Joseph Banks. Patrick O’Brian

though on the other hand she must not be late for the transit, and if at all possible she should be there a month or so before to prepare the observatory. The bark was slow; she might meet with calms or with headwinds; clearly there was not a moment to be lost. Yet it was equally clear that there was no room for excessive zeal, for in this part of the world there were no marine stores to be had, no sailcloth, no cordage, no spars to replace those broken or worn out.

      These problems were Cook’s own particular province. Banks had no part in them whatsoever: he was mildly concerned to show that the theoretical southern continent, Brosses’ Australasia, did in fact exist, but he was very much more interested, passionately interested, in the various forms of animal and vegetable life that were to be seen on the way to Tahiti and then south and west, perhaps to the Terra Australis Incognita.

      In the early days of this voyage in the Pacific, when the Endeavour was still in the rich waters of the far south or in the broad Humboldt current, so cold that it carries seals and penguins right up the coast of Peru and as far as the Galapagos, there were still a great many birds, above all petrels and albatrosses; and whenever the weather allowed Banks went out in his boat and shot them. To those who find the number of birds he killed distressing, it may be some little comfort to know that having been measured, weighed, scientifically described and sometimes drawn they were at least eaten: the entry for 5 February 1769 reads: