'Age of Banks’ title may yet become vogue

Press, 13 August 1988, Page 22

'Age of Banks’ title may yet become vogue

PATSY CREED,

a Christchurch resident living in

Lincolnshire this year, has been looking at the life of Sir Joseph Banks, the man who sailed with Captain Cook as the naturalist on board the Endeavour and later became known as the “Father of Australia.” His name was given to Banks Peninsula. The writer has read many of his original letters, now held in the Lincoln Public Library.

Here in Lincolnshire, his home county, Sir Joseph Banks is revered as one of the great public figures of the eighteenth century. Recent publication of the great “Banks Florilegium” and celebration of Australia’s Bicentenary will do much to bring him out of his shadowy place in history.

One historian has said that his time should be known as “The Age of Banks.” His power and influence continue into the twentieth century. He was a big man, as his portraits show. He was cheerful, forthright and hospitable, as his letters show.

There were more than 50,000 of the letters, now scattered round the world. An 1882 sale at Sothebys sadly broke up the record of his life’s work.

Every facet of British public life was represented in his vast collection of manuscripts, letters and papers. He had an extraordinary range of interests. Sir Joseph planned a publication of epic proportions based on results of his journey on the Endeavour. It was to be based on 743 plates made from Sydney Parkinson’s drawings, each with small coloured drawings and text.

When he died, the manuscripts, drawings and copper plates were left to his librarian, then to the British Museum. Alecto Historical Editions has now printed the “Florilegium,” with 738 of the undamaged plates in 38 portfolios. The complete set costs £60,000. I recently inspected some of the drawings from a set owned by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, on display at Chatsworth. It is one of the few copies in private hands. Joseph Banks was born in 1744, when his father was a member of Parliament living in Westminster. The father was more interested in farming and soon moved to Revesby, in Lincolnshire.

Revesby Abbey, the family seat, was set in a deer park of nearly 400 acres. Vast woods lay beyond the park. In front stretched miles of fenland and limitless tracts of whispering reeds. It was a wonderful playground for a growing boy, and his tutor found it difficult to keep him at his lessons.

Young Joseph Banks spent three unproductive years at Harrow before his father removed him to Eton. His academic pro-

gress did not improve. At Eton, he was described as “remarkably fine-looking, strong and active, a boy whom fatigue could not subdue, and quite fearless.” His entire time out of school was spent hunting insects and collecting plants. This was to be the beginning of his great lifetime collection, an herbarium, which is still being used by botanists today at the Natural History Museum in London.

When he became a student at Oxford in 1760, his ambition was to become an expert in all branches of natural history, botany in particular. His reputation there was of a “pleasure-loving buffoon” who knew “nothing of the classics.” But by the end of his university career, he had become an acknowledged authority on natural history. Botany at Oxford became a respectable subject, due largely to his efforts. He persuaded a brilliant Cambridge student, Israel Lyons, to lecture there and organised a group of students to study botany under Lyons, financing the project himself. This was the beginning of his lifelong devotion to sponsoring the careers of talented men, one of the outstanding entreprenurial gifts he possessed, and used to the best of his ability. His university career was cut short by his father’s death. He returned to Lincolonshire to learn to run his great estate, with its many farms and 268 tenant farmers. The next few years he spent at Revesby, increasing his knowledge of agriculture together with the improvement of the land by drainage of the fens.

Some of the drains he built are still in use near Revesby. He continued his interest in botany and sought out the leading naturalists and zoologists in Britain and on the Continent. One botanist he befriended was the brilliant Phillip Miller at the Chelsea Physic Gardens, who gave Joseph permission to study exotic plants which grew there. Now his future plans included expeditions and explorations which would add to the knowledge of natural history. Family friends were horrified when he announced his intention of sailing to Newfoundland and Labrador “to hobnob with Eskimos!”

He was determined to go and make the first scientific collection of flora and fauna of those territories. In 1766, he signed on as a supernumary on the HMS Niger. The same month, he was

nominated to the Royal Society. Five days out in the Atlantic, he discovered to his dismay that he was a poor sailor. For the next seven years’ voyaging, never once did he overcome sea sickness.

The Royal Society planned to observe the Transit of Venus, with the help of the Admiralty, and in 1768 the Navy Board was directed to find a suitable vessel. A Whitby collier, The Endeavour, was chosen for the expedition to Tahiti “and to proceed to further discoveries of the great Southern continent.”

Joseph Banks was not much concerned with stars, but the news of Tahiti interested him, particularly when it became apparent there was a likelihood of further explorations south. Captain Cook was directed by the Admiralty to receive “Joseph Banks, Esq., and his suite consisting of eight persons with their baggage.”

There is no doubt Banks lobbied furiously to be included in the expedition. He was determined to sail with Endeavour and had the means and influence to do it.

Lord Sandwich, his friend, was First Lord as well as a fellow member of the Royal Society. Banks financed his own part of the voyage at a cost of £lO,OOO, an enormous sum in those days. He chose his party with care — his four servants and his two favourite greyhounds; Dr Solander, a naturalist and pupil of the great Linneaus — he had been granted leave by the British Museum; Sydney Parkinson, a talented artist and draughtsman; Alexander Buchan, a landscape artist, and Herman Sporing, also a draughtsman, who was Solander’s secretary. Their journey was long and eventful. Only two members of the Banks party returned to England at the end of their epic voyage in 1771. One of Endeavour’s landing places that features in the history of Australia was Botany Bay. Captain wrote that "the great quantity of new plants Mr Banks and Doctor Solander collected in this place occasioned my giving it the name ...” On his return to England, the doors of society were opened to the young explorer, and he was received by the King, George 111. They became friends, having much in common, including a great interest in agriculture, particularly in plants which could be used as food or as raw material

for manufacturing. One of the Royal Family’s great interests was the Gardens at Kew, in London, which had come under their care in 1730. Augusta, the Dowager Princess of Wales, had directed much of her energies to developing the gardens. After her death in 1772, the King wanted the Gardens developed on scientific lines, as well as ornamental, and the obvious man for the job was Banks. In 1773, he was appointed director of the Royal Gardens. The day-to-day running was in the hands of the Royal Gardener, William Aiton, but the over-all development was the responsibility of Banks, a task which occupied much of his life. Banks was a convinced colonialist, certain that settlers would spread British influence worldwide and this would result in the development of untapped resources of nature. He realised that if Kew was to flourish, collecting would have to be business-like. He had already established a wide network of naturalists, and was receiving specimens from all over the world for his private collection. Kew was to become an extension of his collecting, on a grand scale, and became a great seed and plant exchange. He had men sent as collectors to China, Russia, Africa, East Indies, North America, Spain and the West Indies. At Kew, he supervised the germination of exotic seeds, and at his home, “Spring Grove,” in Heston, he developed a miniKew. There he grew experimentally American cranberries and planted rice. Whenever lie sent out a collector from Kew, Banks would equip him with detailed instructions on what to look for, how to collect and transport living plants, and how to package and preserve seeds. Considering the problems of transport, the growth of the Kew collection was astonishing. It is due to Banks that Kew is today the greatest botanical garden in the world. Every year, from August to October, Banks returned to Lincolnshire and his gardens at Revesby Abbey, where he had a magnificent collection of exotic plants. Nothing remains of the house or its gardens, but the reclaimed land is still drained by the same canals he planned and built. Revesby parish church has a memorial to the generations of Banks who farmed there. At his

request, no memorial was erected to him where he was buried in Heston, near London.

One of the Banks’ farming interests was sheep breeding. Together with the King, he devised a plan to cross-breed Merinos with English breeds so that it would no longer be necessary to import wool from Spain. Banks had received a gift of a ram and ewe from the French flock of experimental breeding Merinos.

They were not a success in England. Where they did thrive later was in the new Australian colony of New South Wales. Banks thought Australia was the ideal country for a new penal colony and that Botany Bay would be the perfect site. His enthusiasm was backed by eloquent arguments and meticulous detail.

There was a long delay before the first convict convoy sailed for Australia, but in 1784 the plan was once more discussed in Parliament.

Two companies of Marines were to guard the convicts. The Marines were to be made up of men chosen for their artisan skills as well as their militarytraining. Banks saw the colony as a flourishing agricultural community where hard-working men and women would prosper, and hardened criminals would be reformed into industrious members of society. The colony suffered from the

start since the required planning and organisation were not given to Banks at all, but were left in the hands of junior Admiralty officials who had no experience in equipping a major expedition of this magnitude.

It was a monumental blunder that he was not involved; his wisdom and advice may have prevented what was a near disaster.

So appalling was the organisation, that no clothing was included for the 150 women convicts in the ships. Banks had argued constantly that only convicts who were farmers or trained artisans should be sent to the colony.

When the transports left England, they carried convicts of every kind. The reality of the colony was a far cry from his vision of a thriving pastoral community in the South Seas.

Banks never lost his grip on the mass of affairs which occupied the last years of his life, even when gout kept him much of the time in a wheelchair. There was not a new learned society to which he was not asked to lend his name. He helped to form the Linnean Society (which celebrates its second century this year), the first specialist scientific society in Britain.

He loved being at the centre of events, and until his death in 1820, he remained president of the Royal Society.