of March, the Admiralty had agreed which ship to purchase. It was called the Earl of Pembroke. It had been built in Whitby a little more than three years earlier and was currently lying unused in the Thames to the east of the present location of Tower Bridge. Just over a week later, on 5 April, the Admiralty informed the Navy Board, who were responsible for the day-to-day administration of the Royal Navy, that the ship, now renamed HMS Endeavour, and at the relatively small size of 32 metres long and 9 metres wide, should be prepared and armed as necessary for ‘conveying to the southward such persons as shall be thought proper for making observations on the passage of the planet Venus over the sun’s disc’.[14]

For the time being, the ship had no commander and, more importantly, no specific destination in the southern hemisphere for observing the astronomical event. In the discussions leading to the drafting of the memorial, however, suggestions were made that one of the Marquesas Islands, which had been sighted by Álvaro Mendaña in 1595, or one of two islands in Tonga (then named Rotterdam and Amsterdam Islands and last seen by Abel Tasman in 1643), might be suitable, but no one was certain precisely where in the ocean these likely candidates were.[15]

While the issue of the ship’s destination remained unresolved, that of the Endeavour’s commander was moving swiftly along. Sometime during the week after the order to get the ship ready for sea, that is before mid April 1768, the Admiralty found in James Cook the man that they wanted to appoint to command. Cook was not a young man and, as far as the Royal Navy was concerned, fairly inexperienced, but he certainly had talent.[16] He was born in Yorkshire and first went to sea when he was eighteen years old working for a Whitby company involved in carrying coal from the northeast of England to London. Once Cook’s apprenticeship was over he sailed on ships throughout the North Sea, from Holland in the south to Norway in the north. He did well, and he was promoted, but then, and for no reason that has come down to us, he volunteered, in 1755, to join the Royal Navy in Wapping, East London. Two years later he became a master, qualified, therefore, to sail naval ships. By then, however, war had erupted between Britain and France and their respective allies, and Cook was sent on a naval squadron to North America where he participated in several battles in and around the St Lawrence River. When, in 1763, peace came to bring an end to what was then referred to as the Seven Years War, Cook, who had by now distinguished himself in surveying and cartography, in addition to navigation, was appointed to be the surveyor on a naval expedition to Newfoundland over which Britain had been given sovereignty under the terms of the peace treaty. There he remained, apart from short spells back in London, until the early part of November 1767, when he returned bearing a cache of elegantly produced maps and hydrographic surveys of the coasts of this geographically complicated island.[17]

Cook intended to return to Newfoundland in the spring of 1768, once he was satisfied that the engravers were competently handling his manuscript maps, but this didn’t happen. His requisitions to the Admiralty to prepare his surveying ship for the next season coincided precisely with their search for someone to command HMS Endeavour. Cook never crossed the North Atlantic again. Instead, from now until his murder in Hawaii in February 1779, his life was bound up wholly with the Pacific.

It was now May 1768. The Endeavour was being prepared but where was it heading? Cook, and Charles Green, whom the Royal Society had already appointed as the expedition’s astronomer, were the designated observers. They needed an island on which they could erect their observatory. Would Cook be able to find the Marquesas or Amsterdam and Rotterdam island? And if he could, would the ship be welcomed or attacked?

While these questions were being discussed in the Admiralty and the Royal Society, something wholly unexpected happened.[18] On 20 May 1768, Samuel Wallis, a naval commander, arrived in London with incredible news. In August 1766, Wallis had been given command of HMS Dolphin whose objective was to sail into the Pacific in search of Terra Australis Incognita, the substantial land mass that was supposed to exist in southern latitudes – Alexander Dalrymple, the noted hydrographer and cartographer, preferred to use the term ‘Southern Continent’ and many followed his example.[19] Wallis reported that high land had been seen in the distance during the voyage but what caught his and everyone else’s imagination was his discovery of an extraordinary island and civilisation, which he named, in honour of his sovereign, ‘King George the Third’s Island’.[20] Wallis was an excellent navigator and equipped with the latest instruments to calculate that most elusive of navigational parameters – longitude. He reported that this island, which had abundant food and water, a healthy climate, a good anchorage and welcoming people, and which we now know as Tahiti, lay at 17 degrees 30 minutes latitude and 150 degrees longitude, west of London, precisely within Maskelyne’s oceanic rectangle.

Wallis knew nothing about the Royal Society’s interest in tracking Venus and the Admiralty had not expected him to arrive back in London for at least a year, that is sometime in 1769. As it happened, because of widespread illness among his crew, his own weakness and serious doubts that his ship could stand any more wear and tear, Wallis had decided to abandon a part of his surveying objectives and hurry home by way of the Cape of Good Hope (in spite of his instructions to return by way of Cape Horn).[21] History would have been very different had he carried out his instructions to the letter.

Wallis’s discovery of the island and of an excellent anchorage in the very north of the island, at a place he named Port Royal, or Matavai Bay in Tahitian, where he had anchored on 23 June 1767, could not have been better news for the Royal Society. The vague destination of the Marquesas and Tonga was now replaced by a firm, precise and, therefore, perfectly findable location. The predicted date of the transit was almost the same as the date of Wallis’s anchorage so that what he described then, especially the weather, would equally apply to the Endeavour’s stay. On 9 June 1768, a fortnight after Cook had officially taken charge of the Endeavour, the Council of the Royal Society endorsed the choice of the island discovered by Wallis as the expedition’s destination.[22] In the following month, the Admiralty reaffirmed the Society’s decision of where to observe the track of Venus when they presented their instructions to James Cook, who had, in the meantime, been promoted to the rank of lieutenant.[23] To guide him to Tahiti, the Admiralty presented Cook with copies of ‘such Surveys, plans and Views of the Island and Harbour as were taken by Capt Wallis, and the Officers of the Dolphin when she was there’.[24]

The Royal Society Council meeting minute of 9 June 1768 recorded the important decisions that had been taken since the ‘Memorial’ of mid February: the observers, Cook and Green, had been chosen and their salaries agreed; the ship and its commander had been commissioned; and the location pinpointed in Maskelyne’s rectangle of southern sea.

At this point, the scientific aspects of Cook’s expedition to the Pacific were astronomical and geographic. The minute of the Royal Society’s Council meeting, which recorded Cook and Green’s appointment, also had a small note to the effect that the Society’s secretary would be asking the Admiralty that ‘Joseph Banks … being desirous of undertaking the same voyage … for the Advancement of useful knowledge … He … together with his Suite … be received on board of the Ship, under the Command of Captain Cook.’[25]

Banks attended his first meeting at the Royal Society on 12 February 1767 shortly after his return from Newfoundland and Labrador.[26] Though he was not in London when, in November 1767, the Committee of the Transit recorded its decisions about how the Society wished to have Venus’s track observed, it is very possible that he knew about it shortly afterwards, and certainly by the time of the ‘Memorial’ to the King on 15 February 1768, Banks had made up his mind to try and join the expedition.[27] Over the next few months, by dint of careful negotiations and relationships, especially with Philip Stephens, the First Secretary of the Admiralty, whom he had met at the British Museum, Banks convinced those in authority that he should go to the Pacific.[28] The Royal Society Council minute of 7 June 1768, requested the Admiralty to accept Banks, accompanied by seven others, including two artists (Sydney Parkinson and Alexander Buchan), a secretary (Herman Spöring) and four assistants and servants (James Roberts, Peter Briscoe, Thomas Richmond and George Dorlton), all paid for by him, to join the ship.[29]

More than a month later, on 22 July, the Admiralty informed Cook that the Royal Society’s request had been accepted. Instead of seven in Banks’s accompanying suite, they now stipulated that eight, in addition to Banks, would be going.[30] The eighth person was Daniel Solander, probably the most important person in Banks’s intellectual life since Israel Lyons.

Solander was Linnaeus’s best and most favourite student, and had been invited to England from Sweden, especially by the botanist John Ellis, to expound his teacher’s new system of classification. Since 1763 he had been busily working on cataloguing the Museum’s natural-history collections, primarily those that Hans Sloane had bequeathed. In the following year he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society.[31]

Solander, ten years Banks’s senior, probably met Banks when he first used the British Museum’s Reading Room, and soon after this meeting he took over Banks’s botanical education where Lyons had left off. He had prepared Banks for his Newfoundland voyage and, on his return, helped him catalogue the plants that had been collected.[32] It is not surprising then that Banks confided in Solander that he was planning to join the Endeavour. Solander was ‘very excited by my plans, and immediately offered to furnish me with information on every part of natural history which might be encountered on such an ambitious and unparalleled mission’. Banks later explained that several days later, when they were dining at the home of a mutual friend, the topic of the Endeavour came up. Solander jumped to his feet and asked Banks if he wanted a companion to join him. Banks replied, ‘Someone like you would be a constant benefit and pleasure to me!’ Solander did not hesitate. ‘I want to go with you,’ he exclaimed.[33]

On 24 June 1768 Solander wrote to the Trustees of the British Museum to tell them about Banks’s offer, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had the power to grant leaves of absence, had agreed he should go. Solander added that this unique opportunity would allow him to collect for the museum.[34] Banks may have been well known in the Royal Society, especially its exclusive dining club, which he frequented increasingly after the ‘Memorial’ had been sent to the King, and in the British Museum’s Reading Room, but in the world of botany, it was Solander who was the more famous. He was a great addition to the voyage.

This was now quite a different expedition from what had been planned by the Royal Society when they petitioned the King for financial help. It wasn’t just advances in astronomy and geography that they hoped would gain from the expedition. Now natural history, and botany in particular, had a leading role. There were also two Fellows of the Royal Society on board.

John Ellis, who had known Banks since 1764, wrote to Linnaeus excitedly, telling him about the forthcoming voyage.[35] Ellis’s main news for Linnaeus was that his student, Daniel Solander, was accompanying Joseph Banks, whom he described as a ‘very wealthy man’, to the Pacific. Ellis added that they were very well-equipped, with a fine library and all of the tools necessary to collect and preserve natural history specimens; or, in Ellis’s own words: ‘No people ever went to Sea better fitted out for the purpose of Natural History, nor more elegantly.’ What Ellis did not mention was the huge quantity of cases and book shelving that Banks was taking on board – ‘such a Collection … as almost frighten me’, Banks remarked.[36]

Banks and his suite were given rooms next to Cook’s. The ‘scientific gentlemen’ would be sharing his great cabin: specimens in bottles and in presses, nets and hooks, and sheets of drawing paper were jammed up next to maps and mathematical instruments.[37] Deferentially, Ellis concluded his letter to Linnaeus by saying that ‘All this is owing to you and your writings’.

On 30 July 1768, Cook received his instructions. He was to take the ship to Port Royal Harbour by way of Cape Horn. On the way, the Lords of the Admiralty remarked, ‘You are at Liberty to touch upon the Coast of Brazil, or at Port Egmont in Falkland Isles, or at both in your way thither.’ The first stop though was Madeira, where Cook was ordered to ‘take on board such a Quantity of Wine as you can Conveniently stow for the use of the [Ship’s] company’.[38]

So, on 25 August, the Endeavour, with almost one hundred men on board, ten of whom had already been to the Pacific on the two previous voyages of HMS Dolphin, left Plymouth for the Pacific Ocean.

Following his instructions, Cook took the Endeavour to Madeira where he stocked up with 14,000 litres of wine. Banks and Solander had been collecting specimens from the sea as the Endeavour made its way south, but Madeira now gave them the first opportunity to try out their methods for collecting on land and for recording and drawing botanical specimens, in the ship’s great cabin.[39] With the generous assistance of the English Consul and the resident English physician (himself a naturalist) and despite it not being the best time of the year for botanising, by the end of their five days’ stay, over three hundred species of plants had been collected – Solander reported to Linnaeus that of these fifty or sixty were new species.[40]

On 18 September, Cook set sail for Rio de Janeiro on the other side of the Atlantic. The stay in the city, from 14 November until 7 December, was generally a frustrating time for Banks and his entourage. Their welcome from the authorities was frosty, and they were not given permission to land. It was a bitter disappointment, especially when compared to their warm reception in Madeira. Surreptitiously evading the restrictions, Banks and Solander managed a few precious hours on shore and, in the end, either by their own means or by bribing locals to bring plants to the ship, they managed to collect about three hundred specimens: Parkinson drew about 10 per cent of them. The ship’s company hurriedly wrote letters home as they did not know when they would get another chance to send them. Soon they would be entering a part of the Pacific where there would be no passing European ships to which they could entrust their letters. They did not even know at this stage by what route they would be returning home, or when.

For about five weeks, the Endeavour made its way south through the Atlantic until 14 January 1769, when the ship anchored in a sheltered bay near the tip of Tierra del Fuego. Solander and Banks rushed to collect as much as they could. Banks was anxious to go into the interior. The local people seemed friendly and the naturalists’ activities were not made difficult as in Rio de Janeiro. But it was here that the first tragedy of the voyage struck.

When they were climbing a part of the interior that resembled the Alps, the weather suddenly turned cold, with snow and icy winds. They were too far from the ship to make it back before nightfall and two of Banks’s black servants, George Dorlton and Thomas Richmond, having drunk too much, literally froze to death.

Banks continued to collect but stayed closer to the ship. On 21 January, the Endeavour left its anchorage and headed for Cape Horn where the ship left the Atlantic and entered the Pacific Ocean. The botanic haul was small but with about a hundred specimens, it was respectable nevertheless.

PART I

Preface

Between 1777 and 1779 Joseph Banks’s life changed in several important ways that set a pattern for the rest of his days. In 1777, he moved with his sister, Sarah Sophia, into his permanent home in Soho Square. It was a large house with enough space to accommodate his domestic life and his professional interests. His great library focused principally on natural history and its associated texts, manuscripts, drawings and specimens. In 1778, Banks was elected President of the Royal Society after having been a Fellow for just over a decade; he was only thirty-five years old. In 1779, he married Dorothea Huggesen, who moved into Soho Square with him and Sarah Sophia. In the same year, Banks leased and subsequently bought Spring Grove, a property with extensive grounds in Heston, Middlesex. Over time Banks had gardens laid out, and greenhouses and hothouses built. Produce grown there was sent to Soho Square and this was where Banks carried out a number of important horticultural experiments. Banks also began what became an annual pilgrimage to manage his Lincolnshire estates, centred on his country home at Revesby Abbey, where he, his wife and sister would spend every September and October.

In contrast to the English focus of his domestic life in London and Lincolnshire, Banks was being drawn in other, more outward-looking and global directions. In 1776, Francis Masson, Kew’s first official collector since 1772, became Banks’s direct responsibility. Masson had already been to the Cape of Good Hope collecting for the royal gardens at Kew, and he was on his way to Madeira to continue his assignment when Banks took over his direction. During the next three decades, while Masson travelled through the Atlantic region, Banks handled all his preparations, telling him where and what to collect, arranging his finances and managing the receipt of his specimens for Kew.

Banks, already a wealthy man, now settled down as a county notable and the President of the Royal Society. His contact with Masson offered Banks something entirely different, something unpredictable that must have reminded him of his experiences on the Endeavour. Banks could share vicariously in the excitement of finding new plants to send to Kew, of making Kew a place where plants from all over the globe could thrive, far from their native habitats. It gave Banks, as he said himself, the greatest of pleasures, to harness the intellectual resources of Soho Square, its library and herbarium, to the practical horticultural experience and knowledge of Kew, all for the benefit of the King and his garden. Banks would continue pushing these projects into new geographic regions, whenever the opportunities arose.

These early collectors, including Masson, were mostly Scots – they were generally better trained and more knowledgeable about botany than their English counterparts. Most of these men sought out Banks rather than the other way round. They expanded their own and Banks’s geographical horizon, collecting plants in parts of the world – the Pacific Northwest, China, southwest Africa and the Coromandel Coast – whose botany was hardly known in Europe.

1
1772: Masson Roams the Atlantic

Joseph Banks did not choose his first collector himself. Francis Masson had been appointed as Kew Garden’s first plant collector by Sir John Pringle. Sir John had been a close friend of the royal family even before 1764 when he was made Physician in Ordinary to Queen Charlotte. Liked and trusted by the King, he had replaced the Earl of Bute as adviser to the royal garden at Kew. Though, as he admitted, ‘I myself am so little a Botanist’, he was very well connected in cosmopolitan scientific circles, and would have acted as the King’s agent in selecting Masson, no doubt taking the advice of the head gardener at Kew, William Aiton.[1]

Masson had been working under Aiton, as a gardener at Kew, and had made a good impression. He was a fellow Scot, born in Aberdeen in 1741, but little is known about his life before Kew.[2] Although Banks took no credit for selecting Masson, saying Pringle did it all, he does seem to have had a hand in deciding where he was sent.[3] According to Masson, writing in 1796, it was Banks who ‘suggested to his Majesty the idea of sending a person, professionally a gardener, to the Cape’.[4]

Aside from recommending the destination, it’s unlikely Banks had anything to do with any instructions for Masson. Banks was busy planning a second voyage to the Pacific with Cook. This, and the intense pressure of classifying the huge botanical collection from the first voyage, and preparing the botanical drawings made on the Endeavour, took up most of his time.[5]

The choice of the Cape as the destination for Kew’s first plant collector, may not seem obvious; it was under Dutch rule for one thing. However, other circumstances did recommend it. Banks and Solander had spent some time there, from 14 March to 16 April in 1771, when the Endeavour made its last substantial stop before returning to England.[6] The plant collecting had not been as productive as they had expected, because, for almost half their stay, Solander had been confined to bed suffering from a fever. Referring to what possible botanical treasures might be found beyond the port, Banks commented ‘I can say but little … not having had an opportunity of making even one excursion owing in great measure to Dr Solanders illness.’[7] Even so, in the vicinity of the ship’s anchorage, they managed to collect more than three hundred varieties of plants, including a gardenia, an acacia and a heather.[8]

Observing the plants being cultivated by Dutch farmers in the fields around, and in the Dutch East India Company’s botanic garden, Banks concluded that though the climate was milder than that of England, the food crops, at least, were pretty much the same. This would have led him to conclude that the Cape area might be ideal for collecting plants that would be easy to grow at Kew, unlike the tropical plants that needed a protective habitat and artificial heat.

This observation would have been confirmed by the fact that Kew was already growing plants from the Cape, many of which had been introduced to the garden in the 1730s by Philip Miller, head gardener of the Chelsea Physic Garden.[9] Not only had there been these living plants for Masson to see but Hans Sloane’s herbarium was then at the British Museum, which contained an impressive collection of Cape plants that had come into Sloane’s possession from other collections and collectors.[10] Also, since the early years of the seventeenth century, Cape plants figured in specialised texts, such as the famous Hortus Cliffortianus, compiled by Linnaeus, and many of these publications were at the British Museum or in Banks’s home.[11]

These factors alone recommended the Cape as a collecting destination but also important was the fact that maritime contact between it and Europe was excellent. Table Bay, the Cape’s harbour, was always full of foreign ships, primarily from the Dutch, Swedish and English East India Companies either heading into or returning from the Indian Ocean.[12] When the Endeavour arrived in Table Bay on 14 March 1770, Cook noted that there were already sixteen ships at anchor; over the following month he reported that four British East India Company and seven Dutch East India Company ships left for Europe.[13] With so many ships bound for Europe and with a sailing time of less than three months, living plants would have their best chance of survival at sea if shipped from the Cape.

What may have sealed the decision was that when Banks and Solander were at the Cape, they had met a Swedish soldier, Franz Pehr Oldenburg, who was working for the Dutch East India Company at the Cape and who was very interested in natural history, having already amassed a personal herbarium.[14] Before Banks and Solander left the Cape for England, they had made an agreement with Oldenburg to collect specimens for them after their departure. The specimens arrived in London sometime in 1772.[15] If Oldenburg was still at the Cape when Masson arrived, the benefits would be substantial, since, in addition to his local botanical knowledge, he spoke Dutch, which Masson did not.

It was decided that Masson would travel to the Cape by the beginning of April 1772 at the latest.[16] On 5 May Cook received an order from John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich and First Lord of the Admiralty, informing him that Francis Masson would be joining the ship for a passage to the Cape of Good Hope.[17] He would thus be sailing with Banks for part of the way, but five days after the order from Sandwich, the Resolution was given its first trial for its intended Pacific voyage. At the mouth of the Thames, Robert Cooper, the ship’s first lieutenant, declared to Cook that he would not risk the ship at sea in its present top-heavy state. The Resolution was ordered back to Sheerness, and the superstructure, which Banks had designed and which the Admiralty had built for him, was removed.[18] Learning of this Banks withdrew from the voyage and took his personal, and rather large, entourage with him.

In its new slimmed-down version, the Resolution, in company with HMS Adventure, left Plymouth on 13 July 1772. Masson had new scientific companions – Johann Forster and his son Georg Forster, the two naturalists who were hurriedly assigned to the ship following Banks’s departure. After two short stops, the first at Madeira and the second in the Cape Verde Islands, the ships anchored in Table Bay. Masson stepped into a bustling town at the foot of Table Mountain, a Dutch settlement with a population of around 5000 people, about half of whom were white: the black population was mostly composed of slaves owned by the Dutch East India Company and imported from East Africa and the Indian Ocean region.[19]

What instructions he carried with him we don’t know but within less than two months, on 10 December 1772, Masson headed to the interior, in an easterly direction, accompanied by Franz Pehr Oldenburg, who was still at the Cape, and an unnamed Khoikhoi, who was in charge of the wagon driven by eight oxen.[20]

Masson’s report of his expedition, written to Sir John Pringle, was read to the Fellows of the Royal Society in London. It was short and, apart from providing some information about where the party went, it contained few details. What we do know is that they got as far as the town of Swellendam in the Western Cape, about one hundred and fifty miles to the east of the Cape. (When Cook was at the Cape he reported that the Dutch had settled an area which, at its greatest extent, exceeded 900 miles and 28 days’ journey time.)[21] On 20 January 1773, after a two-day stay in Swellendam, they set off to return to the Cape by the same route they had taken out. Masson mentioned that he had collected and sent seeds of several species of heather back to Kew, which had germinated and been successfully grown there while he was still at the Cape.[22]

On his return to Cape Town, probably in February 1773, Masson was in for an unexpected treat: a fellow plant collector and a trained botanist had arrived in town.[23] Carl Peter Thunberg, who was born in the same year as Banks but in southern Sweden, had studied under Linnaeus at Uppsala University and had taken a medical degree. Like other disciples of Linnaeus, he left Sweden for foreign shores. Thunberg arrived in Amsterdam in August 1770 where he worked on plant collections from other parts of the Dutch Empire. In December 1771, he began his long journey to the East via the Cape where he arrived on 16 April 1772 in order to collect plants and learn Dutch. After acquainting himself with Cape Town and its local botany, including day trips into the surrounding countryside, on 7 September, Thunberg set out with three European companions, two Khoikhois and an oxen-driven cart for the interior: first to the north and then eventually in the direction of Swellendam and beyond. They were back in Cape Town on 2 January 1773.

At some point between February and September 1773, Masson and Thunberg met and decided to travel together on a botanical expedition. On 11 September they set out from Cape Town and headed in a northerly direction for about 100 miles from their point of departure. Masson could see that the decision to go to the Cape to collect was the right one as he looked down on the scene unfolding before him, on the sea coast from St Helena Bay back to the Cape: ‘The whole country’, he wrote, ‘affords a fine field for botany, being enamelled with the greatest number of flowers I ever saw, of exquisite beauty and fragrance.’[24] Having reached their most northerly point, the party turned southeast, heading again to Swellendam, and finally reached the ocean at Mossel Bay on 16 November. There they turned inland and made their way again in a southeasterly direction until they met the ocean for a second time at Algoa Bay (near present-day Port Elizabeth) on 14 December, almost five hundred miles from Cape Town. They had been away for months. They pushed on a little further to the east until they were on the banks of the Sundays River, which flows into Algoa Bay. But the Khoikhoi people they employed refused to go any further. The oxen were sick and the carts near collapse.[25] Reluctantly, they turned back and, retracing their steps, they arrived in Cape Town on 29 January 1774.

Masson referred on many occasions to the beauty of the plants he and Thunberg encountered but, apart from mentioning that he obtained specimens of what he called geraniums, stapelias and ericas near the end of the journey, he failed to specify what else he had collected.[26]

While they were in Cape Town during 1774, Thunberg and Masson met Lady Anne Monson, the highly accomplished botanist and collector, who was on her way from England to Calcutta with her husband, a colonel who was returning to Bengal to serve on the supreme council.[27] She, Thunberg and Masson frequently went botanising together in the surrounding countryside.[28]

After only a few weeks these delightful excursions came to an end. Lady Monson continued her voyage to Calcutta on the Pacific, an East India Company ship. On 29 September 1774, Thunberg and Masson decided to strike out into the interior again. They headed out of town in a northeastern direction to an area they had never visited before. This time they took in mountains and desert, plotting a circular route that took them to a point around three hundred and fifty miles north of Cape Town before swinging to the southeast and eventually to the southwest back to Cape Town, which they reached on 29 December 1774.

Thunberg must have been a real inspiration for Masson: highly educated and one of Linnaeus’s own students – a mine of up-to-date botanical information and an intrepid traveller, not just an accomplished gardener like Aiton. For his education as a travelling botanist, collecting in unfamiliar terrain, Masson could have had no better teacher than Thunberg.

Thunberg’s departure for Batavia, his ultimate destination, on 2 March 1775, may have convinced Masson to leave as well. He left the Cape sometime towards the end of March but before that Masson met Anders Sparrman. Sparrman, born in Sweden in 1748, was another student of Linnaeus’s, who had first arrived at the Cape on 12 April 1772 to study the region’s natural history.[29] His plans, however, were put on hold when he met the Forsters and was invited to join them on the Resolution on its Pacific voyage.[30] The Resolution, having dropped Masson off at the end of October, now collected Sparrman before setting off for the Pacific less than a month later on 22 November 1772. There is no evidence that Masson and Sparrman met at this time.[31] It was only when Sparrman came back to the Cape on 22 March 1775 on the Resolution’s return voyage to England from the Pacific that the pair are known to have met.[32]

Masson was back in London in either July or August 1775.[33] He had been sending seeds and living plants to Kew from the Cape, but now on his return, he had much more to show.[34] Solander was at Kew, where Masson had gone back to live, on Saturday, 26 August and reported to John Ellis, his close friend and fellow botanist, that he had just seen Masson ‘with a great cargo of new plants … a glorious collection’.[35]

Solander did not give many details about the collection but the antiquary Richard Gough alerted his friend and fellow antiquary the Reverend Michael Tyson that Masson had brought home a great variety of new species of plants from the Cape of Good Hope, ‘which grew and blowed at sea’.[36] Tyson, himself, then went to Kew to see Masson and was amazed by what he found: totally new species of heather, protea, geraniums, and an undisclosed number of dried varieties.[37] Tyson spoke of more than two hundred examples of just two species but when Masson wrote to Linnaeus at the end of December 1775, his first letter to ‘the Father of Botany’, introducing himself as having been employed ‘some years past, by the King of great Brittain, in collecting of Plants for the Royal Gardens at Kew’, and remarking that he had made two trips into the interior with his student Thunberg and had met Sparrman, he announced that he had ‘added upwards of 400 new species to his Majesties collection of living plants’.[38]

What no one mentioned was that Masson had also collected a magnificent plant known by its popular name as the bird-of-paradise flower but which, when it arrived at Kew in 1773, was given the name Strelitzia reginae, in honour of Queen Charlotte, Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.[39] It is likely that Thunberg directed him to this plant since he had already come across it on his first journey to the interior.[40] This may have been Banks’s favourite plant:[41] certainly, when, in 1795, it came to putting together a substantial gift of plants for Catherine II, Empress of Russia, among many Cape plants collected by Masson, Strelitzia reginae, which Banks described as ‘one of the most rare, & certainly … one of the most beautiful plants in Europe’, headed the list of plants chosen.[42] Even more remarkable, perhaps, is that Masson collected the first specimen of the cycad Encephalartos altensteinii, which was at Kew in 1775, and which, in 2009, was re-potted: it is believed to be the oldest living pot plant in the world.

Banks, too, was delighted with Masson’s collection, ‘a profusion of Plants unknown till that time to the Botanical gardens in Europe’.[43] In his estimation, ‘by means of these, Kew Gardens has in great measure attained to that acknowlegd superiority which it now holds over every similar Establishment in Europe; some of which, as Trianon, Paris, Upsala, etc., till lately vyed with each other for pre-eminence, without admitting even a competition from any English Garden.’

Masson’s second assignment, also authorised by Sir John Pringle, was to collect for Kew on the Atlantic islands of Madeira, and the Canaries, and in the British West Indies.[44] It is likely that Banks and Solander once again had a hand in deciding where Masson should go: they had both been to Madeira in 1768 on the Endeavour’s outward voyage and, during their stay from 12 to 18 September, had collected many plants that they brought back with them in 1771.[45]

Masson left for Madeira on 19 May and arrived there on 5 June 1776.[46] Around this time, Pringle, who was by now George III’s Physician Extraordinary, in addition to being President of the Royal Society, no longer had time for Kew.[47] Banks took over. He arranged Masson’s finances, sent him instructions and supplies, and, in return, Masson sent Banks plants and seeds and letters.[48]

In what might have been his first letter to Banks, dated 28 July 1776, Masson noted that he hadn’t yet explored very much of the island but he believed he had already found some new plants. He had about fifty plants for Banks and some seeds for Aiton.[49] Apart from that he said little: he remained a man of few words for the next thirty years.

Masson would have arrived well equipped to explore the botany of the Atlantic islands, especially Madeira and the Canaries. The islands’ plants were well represented in Sloane’s herbarium at the British Museum.[50] Both island groups were a common stopover for British ships, both naval and East India Company vessels, on their way into the South Atlantic. It was where they stocked up with wine and fresh fruits for the next part of the voyage. Those who were interested in botany helped themselves to the local flora. There was a good, if small, selection of plants from the area already growing at Kew.[51]

From the summer of 1776 until the summer of 1779, Masson stayed and collected in the Atlantic region – seeds for Aiton and plants for himself and Banks.[52] Madeira was the base where he spent most of his time when he wasn’t travelling. The itinerary he followed during this period began with a stay in Madeira which lasted for almost a year until May 1777; this was followed by a trip to the Azores, not planned originally but which Charles Murray, the British Consul in Funchal, who found Masson very convivial, convinced him he should visit.[53] Masson stayed in the Azores from late May 1777 to early December 1777, during which time he visited the islands of São Miguel and Faial – Johann and Georg Forster had collected on Faial between 14 and 19 July 1775 on the final homeward stretch of Cook’s second voyage, and might have discussed this with Masson – and São Jorge;[54] Masson left the Azores in December for the Canaries, via Madeira, and remained there until early October 1778, and from there he travelled back to Madeira, where he stayed until May 1779.[55]

Because of a lack of plant lists, it is not possible to give a definite account of the shipments, but about one thousand plants, many of them new to European science, would probably be close to the mark. Collecting was not a problem. Masson went well off the beaten track where there was plenty to be found.[56] What was difficult was shipping his collections back to England. The problem, as he said himself, was that while he was in the islands the American revolutionary war was in progress on the other side of the Atlantic. American cruisers were present but not British naval vessels. He had to use whatever shipping was available: a Dutch ship on one occasion; on another a French brig on its way to Dunkirk with a stop at Portsmouth, and even a British privateer making its way back to Plymouth.

However the difficulties of this trip were as nothing when compared to those of his next destination, the West Indies.[57] Masson left Madeira sometime in the early part of 1779 for Barbados. What happened then is unknown, but at some time he went from there to Grenada, where he became embroiled in the war between Britain and France, France by this time fighting on the American side. The French assaulted and captured the island from the British in the early part of July 1779.[58] Masson was, in Banks’s words, ‘call’d upon to bear arms in its defence, which he did, & was taken prisoner’.[59] When he was finally released, he made his way to St Eustatius, a Dutch Leeward Island, between St Kitts and St Martin.

There he found some respite from the conflict and island-hopped, taking in St Kitts and Nevis but found that the people there were unsupportive of his efforts: ‘a philosopher’, he wrote, ‘is [a] monster of nature to the people in this part of the world’.[60] He then headed to Saint Lucia, where rains and an impenetrable forest kept his botanising to a minimum, but he was still able to put together a small collection of thirty plants for Banks. Then things went from bad to worse: in the early days of October 1780, a deadly hurricane hit the island and Masson lost the entire collection he had with him at the time, his clothes and papers, and almost his life.[61]

Masson never gave up. Certainly the hurricane did not stop him. His next port of call was Jamaica. He had already been to six islands. We know that Masson was in Jamaica in March 1781 but not much more than that. He originally planned to try to get into central America from there but was unable to, presumably because of the continuing conflict. Instead, he finally made up his mind to return home and was back in London in November 1781.[62]

Where to go next was always the question for Masson. In December 1778, while he was still in Madeira, Masson had written to Linnaeus’s son, also called Carl (the great Linnaeus had died in early January of the same year) mentioning that he had been in touch with ‘Mr. De Visme’.[63] Indeed, just before he left Madeira for the West Indies, Masson had informed Banks that he was sending the Canary Islands collection to Lisbon to that same De Visme who would then forward it to Banks.[64] So, it is not surprising that in March 1783, Masson went to Lisbon where he met several of Banks’s acquaintances, including Gerard de Visme, who was a central figure in the English merchant community, and whom Banks had met in November 1766 on his way back to England from Newfoundland and Labrador on HMS Niger.[65]

De Visme had a garden in what is now Benfica, a suburb of Lisbon, and it would seem that he invited Masson to write up a catalogue of the plants that were growing there.[66] When he saw the garden, Masson was not particularly impressed by it or its owner – ‘he knows little or nothing of Botany or natural history’, Masson wrote to Banks, ‘but possessed a very great share of vanity and conceit.’[67] Masson declined to do the catalogue. For his part de Visme was very proud of his gardening achievements, reminding Banks that he had seen his garden in its infancy when he visited Lisbon almost twenty years earlier. De Visme claimed to Banks that the reason Masson did not undertake the catalogue was that ‘he has worn himself out with fatigue, in roving over wild grounds, & sands, in search of new productions … I expect he will add one, to ye martyrs of Botany.’[68]

If he was worn out, as de Visme wrote, Masson certainly hadn’t finished travelling for not only did he visit Lisbon, but also southern Spain, Gibraltar, North Africa and Madeira again, though the order is not clear. He was back in London by late 1784 or early 1785.[69]

Whenever he returned, Masson, as we have come to expect, was not one to stay put for very long and so, on 16 October 1785, he boarded the Earl of Talbot in Portsmouth, an East India Company vessel heading to the Cape. He arrived at Table Bay on 10 January 1786.[70] Though his reception does not seem to have been as warm as it had been the first time, and though he expressed a wish to be sent to Madras, where there was a vacancy as the East India Company’s naturalist (see Chapter 5), he remained at the Cape.[71]

Masson had been sent to the Cape a second time, as he told Thunberg, to collect living plants for Kew, as opposed to herbarium samples and seeds, from the mountains in the environs of the Cape.[72] He did not always follow his orders, as he confessed to Thunberg, but ventured further into the interior. Banks knew this as he paid Masson’s bills and though he disapproved of him not fulfilling his instructions, there was little he could do about it.[73] Masson also failed to follow his instructions exactly as to what he collected: he often sent seeds, herbarium plants and bulbs, as well as the living plants he had been sent to get.

It isn’t clear how long Masson intended to remain at the Cape but it appears that no time limit was placed on his stay. On several occasions he complained to Banks that he hadn’t heard from him in almost two years, and he feared that the letters destined for him had ended up in India or Canton as the East India Company convoys often decided to bypass the Cape. Masson carried on as if he had been instructed to stay. He had no problems collecting new and unusual plants – to Thunberg he mentioned heathers, amaryllis and protea, plant varieties he had collected before, but emphasised that he believed he had found more than twenty new species of Stapelia, which he was going to include in a monograph he was planning.[74] The problems that he did encounter were that he couldn’t always find a ship on which to send his plants back to Kew. It wasn’t that there were no ships in harbour but rather that the ones that came in on their way to England, especially from India, were often so crowded with passengers, that there was no room left for plants.

William Aiton, for whom Masson had been working for maybe thirty years, died at the beginning of February 1793 (William Townsend, his son, took over the duties at Kew) and, from this point on, the tone of Masson’s letters to Banks changed. He now began referring increasingly to wanting to return to England and by October 1794, he started settling his affairs in preparation for a return voyage. On 17 March 1795, fearing that he might get caught up in a possible conflict between Britain and the Netherlands, he found passage on a returning East India Company ship, taking his collection of living plants that he had been growing in his garden at the Cape with him, and was back in England in August of the same year.[75]

As far as one can tell from the few references he made to it in his correspondence with Banks, Masson’s botanical haul was substantial – about one half of the number of geraniums growing at Kew by 1795 had been introduced by Masson.[76] It is also clear that of all the plants he collected he was particularly proud of the Stapelia. As he told Thunberg, he intended to publish on this group and during the quiet periods at the Cape, Masson arranged his collection and began to draw the individual plants. He brought this work to fruition in 1796 when his monograph Stapeliae Novae, describing new species of Stapelia, was published in London. The book was dedicated to the King and contained descriptions of forty-one species, all laid out in proper Linnaean fashion, in Latin, and illustrated in colour.