SINCE THE JOURNALS OF THE ‘ENDEAVOUR’ ENDED WITH DISEMBARKATION, the immediate sequel can only be surmised: the hire of chaise or express; the dash to London; and the formal call at the Admiralty where Banks’s friend the Earl of Sandwich now presided as First Lord. There, one supposes, the trio parted to go their separate ways — Cook to his modest dwelling in Mile End Road and reunion with Mrs. Cook and their children; Solander to solitary bachelor quarters, perhaps in Bloomsbury; Banks to the house in New Burlington Street he seems to have shared with his sister Sarah Sophia. With the least possible delay, it can hardly be doubted, the returned voyager would have hastened to pay filial respects to the widowed Mrs. Banks at Paradise Row, Chelsea. And soon in all probability, by personal call or letter, he would have announced his arrival to members of his varied circle: ‘Coz Bate’ and his aristocratic connexions the Grenvilles; Constantine Phipps, companion on the Newfoundland journey, close friend since their years at Eton and Oxford; Sir John Pringle, President of the Royal Society, and Dr. Morton, Librarian of the British Museum, and John Ellis, the natural historian, and Mr. Lee, the nurseryman — these and numerous others. The pious Sarah Sophia spoke for family and friends when in one of her ‘Memorandums’ she offered up thanks for ‘the wonderfull known miraculous & numberless unobserved Deliverances’ her brother had experienced in the course of the expedition. ‘How often’, she exclaimed, ‘have my Dear Mother & Self contemplated & admired the innumerable great dangers he hath escaped: & adored our Gracious GOD, for restoring him to us.’1
Private prayer was accompanied by public adulation. Since January brief messages from the Endeavour had been seeping into the press, but now the newspapers devoted paragraphs and columns to the exploits of Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander. These ‘ingenious gentlemen’, it was reported, had lately sailed round the world. They had spent four months at George’s Land of whose language they had made themselves masters. They had touched at ‘near forty other undiscovered Islands, not known to other Europeans’ and gathered ‘above a thousand different Species of Plants, none of which were ever known in Europe before’. They had brought with them two natives who were ‘amazingly struck’ by the sight of coaches and horses at Batavia but who, alas, had sickened and died. ‘Mr. Banks, and Dr. Solander’ had been absent three years, began ‘An Authentic Account of the Natives of OTAHITTEE, or GEORGE’S ISLAND’ presented in the form of a letter from a member of the Endeavour’s company to his friend in the country. These islanders, asserted the nameless correspondent, were very expert fishermen and ‘the most dexterous thieves in the world’; their government was despotic, they acknowledged one Supreme Being, they built altars of very large stones. As for their women, they were of a copper colour, ‘well made and well featured’, they were ‘extremely lascivious, and much injured with a certain disease’, they followed one singular and outré custom — and that was ‘painting their posteriors of a jet black’.2
The explorers’ achievements were promptly acknowledged in the most exalted quarters. Early in August it was announced that Mr. Banks, ‘one of the gentlemen who went to the South Seas to discover the transit of Venus’, had been introduced to the King at St. James’s and ‘received very graciously’. Soon afterwards, accompanied by Dr. Solander and Sir John Pringle, he again conferred on the late voyage with His Majesty at Richmond. The curiosities brought home by Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander, ran a later notice, had already been seen by most of the nobility, and ‘the most extraordinary Phaenomena’ were shortly to be inspected at the Queen’s Palace. Before the month was out news came that in the coming spring and under royal patronage the two gentlemen would set out on a second voyage. By September the proposed expedition had grown — on paper — to three ships under the command of ‘the celebrated Mr. Banks’ who, it was asserted, would found a colony in the South Seas. Meanwhile, in the middle of August, the less celebrated Lieutenant Cook had been presented at Court by Lord Sandwich. The officer formally handed over the Endeavour’s journals and charts to His Majesty, receiving in turn a commander’s commission.3
The First Lord had apparently passed on news of these impending events to Banks who hastened to confide in his fellow voyager. ‘Your very obliging letter’, Cook replied, ‘was the first Messenger that conveyed to me Lord Sandwich’s intentions. Promotions unsolicited to a man of my station in life must convey a satisfaction to the mind that is better conceived than described’. What he did succeed in imparting was his indebtedness to Banks as a result of their association on the Endeavour. ‘The reputation I may have acquired on this account’, he continued, ‘… calls to my mind the very great assistance I received therein from you, which will ever be remembered with most gratefull Acknowledgments ….’ Having dispatched these ponderous compliments, Cook turned to other duties which in mid-August included the disposal of assorted ‘Curiosity’s’ — Tahitian cloth and breastplates, a carved box and ‘Images’ from New Zealand, ‘Fish Gigs’ from New Holland, a head ornament worn at ‘Heavas’ in Raiatea.4
Banks and Solander had been similarly employed with their own trophies. ‘They are so very busy getting their things on shore, and seeing their friends, after an absence of three years,’ wrote John Ellis, ‘that they have scarce time to tell us of any thing but the many narrow escapes they have had from imminent danger.’ Sometimes, however, they left specimens and friends to unbend with other men of science or to divert themselves in more frivolous company. They dined with members of the Royal Society Club, to which Banks had been elected in his absence, and frequented royal and aristocratic circles. ‘But the people who are most talk’d of at present are Mr Banks and Dr Solander’, wrote Lady Mary Coke on 9 August. She had seen them at Court and afterwards at Lady Hertford’s, she added, but had not heard the account of their voyage round the world which, she was told, was ‘very amusing’.5
All did not go well with Banks in that crowded summer of 1771. Soon after his return he found himself involved in a tiresome controversy over Sydney Parkinson’s effects which would drag on for months and end only at the cost of considerable ill-feeling and money.6 Far more distressing to all concerned was the affair of his fiancée, Miss Harriet Blosset. At some point in his travels — perhaps during the exhilarating stay in Tahiti — he seems to have decided that the role of husband was incompatible with his vocation as voyager-naturalist. The proper, the manly course would have been to announce that decision to Miss Blosset in the rural retreat where, said malicious gossip, she had spent the past three years working waistcoats for her absent lover. But to the surprise of disapproving friends and the diversion of prying society Banks did nothing. It was left for Miss Blosset to make the journey to London and demand an explanation. There were letters, there were interviews (one lasting from ten at night till ten in the morning), there was a brief reconciliation. Miss Blosset expostulated and swooned, Mr. Banks pleaded and recanted, finally withdrawing from the engagement but not without some damage to honour and, it would seem, to fortune.7
Early in September Banks left the scene of his triumphs and perplexities to rusticate with his fellow voyagers at Lord Sandwich’s country seat, Hinchingbrooke in Huntingdonshire. In spite of the disparity in their ages (Banks was twenty-eight, Sandwich in his early fifties), the two men had long been friends. As neighbours at Chelsea they had fished and botanized together or joined in less innocent pursuits. A common interest in mechanical experiment, combined with a penchant for practical joking once, it is said, led them to devise an abortive scheme for draining the Serpentine. Among the versatile First Lord’s other interests was music. Hinchingbrooke was the setting for entertainments where he would sometimes perform on the drums while singing parts were taken by the talented Martha Ray. Sandwich had long been separated from his wife and for the past decade this young woman had lived openly with him and borne his children.8
Whether Miss Ray was hostess at the house party in September is not recorded, but one of the guests was certainly another member of Sandwich’s musical circle. He was Dr. Charles Burney, well known in London society as teacher, composer, and author. Entering her diary on the 15th of the month, his youthful daughter Fanny wrote that her father had lately spent a few days at Hinchingbrooke to meet Mr. Banks, Captain Cook, and Dr. Solander who, she said, had just made a voyage round the world and were soon to make another. Ever alert to promote the fortunes of his children, Dr. Burney took this opportunity to advance the career of his sailor son James. As Fanny expressed it in her somewhat tortured prose, ‘My father, through his Lordship’s means, made interest for James to go with them, and we have reason to hope he will have a prosperous and agreeable voyage.’9
8 Hinchingbrooke, Huntingdonshire
Dr. Burney’s kindly efforts were not confined to the members of his family. At an earlier meeting in Norfolk, Fanny relates, Lord Sandwich complained that the Endeavour’s papers in his possession were ‘mere rough drafts’ and asked someone to recommend ‘a proper person to write the Voyage’. Thereupon Burney brought up the name of his old friend Dr. John Hawkesworth who met with the First Lord’s approval and by October had been commissioned to prepare for publication not only the Endeavour’s journals but those of earlier circumnavigators.10 For his labours, on the authority of that aristocratic gossip Horace Walpole, he received ‘d’avance’ six thousand pounds from the booksellers and a thousand from ‘the voyager’ (meaning Banks).11
9 & 10 Bougainville’s extended account of his voyage; the unauthorized narrative of the Endeavour expedition
BANKS THUS HAD SOME PART in launching the official narrative of his recent voyage, but it was too late to forestall the French, as he had hoped. Bougainville had published his Voyage autour du Monde in May, and — a fact probably known to Banks — an English translation had already been commissioned.12 More vexing still, within weeks of his return the anonymous Journal of a Voyage round the World, in His Majesty’s Ship ‘Endeavour’ was rushed into print and immediately became a centre of contention. Well aware of the ban on such unauthorized revelations, Thomas Becket, the co-publisher, introduced the book with a letter jointly addressed to the Lords of the Admiralty and to Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander. Nothing, he assured them, could have induced him to bring out the journal but a consciousness of its authenticity. He was further persuaded to do so, he said, from the agreeable manner in which it was written as well as from its honourable mention of ‘those ingenious gentlemen, Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander’. He was convinced it was ‘the production of a gentleman and a scholar’ who had made the voyage.13
Becket went even farther in his calculated effrontery, according to the Gentleman’s Magazine. When advertising the book he vouched for its genuineness by citing the letter he had himself composed. Official reaction, on the same authority, was swift and emphatic. Writing from the Admiralty Office on 27 September 1771, Banks and Solander publicly denied all knowledge of the journal but announced that a full and authoritative account of their voyage was then in preparation. The disclaimer had an immediate effect on Becket who promptly cancelled his prefatory letter and modified the advertisement. Having disclosed these circumstances, the Gentleman’s Magazine refrained from reviewing the publication. It merely printed extracts and left readers to determine for themselves how far the journal was worthy of their attention.14
The extracts, presumably selected for their popular appeal, were in fact an edited paraphrase of the gentleman-scholar’s remarks on ‘Otahitee’. Here and elsewhere in his journal he was sparing of nautical particulars and virtually ignored natural history. In that field, he explained with a well-turned compliment, curiosity would thereafter be gratified by Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander, ‘gentlemen of great erudition’, who had been indefatigable in their researches. For his part he dwelt more especially on the island people, their appearance, their occupations, their customs, their amours. Some of what he disclosed was already known through newspaper reports but much was novel: the natives believed in a supreme god called ‘Maw-we’; they thought the sun and moon generated stars; they supposed an eclipse was the time of celestial copulation; their sovereign had only one wife but many concubines; the men ‘used’ circumcision. His description of the Society Group (not given in the Gentleman’s Magazine) was attributed to Tupia and reflected the exile’s prejudices together with the author’s preconceptions. Borabora was represented as a barren island without inhabitants until neighbouring sovereigns chose it for a penal settlement. When the population increased, the account went on, the criminals resorted to piracy, invaded Raiatea under their tyrant ‘Opuna’, and killed its sovereign whose youthful heir found refuge in Tahiti, living there in ‘the manner of James II. while at St. Germains’. Tupia himself was depicted as Oberea’s lover in a tale of ‘amorous dalliance’ and intrigue worthy of a Gothic novelist. Much space was given to the New Zealanders who, despite irrefutable evidence of their cannibalism, were admiringly characterized as ‘of all mankind the most fearless and insensible of dangers’.15
The journal was diverting, suggestive, highly readable, and was soon reprinted in Paris, Dublin, and Berlin. The French rendering appeared twice in 1772, first independently and then in an edition brought out by Bougainville’s publishers with the title, Supplément au Voyage de M. de Bougainville: ou Journal d’un Voyage autour du Monde, Fait par MM. Banks & Solander, Anglois. In spite of their exertions, the two ingenious gentlemen were indissolubly linked with this catch-penny enterprise.16
Meanwhile, in the late summer of 1771, a work of more limited extent but far larger implications had been issued by Alexander Dalrymple. Rousseau considered iron and corn to have been the ruin of mankind; Dalrymple evidently thought otherwise. Having failed in his bid to command the earlier expedition, he now proposed one whose purpose it would be ‘to Convey the Conveniencies of Life, Domestic Animals, Corn, Iron, &c., to New Zealand’. The Endeavour, ran a preamble, had discovered that country to be two islands inhabited by a brave and generous race destitute of corn, fowls, and all quadrupeds except dogs. These circumstances being lately mentioned to certain men of liberal sentiments, they persuaded Mr. Dalrymple to offer himself as leader of a mission that would remedy the situation. The scheme had the support of Dr. Benjamin Franklin who, widening its scope to include other deprived countries, presented his views in a discourse that appealed both to humane feelings and self-interest. Britain, he pointed out, once in a similar condition, had derived vast advantages from the fruits, seeds, animals, and arts of other nations. Now the world’s chief maritime power, she had the means and the men to visit distant people on the other side of the globe not to cheat them, not to seize their lands or enslave their persons, but merely to do them good. As a commercial nation, moreover, she should promote the civilization of mankind since trade prospered with people who had the arts and conveniences of life rather than with naked savages.17 The British nation was in general unresponsive, but the appeal may have caught the eye and touched the conscience of Dalrymple’s former rival, Captain James Cook.
That navigator was certainly aware of Bougainville’s Voyage which, early in 1772, was brought to British readers in a version by John Reinhold Forster. The choice of translator was not altogether fortunate. A German expatriate, Forster possessed an imperfect command of both English and French; furthermore, he sought every opportunity of displaying his own erudition and his loyalty to Britain. As a result the book was spattered with ponderous footnotes questioning Bougainville’s scholarship, veracity, and powers of observation. He had, alleged Forster, ignored an obscure predecessor in order to claim for himself the honour of being the first French circumnavigator. Elsewhere, citing the anonymous Endeavour journal, he denied one of Bougainville’s tentative conclusions: ‘The people of Otahitee, or as the author wrongly calls it, Taiti, are not idolators, according to the last published account ….’ If the voyager had been longer in the island, Forster continued, if he had studied the language more thoroughly and observed with a less prejudiced eye, then his narrative would have contained fewer of the mistakes with which it now abounded. ‘The English, more used to philosophical enquiries, will’, he promised, ‘give more faithful accounts in the work that is going to be published, of the great discoveries made by the British nation in those seas.’18
In the second French edition of his work Bougainville commented on his translator’s jibes with urbane good manners tinged with irony. They were qualities that even Forster’s graceless rendering did not wholly efface. ‘I am’, he introduced himself, ‘a voyager and a seaman; that is, a liar and a stupid fellow, in the eyes of that class of indolent haughty writers, who in their closets reason in infinitum on the world and its inhabitants ….’ The shaft was aimed at Rousseau or perhaps more immediately at the sentimental disciples the explorer had encountered in Parisian drawing-rooms. Since leaving Tahiti he had apparently reconsidered his first impressions and while preparing his journal for the press had dropped or modified some of his unrestrained tributes. The edited account was more factual, more sober, far more critical than the original. He gave some details of the island’s vegetation (dismissed by Forster for their superficiality); he ventured the opinion that the hills contained no minerals since they were covered with trees (justly provoking Forster’s derision); and at greater length he wrote of the skill and ingenuity with which the islanders fashioned their canoes and fishingtackle. Where the idyllic flavour of his journal persisted most strongly was in the scene of his reception by Ereti or in the description of his rural walks when he felt himself ‘transported into the garden of Eden’. And intermittently he still saw the Tahitians as survivors from a golden age, the women dedicated to the cult of love, the men fit models for paintings of the ancient gods. But Cythera was now infected by the disease of Venus. This was Eden after the Fall, a society disfigured by human sacrifice, gross inequalities, and the cruelties of war.19
The revised view owed much to Aotourou (as the visitor’s name was now rendered). It was from this living source, Bougainville acknowledged, that he drew most of his information on Tahitian religion, government, and language. In answer to hostile critics he also felt compelled to clear himself from blame for having carried the man away. The islander’s eagerness to follow them was unfeigned, Bougainville emphasized, and his fellow countrymen seemed to applaud the project. As for himself, he explained, since they were about to sail through an unknown ocean and would depend on its people not only for subsistence but for life, he thought it of great consequence to have with them someone of similar customs and speech. Besides (here touching on his imperial ambitions) how could France better cement an alliance with the island nation than by sending back its representative well treated and enriched by useful knowledge? In spite of his brave words, Bougainville’s fears and scruples were not wholly allayed. ‘Would to God’, he exclaimed, ‘that the necessity and the zeal which inspired us, may not prove fatal to the bold Aotourou!’ And again, after recounting the events of his protégé’s stay in France and departure for Mauritius: ‘O may Aotourou soon see his countrymen again!’20
These sentiments did the ‘Philosophical Commodore’ great honour, observed a writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, adding the hope that English navigators would on their return bring news of the native’s safe arrival. The same periodical published no fewer than four articles on the book during 1772. Two summarized the text, another dealt with Aoutourou, and the fourth, a description of Tahitian canoes, inquired in passing how, ‘upon the Mosaical plan’, islands a thousand miles distant from any continent first came to be peopled — a subject that was left for divines to reconcile. Bougainville’s humanity and understanding were praised, while adverse comment was confined to Forster for his unsatisfactory translation and ‘petulant’ footnotes.21
The Monthly Review: or Literary Journal was more critical of the author. It censured him for diffuseness and, more severely, for his failure to supply the information required by philosophers in tracing mankind’s progress ‘between the age of the untutored savage, and that of the polished citizen’. Least defective in that respect was Bougainville’s description of ‘Otahitee, or George’s Island’ from which the writer went on to give extracts accompanied by his own comments. Successive quotations touched on diet, manufactures, government, and at greater length on the diverting subject of Tahitian women — their delicacy of feature, their coquettishness, their unashamed sensuality. Such details, noted the philosophical reviewer, had some bearing on questions of virtue and vice: ‘In one country, chastity is disgraceful; in another it is meritorious.’ ‘We should beware, however,’ he cautioned his readers, ‘of judging of other ages and nations by the sentiments of our own.’ On the subject of religion, as presented by Bougainville and Aoutourou, the writer was less satisfied. ‘These extracts’, he complained, ‘furnish an example of that want of precision which we complain of in travellers. It is impossible certainly to conclude from them, whether idolatry, or impure theism, is the religion of this people.’ Such lame and contradictory reports gave authority to opposite opinions and confounded the philosopher. ‘But’, he observed, ‘in relation to the present case, as well as to others of still higher importance, it is with real pleasure we reflect that the public is soon to be enlightened by the discoveries and enquiries of Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander.’22
AN EAGER PUBLIC must of necessity curb its impatience for the present and make do with imperfect accounts of southern discoveries. Hawkes-worth’s compilation would not appear until 1773, while work on the natural history of the voyage, to which Banks and Solander were committed, seems to have suffered from their many other activities. His friends were ‘so hurried with company’ that they had no time for answering letters, wrote the apologetic Ellis to Linnaeus on 19 November. Earlier that month they were observed with other members of the Royal Society at a gathering to establish the height of St. Paul’s. On the 21st they attended a ceremony at Oxford when the university conferred doctorates on its distinguished son and his Swedish companion. In the new year they were welcomed into one of London’s most exclusive literary circles. At a function apparently arranged by Sir Joshua Reynolds towards the end of February, they discussed their experiences with Dr. Johnson. The great man was in benign mood the next day as he thanked the voyagers for the pleasure their conversation had given him, enclosed a Latin motto for the Endeavour’s goat, and wondered whether Mr. Banks might perhaps have an epic poem from some happier pen than that of his humble servant Sam. Johnson. A month later the inveterate hero-worshipper James Boswell dined with the ‘famous’ pair at Sir John Pringle’s. He found Mr. Banks a genteel young man without affectation and decided that Dr. Solander, though a Swede, spoke English with more fluency and propriety than most natives.23
Such were among the duties and diversions of the inseparable friends in the winter of 1771-2. But their chief preoccupation since the house party at Hinchingbrooke had been the forthcoming voyage. Though rather more modest than some newspapers had announced, this expedition was to surpass all its forerunners in size and scope. As a precaution against the misadventures which had overtaken the solitary Endeavour, two vessels were to go, one under Cook, the other under Tobias Furneaux, veteran of the Dolphin. Cook would be in charge of the whole enterprise whose purpose it was not to found a Pacific colony, as earlier reported, but to prove once and for all the existence or non-existence of a southern continent. The general plan, later embodied in official instructions, was to explore Antarctic waters during the summer months and then carry on the search farther north. Though definite limits were not set, the voyage was expected to take at least three years. By the end of November two ships had been purchased and named the Drake and the Raleigh. At the King’s request, in deference to the feelings of his brother monarch in Spain, they were soon rechristened the Resolution and the Adventure.24
There was no question of the ‘celebrated’ Mr. Banks leading the expedition, as had once been rumoured, but the First Lord formally asked him and Solander to take part and treated them with more consideration than was normally accorded naval supernumeraries. Early in December they were invited to discuss arrangements for the voyage with what was termed a ‘private board’ of Admiralty officials. It was perhaps as a result of this meeting that Solander dispatched by postexpress a long, agitated letter to his friend Dr. James Lind of Edinburgh. Government, he announced, had resolved to send out two ships to the South Seas and he and Mr. Banks had leave to go in one. No expense whatsoever was to be spared, everything was to be made agreeable to those who went, and both the King and other great men in power desired the expedition to be as complete as possible. Would Dr. Lind, he asked, allow himself to be nominated as astronomer? The intention was, Solander explained, to leave in March, touch at Madeira, make for the Cape of Good Hope, proceed thence for a short stay in New Zealand, and ‘afterwards set out upon Discoveries farther to the South than any European Navigator has been. In those high Latitudes spend two or three Summers & every Winter go up within the Tropics to compleat our former discoveries.’ ‘Good God,’ he concluded, ‘we shall do wonders if you only will come and assist us.’25
Dr. Lind was delighted to come, and his pleasure was doubtless enhanced when a generous parliament undertook to reward him with a grant of £4000. For the payment and equipment of his immediate entourage Banks alone was responsible. After the indispensable Solander the foremost of his assistants was the Royal Academician John Zoffany who was engaged for a fee of £1000. In addition, chosen from his household or from a host of eager applicants, there was a retinue of draughtsmen, secretaries, servants, and musicians — thirteen in all. To meet their needs and his own, Banks gathered an immense and varied array of implements, instruments, scientific apparatus, and supplies — screw-drivers, axes, harpoons, French horns, artists’ colours, drawing-tables, rat traps, wire catchers for insects and birds, magnifying glasses, microscopes, table delicacies, tents for shelter, arms for protection, with beads, combs, mirrors, feathers, fish-hooks for trade with the natives.26
11 Captain James Cook, after Nathaniel Dance
The disposal of Banks’s staff and their baggage posed serious problems for Cook and the navy officials concerned. One draughtsman and one secretary were to go on the Adventure, but the rest were assigned to the Resolution with Banks himself and his chief lieutenants. Soon it became obvious that, if the supernumeraries were to travel in becoming privacy and carry out their duties in comfort, more room must be found. So the requisite authority was obtained and major alterations undertaken. An additional upper deck was built, with a raised poop or ‘round house’ for the use of Cook who generously gave up the ‘great cabin’ to house his passengers. The work went on as the Resolution lay at Deptford, often thronged by idle crowds of ladies and gentlemen curious to see the vessel in which Mr. Banks would again sail round the world. One regular visitor was the First Lord who followed proceedings with interest and possibly some disquiet. As a result of the ship’s reconstruction, timetables had been upset and it was May before she was ready to leave for Plymouth. The occasion was celebrated by an entertainment given on board by Mr. Banks and graced by the presence of Lord Sandwich, the French Ambassador, and other unspecified ‘persons of distinction’.27
12 The Earl of Sandwich, after John Zoffany
The Resolution had not sailed far when it was found to be dangerously top-heavy — so ‘crank’, in nautical parlance, that the pilot refused to venture beyond the Nore. The decision was accordingly taken, on Cook’s advice, to make for the dockyard at Sheerness and restore the ship to its original state. The newly added superstructure would be removed and the passengers housed in whatever space could be found or contrived elsewhere. By 20 May Cook, who had been absent in London, reached Sheerness to find the work ‘in great forwardness’ with the round house and extra deck already taken away. On the 24th Banks and Solander, who since the function at Deptford had also been ashore engaged in last-minute preparations, visited the yard to inspect the retrimmed Resolution. To say that Banks was outraged by the spectacle is an understatement; nor was he prepared to consider alternative plans for accommodation on the mutilated ship. Four days later his decision was recorded in the laconic minute of some nameless official: ‘Mr Banks does not go ….’ Not only Mr. Banks but Dr. Solander and Dr. Lind and Mr. Zoffany and the train of musicians, draughtsmen, servants, and secretaries with their baggage and equipment.28
Banks did not withdraw in dignified silence. He poured out his grievances in a complaining, self-justifying, interminable letter to Sandwich. He recalled the circumstances in which he had been invited to join the expedition; he mentioned the pledges he had given to the learned world of Europe; he described the preparations he had made to meet those pledges — at a cost, he estimated, of above £5000; and he dwelt on the most recent alterations to the Resolution which, he foretold, must infallibly condemn its packed crew to putrid distempers and scurvy. Would the public, he inquired, expect him to go out in a ship where his people would not have room to perform their duties? In a ship that was, moreover, apparently unhealthy and probably unsafe? Sandwich responded to the implied threat of publicity with a chilling rebuke: If Mr. Banks gave himself time to think coolly, he would at once see the impropriety of publishing his opinion that one of the King’s ships was unfit to sail and would endanger the lives of her crew. Cook’s loyalty in the unhappy quarrel was to the First Lord, but at the close of a punctilious report to Banks on the now unwanted baggage he made a gesture of reconciliation. He sent best respects to Dr. Solander and to Mr. Banks himself, since he would not have his company on the Resolution, sincere wishes for success in all ‘exploring undertakens’.29
Displaying belated good sense, Banks decided not to pursue the controversy farther but instead to seek consolation in the undertakings mentioned by Cook. Since there seemed some hope that the East India Company might send him to the Pacific in the spring of 1773, he was unwilling to disband the staff gathered with so much effort and expense. But how could they be occupied in the meantime? The young magnate answered the question in his own lavish manner by deciding to transport his entourage and himself to Iceland. He had been thinking for some time of a voyage to Europe’s northern waters, and Iceland, with its volcanoes, its relatively unexplored terrain, and its epic past, opened up attractive prospects for scientific and antiquarian study. So he chartered the Sir Lawrence at a cost of £100 a month and quickly completed preparations for the new venture. Mr. Zoffany had gone off to Italy, but Dr. Lind was willing to come and so, among less travelled volunteers, was Banks’s companion on the Endeavour, Lieutenant John Gore, who had thrice circumnavigated the globe. Early in July the party, now numbering twenty-one, assembled in London and on the 12th left Gravesend.30
The following day, Monday 13 July 1772, the southern expedition sailed from Plymouth. In the weeks since Banks’s departure, work on the Resolution had been completed and efforts made to replace the lost supernumeraries. As artist, instead of the mature Zoffany, went the young landscape painter William Hodges, assigned to Cook’s special care with the direction that he be ‘diligently’ employed. On the scientific side Johann Reinhold Forster, Bougainville’s translator, took over Dr. Lind’s post and emoluments, while his son Johann Georg Adam travelled as assistant. Known at this period by anglicized versions of their names, they were experienced naturalists, if not wholly adequate substitutes for the illustrious Banks and Solander. In addition, two astronomers had been appointed long before Banks’s defection — William Wales and William Bayly, both capable observers and mathematicians. With the exception of Bayly, all these men travelled on the Resolution. That ship also carried naval notabilities: not only Cook himself but the Pacific veterans, Charles Clerke and Richard Pickersgill, with two newcomers, Dr. Burney’s son James and the youthful George Vancouver. Burney appeared on the muster-roll as an able seaman but was armed with a lieutenant’s commission and the First Lord’s promise of promotion. As he prepared to leave, his sister Fanny commented: ‘I should prefer this voyage to any in the world if my ill stars had destined me a sailor.’32
