Joseph Banks

English scientist and explorer

• Born: February 13, 1743
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: June 19, 1820
• Place of death: Spring Grove, Heston Parish, Isleworth, England

Combining his knowledge of botany and an inherited fortune, Banks led the scientific group on Captain James Cook’s expedition in the Endeavour and, for forty-one years, as president of the Royal Society, supported and encouraged various scientific activities.

Early Life

Joseph Banks was the only son of William Banks, of Revesby Abbey, and of the daughter of William Bate of Derbyshire, who is referred to as Sarah, Sophia, or Marianne by various writers. The Banks family was landed gentry, represented in Parliament and associated with all the great families in England. William Banks was strongly religious, but Joseph did not seem to follow any formal religion. He had a private tutor for some time; then, in April, 1752, he was sent to Harrow, and in September, 1756, to Eton. He was cheerful, with a generous disposition, but no student. At fourteen, he discovered the beauty of flowers and plants, embarking on a lifetime study. He was entered a gentleman commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, in December, 1760.

His father died in 1761, and his mother moved to Turret House, Paradise Walk, Chelsea, with her daughter, Sarah Sophia. This was near the Chelsea Physic Garden. In Chelsea, Banks could pursue his botany and natural history interests while vacationing from Oxford.

Oxford’s botany professor gave Banks permission to go to Cambridge to find a teacher. There, he met Israel Lyons, who was proficient in botany and mathematics. Lyons became a reader or lecturer in botany at Oxford, giving his series of lectures in July, 1764, paid for by pupil subscriptions organized by Banks. Banks’s regular residence at Oxford ended in December, 1763, with irregular attendance in 1764 and 1765. In February, 1764, he had taken control of his inheritance, making him a wealthy young man. He made good progress under Lyons’s teaching and attracted attention for his knowledge of natural history. In May, 1766, when he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society at age twenty-three, Banks already had left on his first scientific exploration.

Life’s Work

Joseph Banks joined an Oxford friend, Lieutenant Constantine Phipps, serving on HMS Niger on April 7, 1766. The ship was being sent to Labrador and Newfoundland on fishery protection duty under Sir Thomas Adams. Banks was its naturalist, and the two made observations and collections in Newfoundland, Labrador, and Portugal. Banks’s journal was not published for almost two hundred years, nor was any formal report made to the Royal Society, where he attended his first meeting on February 15, 1767. His dried specimens became the basis for his herbarium, a center for the study of natural history. In 1767 and 1768, he toured parts of England and Wales, but nothing was published until 1899.

Banks abandoned his plans to visit Carolus Linnaeus in Sweden and Lapland in the spring of 1768 to concentrate on a Pacific expedition to observe the transit of Venus in 1769. The Admiralty agreed to fit out vessels and appointed Lieutenant James Cook commander of the Endeavour on May 25, 1768. Banks applied to the council of the Royal Society to join in with ten others and, with the support of Lord Sandwich, the Admiralty gave approval on July 22, 1768.

The group included Dr. Daniel Carl Solander, a Swede and pupil of Linnaeus, who arrived in England in July, 1760, making an impact on English science and natural history. In 1764, Solander finally obtained an assistantship in the British Museum and was elected to the Royal Society. Banks met him in 1767. The principal artist was Sydney Parkinson, along with John Reynolds, Alexander Buchan, and Henry Spöring. Banks expended about œ10,000 of his own money outfitting himself and his staff. This was to be the first British voyage of discovery equipped with a scientific staff that was officially recognized.

The Endeavour sailed from Plymouth on August 25, 1768. Banks and Cook began journals, which complement each other, as did the ship’s crew. They sailed around the globe in three years, returning on July 12, 1771. Banks examined the specimens collected, Solander described them, and Parkinson drew them. In Tahiti, Banks studied the indigenous peoples and showed his ability to connect and communicate well by getting back a stolen astronomical quadrant, which was needed to observe the transit of Venus. He lost his two black servants, Richmond and Dollin, who died at Tierra del Fuego. Buchan, the landscape artist, died at Tahiti, while the other three artists died before returning to England. Hundreds of new species were collected, new peoples and new lands were discovered, charting was done, and dangers were overcome. Solander continued to work with Banks as associate and secretary until he died. Cook and Banks were hailed as heroes. Oxford granted Banks an honorary doctor in civil law degree on November 21, 1771. A tradition of scientific work on British voyages of discovery had begun.

The travelers were summoned to Windsor to be received by King George III, and Banks began a friendship that lasted his lifetime. Banks, Solander, and Cook also visited with Lord Sandwich to report on the voyage. John Hawkesworth, official recorder of this Cook voyage, worked with various journals, including Banks’s, preparing three volumes, published in 1773. This, however, represented only a small part of the information gathered by the expedition.

Preparations were begun for a second voyage by Cook in the Resolution. Banks and Solander planned to take part, but with a larger group of assistants, so extra quarters had to be constructed on deck. This made the ship too cumbersome, however, and Cook was concerned. Lord Sandwich and the Admiralty objected, and Banks withdrew. The scientists who finally sailed with Cook, in 1772, were Dr. Johann Reinhold Forster and his son Georg.

Banks then decided to go to Iceland. He chartered the brig Sir Lawrence for five months. Collections were made in Iceland, with stops at the Orkney Islands and Scotland. The printed material and manuscripts formed the British Museum’s Icelandic Collection. Descriptions of the natural pillars of Staffa and some drawings were published in Tour in Scotland by Thomas Pennant in 1774, but Solander’s work on the flora of Iceland and most of the drawings were never published.

Banks took an active role working on the natural history collections of Cook’s second and final voyages. He then took on the role of promoter of science when George III selected Banks as his unofficial scientific adviser. Banks began to work on an open-air herbarium for exotic plants from all over the world at Royal Kew Gardens. This encouraged botanical exploration, the study of economic uses of various plants, and the development of botanical gardens in other British settlements, the first in Jamaica around 1775.

Banks first served on the council of the Royal Society in 1774, and, in 1778, was elected president. He also became an ex officio trustee of the British Museum, and he held both posts for more than forty years. This placed him in the forefront of all scientific activity. His London center was 32 Soho Square, the home of his growing library and botanical collections. His sister, Sarah Sophia, presided over the house. When he married Dorothea Hugessen, daughter of William Weston Hugessen of Norton of Kent, on March 23, 1779, Sarah continued to live with them. He also bought Spring Grove, in Heston, developing the gardens there with the help of his wife and sister. In 1781, he was made a baronet.

Solander’s death in 1782 deprived Banks of an excellent secretary and associate and prevented the publication of Solander’s manuscript. Many species in Australia and New Zealand had to be rediscovered later. Dr. Jonas Dryander, another Swede, became Banks’s librarian and curator. Late in the summer of 1783, Banks had a carriage accident, after which he developed gout, troubling him for the rest of his life.

Early in 1784, there was renewed interest in settlement in Australia, an idea presented by Banks in 1779. By 1786, he called for establishing a colony at New South Wales and continued to be active in the affairs of the new colony in Australia. He had many other interests: transplanting breadfruit from the Pacific to the West Indies for food; improving English wool quality by importing the first merino sheep from Spain; founding the African Society, which became the Royal Geographic Society; advising the British East India Company on transplanting tea from China to India; supporting James Edward Smith in forming the Linnaean Society of London; getting Francis Bauer appointed at Kew Gardens in 1790; and selecting Archibald Menzies as naturalist for the Vancouver expedition to the northwest Pacific coast in North America, from 1791 to 1795.

Banks was invested with the Order of the Bath on July 1, 1795, taking the lizard as his device. He was sworn into the Privy Council in 1797. France honored him in 1802 with membership in the National Institute of France. When the Royal Horticultural Society was formed in 1804, Banks was present and became a vice president. He was also a member of the Society of Arts, the Engineers’ Society, the Dilettanti Society, and the Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture. He was active on the Council of the Society of Antiquaries, the Board of Longitude, and the Royal Institute.

In 1810, Robert Brown published his work on the plant collection from the Flinders expedition and became Banks’s secretary when Dryander died. Banks continued his vast correspondence, even during wartimes. In fact, he was responsible for saving the collections and helping foreign scientists on no fewer than ten occasions. He attended meetings and club dinners, even though he had to be carried or wheeled in a chair by his servants during the last fifteen years of his life. He continued to be active mentally, attending his last meeting in March, 1820. He died June 19, 1820, at Spring Grove and was buried in Heston Church with simple services and no headstone.

His will provided that Robert Brown was to have the use of his library and herbarium, and at Brown’s death they were to go to the British Museum. Brown turned over the library and collections in 1827 and became keeper at the British Museum. The later scattering of Banks’s papers and manuscripts through sales at Sotheby’s has hindered efforts to produce a full biography, although his library and collections are still available and used in the British Library.

Significance

Sir Joseph Banks had an outstanding part in the celebrated first voyage of Cook (1768-1771). Along with his activities in Labrador and Newfoundland, Banks had established a pattern of collection and scientific exploration that enriched the British Museum and the rest of the world. He made his collections available to all, but it was unfortunate that he did not publish so that more people might have had easier access to his work.

In his role as president of the Royal Society he supported individuals and a variety of scientific activities. In both botany and settlement support he is truly the “father of Australia” and the first European to lead botanical investigation of New Zealand. He made the Royal Kew Gardens a world-renowned institution and helped develop numerous other botanical gardens throughout the world. He was a friend to king and commoner, a prodigious correspondent, a promoter of scientific societies and organizations in a wide range of fields, a promoter of scientific exploration, and an important link between the amateur tradition in British science and the modern scientific community.

Bibliography

Banks, Joseph. The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks, 1768-1771. Edited by J. C. Beaglehole. 2 vols. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1962. A carefully researched and faithfully presented version of Banks’s journal and a fitting companion to Beaglehole’s The Life of Captain James Cook (1974). Here is the tale of the scattering of Banks’s work around the globe. Beaglehole suggests that Banks did not publish because he was an amateur who lost interest in the work when completed.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, Bart., K.B., P.R.S. During Captain Cook’s First Voyage in H.M.S. Endeavour in 1768-71 to Terra del Fuego, Tahite, New Zealand, Australia, the Dutch East Indies, etc. Edited by Sir Joseph D. Hooker. New York: Macmillan, 1896. A one-volume version of Banks’s journal, very much abridged. Contains information on the people mentioned in the journal and a biographical sketch of Banks, which Beaglehole considers full of errors.

Cameron, Hector Charles. Sir Joseph Banks, K.B., P.R.S.: The Autocrat of the Philosophers. London: Batchworth Press, 1952. A very readable account of Banks’s wide range of activities, with sections on Kew Gardens, Banks’s correspondents, his role as president of the Royal Society, the founding of Australia, his promotion of science, his life at home, and his detractors.

Captain Cook’s Florilegium. London: Lion and Unicorn Press, 1973. Thirty engravings from the drawings of plants collected by Banks and Daniel Solander on Captain Cook’s first voyage to the islands of the Pacific. Features accounts of the voyage and descriptions of the botanical explorations and prints. Exquisite engravings based on the drawings and sketches of Sydney Parkinson with Solander’s descriptions and collection data, and new names given by other botanists.

Fara, Patricia. Sex, Botany, and Empire: The Story of Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Despite its title, the book focuses more on Banks and Linnaeus than on sex and botany, describing how Carolus Linnaeus developed a system to classify organisms and how Banks, who never met Linnaeus, popularized the classification system.

Gascoigne, John. Science in the Service of Empire: Joseph Banks, the British State, and the Uses of Science in the Age of Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Examines how Banks promoted the scientific discoveries of his age to advance the economic and political interest of British society. The illustrations enhance the text.

Maiden, J. H. Sir Joseph Banks: The “Father of Australia.” London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1909. Contains a brief personal sketch and comments on Banks, extensively quoting from journals, letters, and other sources. There are also brief sketches of men who worked with Banks, numerous illustrations, charts, and works written, edited by, or concerning Banks.

O’Brian, Patrick. Joseph Banks: A Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. O’Brian, who specializes in maritime history, has written a narrative biography of Banks. The book is particularly strong in describing Banks’s voyage with Cook.

Smith, Edward. The Life of Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, with Some Notices of His Friends and Contemporaries. London: John Lane, 1911. Started as a detailed life of Banks but forced into abbreviation by the publisher, this work is a reference for most later comments on Banks. It contains seventeen illustrations, while the bulk of the work covers the period of Banks’s life beginning with his election as president of the Royal Society.