Joseph Banks. Patrick O’Brian

where he did better still; among other things he sounded and charted the St Lawrence both above and below Quebec, a very risky and technically arduous undertaking opposite the French positions but one essential for the capture of the city. For the rest of the war Cook was on active service in the Pembroke and in Lord Colville’s flagship the Northumberland; and when peace came his service – his surveying, charting and sounding in American waters – was hardly less uncomfortable and perilous; but at least he did have more time to devote to mathematics and astronomy, and now, in his fortieth year, he was acknowledged to be the fittest man in the Navy to lead the present expedition.

      His officers too were a picked, seamanlike set: what is more, Lieutenant John Gore had already sailed round the world in the Dolphin with Byron and again with Wallis, while Molineux, the master, and his two mates Pickersgill and Clerke had also made this most recent circumnavigation. The senior lieutenant, Zachary Hicks, and the surgeon, William Monkhouse, were both men of great experience; and the midshipmen were grown youths with several years of sea service, with the one exception of Isaac Manley, who was then twelve but who reached the age of eighty-one, dying an admiral of the red. Banks and Monkhouse (whose younger brother was one of these midshipmen) were old acquaintances, for they had been shipmates in the Niger: though perhaps one should write Munkhouse, since that was how he signed his will, one of the many wills written aboard the Endeavour, and rightly written, since so many were called for. Of the original gunroom, only Gore came home; and of Banks’s followers, six died out of eight.

      These followers consisted of Sydney Parkinson; Herman Spöring, a Swede who had lived for some years in London as a watchmaker and for the last two as Solander’s clerk and who now acted as secretary as well as draughtsman; and Alexander Buchan, an artist who was to deal with landscapes and figures. There were also four servants, Peter Briscoe, who had been to Newfoundland with Banks, and young John Roberts, both of them from the Revesby estate, and two black men, Thomas Richmond and George Dorlton.

      There was also Dr Solander, of course, though he cannot be described as one of Banks’s followers. He was more in the nature of a guest, and his presence should have been explained earlier. Quite early in 1768, when Banks was actively preparing for this prodigious voyage, Lady Monson invited him to dinner; among others she had also invited Solander, who had a considerable acquaintance in London by this time. The conversation turned upon Banks’s opportunity of enriching science and becoming famous, and Solander, leaping to his feet, proposed himself as a fellow-adventurer.⁶ Nothing could have pleased Banks more: he agreed, at his persuasion the Admiralty agreed, the British Museum agreed, giving Solander leave of absence; and now he was sitting here in Plymouth, waiting for the wind to change.

      All these people, as well as Mr Green the astronomer and his suite of one, and the bark’s company, ninety-four souls as well as Banks’s two dogs, the ship’s cat, and a goat that had already been round the world with Wallis, were to fit into a vessel just over a hundred feet long, not all of whose meagre length was usable space by any means. It is difficult to see how they did it at all, even with the Navy’s rule of fourteen inches for a hammock and one watch perpetually on deck; it was accomplished however, yet only at the cost of making the people live on top of one another in the promiscuous fashion usual in the heavily manned ships of the Royal Navy. But in this case the promiscuity was even worse, for even the most favoured, even the captain himself, had to share the great cabin, and not only with Banks and Solander but also with those of the draughtsmen who happened to be working on any of the innumerable forms of life that could be collected on land, skimmed from the surface of the sea, fished up from its depths, or shot down from the air. This cabin was about fifteen feet by twenty, and ordinarily it would have been kept strictly for the captain, with a sentry at the door to guard his invaluable privacy.

      Seamen learn very early that discord in a confined space can soon reach horrible proportions and they put up with their shipmates’ little ways remarkably well; but a considerable proportion of the Endeavour’s people had none of this long training in forbearance, and it is not the least of the many wonders in this very long, very crowded voyage that no one murdered any of his companions.

      It was not that the bark was manned by saints: far from it, indeed. Cook, though fairly mild by contemporary standards, quite often had to flog his men for drunkenness and, in Tahiti, for stealing the nails that would purchase fornication; some of the officers were perfectly willing to shoot hostile natives, using the lethal ball rather than small-shot; and the midshipmen were rough by any standard. Orton, the captain’s clerk, messed with them, and one day when the ship was off the east coast of Australia and he, being apt to drink, was lying in an alcoholic coma, they cut the clothes off his back and then cropped his ears. It is little wonder that Gilbert White, writing to Pennant not long after Banks’s departure, should say, “When I reflect on the youth and affluence of this enterprising Gent: I am filled with wonder to see how conspicuously the contempt of danger, & the love of excelling in his favourite studies stand forth in his character. And tho’ I admire his resolution which scorns to stoop to any difficulties: I cannot divest myself of some degree of solicitude for his person.”

      Rough the people were and comfortless their dwelling, yet upon the whole the Endeavour was a happy ship. Almost all the credit for this obviously lies with Cook: although he was a taut captain his officers and men liked him so much that they stayed with him – familiar names are found again and again in his later voyages. Yet the curious sweetness of Banks’s character that his tutor had recognized at Eton and the social talents that had already made Solander so popular in London must have had some share in the matter, if only because they did not send an exasperated captain out on deck, seeking whom he might devour.

      It would be a very wild exaggeration to say that no cross words were ever uttered during the Endeavour’s three years’ circumnavigation, yet apart from a disagreement between Banks and the surgeon over a girl in Tahiti and a somewhat acid remark about turtling on the Great Barrier Reef (“Myself went turtling in hopes to have loaded our long boat, but by a most unaccountable conduct of the officer not one turtle was taken”) there is no trace of them in Banks’s journal.

      This journal has many points in common with the one he kept in Newfoundland; there is the same firm attitude towards spelling, capital letters and punctuation, the same objectivity, and, showing through the whole, the same true devotion to natural philosophy. Naturally it is a very much longer book, something in the nature of 250,000 words filling two fat quarto volumes; and in the course of it one can see the author maturing. He did become a truly remarkable letter-writer in later years, and there are passages, particularly when he pauses for reflection, that foreshadow his manner at its best. It is an exceedingly valuable day-by-day account of the Endeavour’s voyage, and it is necessarily a portrait of Banks, though at a certain remove; it also has the great virtue of immediacy, and no one has ever questioned its perfect truth. Yet it has its drawbacks. The journal is not unlike one of Alice’s books “with no pictures and no conversation”: Banks was as it were a voyaging eye, and this eye was turned perpetually outwards. He no doubt had an inner life, but he almost never mentions it, and the book is even more objective than the earlier one: in Newfoundland Phipps possessed a certain being: he was at least devoured by mosquitoes. Banks’s shipmates in the Endeavour are scarcely mentioned; even his close friend Solander (always referred to as Dr Solander or the Doctor) is but a faint ghost, and Cook is scarcely more substantial. And William Green the astronomer, whom Banks must have seen every day on that exiguous quarterdeck for more than two years, might not have existed until he died in Java. It was the same with the others, officers and men; yet Banks liked them and was liked by them. In some ways dogs are even more intimate companions, particularly on a voyage; but it is not until quite late in the journal that Banks happens to refer to his greyhound, while the bitch Lady who slept on a stool in his cabin is never mentioned at all until her sudden fatal seizure only a week from home, though it would have been strange if they had not walked about with him in every land they visited. Some of this reticence arose from the fact that the journal was not a private diary but a record meant to be read by others. His sister would copy it as she had copied his others; it would circulate among his friends, and Phipps would have an example for his splendid nautical library. Yet it is perhaps allowable to wish that Banks had been a little less reserved – that he had occasionally been a little more