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As Banks sifted through the vast collections made during the Endeavour’s Pacific voyage, several thousand specimens in all, he would have been reminded of the time he had spent in New Holland, at Botany Bay, and on the Endeavour River, in the period from late April to early August 1770, but few other people were interested. New Holland hardly got a mention in the press and when it did it was described as a hostile place, unlike Tahiti, which was described as paradise.[1]

More information about New Holland became available at the end of September 1771, a little over two months after the return of the Endeavour, when an anonymous publication, A Journal of a Voyage Around the World, appeared in London, and told the story of Cook’s three-year voyage. In it New Holland came across as a very disagreeable place.[2] John Hawkesworth’s officially sanctioned publication in 1773, of what he called ‘Lieutenants Cook’s Voyage Round the World’, devoted many more pages to New Holland than the earlier publication: it painted a much more attractive picture of the country’s resources, but, it, too, had little positive to say of its inhabitants.[3] Two days later, the journal of Sydney Parkinson, the Endeavour’s artist, who had died on 26 January 1771 (as the ship was making its way back from Batavia to the Cape of Good Hope), was published – and it confirmed most of the previous descriptions.[4]

After that New Holland disappeared from the scene.

Seven years went by.

On 30 November 1778, following the resignation of Sir John Pringle, Banks, aged thirty-five, was elected, almost unanimously, President of the Royal Society.[5] In the early part of 1779, a few months after his election, Banks received an invitation from Sir Charles Bunbury, MP for Suffolk and Steward of the Jockey Club, to appear before his House of Commons committee to give expert evidence. This was Bunbury’s second committee investigating the general issue of crime and punishment in England.

The first, which convened on 23 March 1778, was set up to assess the effectiveness of an Act of Parliament, which was given Royal Assent on 23 May 1776 and which authorised for the first time the use of hulks, disused naval warships and other vessels, to house prisoners on the River Thames.[6] The Act, the result of desperate government action on a very serious and growing problem of where to house prisoners, and discussed by prison reformers such as John Howard, parliamentarians and religious leaders alike, was passed as a temporary measure and would be in force for two years in the first instance.

Why the desperation and why was it temporary? In 1718, Parliament had passed the Transportation Act which authorised foreign banishment, specifically to the American colonies, as a punishment for serious crime, the term length, depending on the kind of crime, being either seven or fourteen years.[7] Between 1718 and the outbreak of the American War of Independence in 1776, about 50,000, men, women and children had already been disposed of in this way, ending up, for the most part, working on tobacco plantations in Virginia and Maryland.[8] But now, with war raging in the American colonies, there was nowhere to transport the prisoners. Hulks were considered a reasonable solution, especially as they provided the opportunity for hard labour, preparing ballast for ships; and the two years that the Act ran was viewed as a trial period. They interviewed several witnesses. These included Duncan Campbell, who ran the government contract for hulks, and Daniel Solander, who had paid an unannounced visit to the Justitia, a retired East India Company ship and the first ship supplied by Campbell as a prison, to inspect the accommodation. Bunbury’s committee concluded that the system was working well and should continue.[9] Once again the Act was passed and Royal Assent was granted on 22 May 1778.[10]

Not everyone in Parliament and among the public was satisfied with this conclusion – hulks were only absorbing a small proportion of the prison population and many believed the conditions on board, often fatal, were worse than those in the prisons. In response, on 16 December 1778, Bunbury was asked to convene a second committee to seek more detailed information on the number and condition of prisoners convicted of serious crimes in London and the southern English counties jails; to provide more information concerning conditions on the hulks; and, finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, to provide ‘A short Account of the Acts relating to Transportation, and of the Proposals which have been stated to your Committee, for recurring in some Degree to that Mode of Punishment’.[11]

Transportation was back on the agenda. Duncan Campbell was called again, this time to talk about transportation. For twenty years he had been taking British prisoners to Virginia and Maryland. He was asked for his opinion as to where he would send prisoners now. He answered that Georgia and Florida would be suitable but not for large numbers.[12]

On hearing this, the Committee ‘thought proper, therefore, to examine how far, Transportation might be practicable to other Parts of the World’.

It was time to call Banks. He was no expert on transportation but he was one of the few people in London who could speak authoritatively on another part of the world that might be suitable as a destination for those whose punishment, in the eyes of the Judiciary, was transportation.[13]

The report of Banks’s appearance began thus: ‘Joseph Banks, [was] requested, in case it should be thought expedient to establish a colony of convicted Felons in any distant Part of the Globe, from whence their escape might be difficult, and where, from the Fertility of the soil, they might be able to maintain themselves, after the First Year, with little or no aid from the Mother Country, to give his Opinion What Place would be most eligible for such Settlement?’ Banks answered straight away that that place was ‘Botany Bay, on the Coast of New Holland, in the Indian Ocean, which was about Seven Months Voyage from England’.[14]

Then Banks explained his choice further. He spoke glowingly of Botany Bay. The climate was right – like Toulouse, he said – though he admitted he had only been there for a week when the weather was ‘mild and moderate’; the soil would be able to support large numbers of settlers, and sheep and cattle would thrive – there were no predators; fishing was good, water plentiful, and there was an abundance of timber. The inhabitants, he added, were few in number – no more than fifty in the neighbourhood he reckoned; they were willing to share their land (but not their produce). There were no Europeans anywhere nearby – ‘escape would be very difficult’. A settlement would begin to maintain itself after the first year, he asserted, though for the first year the settlers would need to bring all of their necessary provisions with them from England. Would the Mother Country reap benefit from this settlement, the Committee asked? Banks replied confidently that ‘if the People formed among themselves a Civil Government’, the population would grow, they would demand more European goods and, with a land mass exceeding that of the European continent, they ‘would furnish Matter of Advantageous Return’.[15] Banks made no mention of the Endeavour River area where he had spent seven weeks, considerably longer than at Botany Bay.[16]

This was probably the first time that Banks spoke publicly about Botany Bay. He was certainly an illustrious witness but one suspects that what he said made little impression. The real focus of attention, as an alternative to the American colonies, was a place much closer to home and with connections that went back more than a century – West Africa. Bunbury had invited six witnesses to speak about their experiences in this part of the world. Between them they had more than thirty years’ experience living and working on the coast. One of the witnesses, John Roberts, who had been in command of the West African trading and slaving forts for nine years, advocated an African penal colony – his preferred choice was a port, 400 miles upriver from the mouth of the Gambia River. He produced figures to back up his case that the overall cost of this penal colony would be less than the corresponding costs to keep prisoners on hulks. Two other witnesses were in broad agreement with Roberts while the three remaining witnesses were not in favour, citing especially the horrible mortality rates among Europeans. Transportation was not intended to be a death sentence.[17]

After taking expert evidence, Bunbury’s recommendation was that the laws governing transportation, which specified the American colonies as the destination, should be altered to include ‘any other Part of the Globe that may be found expedient’.[18]

As the revolutionary war across the Atlantic progressed, North America became increasingly closed as a destination for transportation: some convicts were sent to West Africa, typically to be enlisted there in the military, but there were few of them. Suggestions of where convicts should be sent were made from all quarters. Possible destinations included Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in Canada, the West Indies, British Honduras, Gibraltar, Menorca and St Helena, but none of these came to anything.[19] It may have been that the government was hoping that the war would be won and that transportation to the American colonies could resume as before.

Nothing more was heard of Botany Bay.

Four years later, the subject of New South Wales, as it was now generally referred to, suddenly reappeared in Banks’s life.

On 28 July 1783, from an address off Grosvenor Square in London’s Mayfair, James Matra wrote a letter to Joseph Banks. This was not the first time Matra had written to Banks but the subject of this letter was out of the ordinary, very different from his former concerns. He was very agitated.

Matra, or Magra, his birth name (he changed it in 1775), met Banks in 1768 on HMS Endeavour. Born in New York in 1746, one of three sons of a wealthy Corsican couple who had come to New York by way of Ireland, James Matra was drawn to the sea and served on several British ships during the Seven Years War (1756–63). A few more naval appointments followed on ships that took him to Chatham, Dublin and finally London. There, on 25 July 1768, he signed on as Able Seaman on HMS Endeavour. One month later, the ship left Plymouth for the Pacific.[20]

Matra, who was promoted to full midshipman just before the ship arrived back in England, is hardly mentioned in the surviving journals. In his own journal, Banks acknowledges his presence but does not record his name, referring to him instead as ‘one of our Midshipmen an American’.[21]

Less than a month following the return of the Endeavour, Matra was promoted but he chose not to pursue a naval career.[22] Instead he remained in London, probably spending some of the time in the company of Banks, Solander and those in their circle.[23] Six months later, though, a new career opportunity opened when he was appointed British Consul to the Canary Islands, based in Tenerife. He remained in this post until March 1775 when he returned to London, where, towards the end of the year he petitioned the King to have his name changed to Matra.[24] A short trip to New York followed and then in mid 1778, he accepted a return to consular life when he agreed to be Secretary to Sir Robert Ainslie, British Ambassador in Constantinople.[25]

Not particularly happy in this situation, Matra was back in London in July 1781. And it was here, as an exiled American Loyalist, a British subject who had remained loyal to the Crown during the revolutionary war, that he formed his grand design, the essence of which he shared with Banks in July 1783.

In his letter, Matra, who had been corresponding with Banks for several years, asked about rumours he had heard that there were plans being considered to settle New South Wales.[26] Matra had learned, he continued, that Banks was the guiding hand in one of these plans and added, as he had ‘frequently revolved similar Plans’, that he would ‘prefer embarking in such a Scheme’.[27]

There is no surviving evidence that Banks was involved; but Matra was probably correct that there was a plan afoot, which he attributed to Sir George Young, a senior naval officer, and Sir George Jackson, Second Secretary to the Admiralty.[28] One month after writing to Banks, Matra offered his own proposal to the government to settle New South Wales with American Loyalists and other free settlers, ‘an Object … which may in time, atone for the loss of our American colonies’.[29]

Matra’s proposal was wide-ranging and covered all aspects of how the settlement would be provided for and what its future would hold. The key point is that it would pay for itself, as it could grow the same economically useful plants that were already growing nearby in the islands of the East Indies to the benefit of other European nations – sugar, coffee, tea, indigo and cotton received special mention. Matra also pointed out, and in some detail, the strategic role, both political and economic, that New South Wales could play in a new Pacific region. He had the backing of ‘some of the most intelligent, & candid Americans’ for whom this proposal held out their best opportunity of re-establishing their lives. And what’s more, Matra had Banks’s full support.[30]

No sooner had Matra laid his ideas before the government than matters took an unexpected turn. Lord Sydney, the Home Secretary, met with Matra and laid before him the idea that was brewing in the Cabinet that New South Wales might be suitable for convicts punished with transportation. With negotiations completed leading to the signing of the Treaty of Paris between Britain and the newly established United States, the government had to look for a new destination for transportation. Matra was very enthusiastic about Sydney’s idea. ‘I believe’, he wrote in April 1784, ‘that it will be found, that in this Idea, good Policy & Humanity are united.’[31]

Events moved ahead very swiftly, because the number of people convicted of crimes in England was growing rapidly.[32] This was not the time to be concerned with a free settlement. Pressure on local prisons was becoming intolerable and the chorus demanding the government resume transportation was increasing in volume.[33]

Even though, with Banks’s backing, Matra spoke glowingly of New South Wales, it was not at this time the government’s favoured option. North America was being reconsidered. On two occasions in 1783 and 1784, transportation was resumed clandestinely to Maryland but the experiment failed.[34] And then, at the end of 1784, West Africa, which had been discussed at the Bunbury Committee, became the government’s favourite choice, though it did not publicise the fact.[35]

When word got out that the government was seriously considering West Africa, opposition to the idea, especially from Edmund Burke, gained momentum – he and other Members of Parliament were convinced that West Africa was a graveyard for white people. Transportation, they reiterated, was a punishment, not a death sentence. The government paused and agreed with the idea put forth by Francis Seymour Conway, Lord Beauchamp, MP for Orford, that a committee should evaluate the government’s recommendation. Chaired by Beauchamp, the committee sought expert testimony on the suitability of West Africa as a penal colony. The government was looking for support to establish a settlement on Lemaine Island, four hundred miles from the mouth of the Gambia River. The specific legislation, the Transportation Act of 1784, was already in place. Unlike its earlier 1718 version, which specified the American colonies as the destination for transportation, this Act left it up to the government to decide on a suitable place of banishment. If everything went according to plan, then all the government would need to do would be to raise an Order-in-Council to specify Lemaine Island as the convict destination.

As it turned out, nothing went according to plan. In its first stage of hearings, held between 26 April and 3 May 1785, the Beauchamp Committee heard one witness after the other pour scorn on the idea of transportation to West Africa.[36] In its first report, on 9 May, Beauchamp’s Committee confirmed that West Africa was unsuitable.[37]

In the second stage of its hearings, beginning on 9 May, the Committee widened its questioning beyond West Africa. One of the first to appear was James Matra. There was nothing surprising in this. Since he had proposed New South Wales as a settlement in August 1783, other influential people had added their voices to his, including Sir George Young, a prominent naval officer, and his brother-in-law Sir John Call, a military engineer and wealthy MP with wide experience in Indian affairs.[38] Matra appeared twice and repeated many of the claims he had been making for the past two years.[39]

Banks, too, was invited to give his opinion. It was a Q and A. ‘This Committee’, Beauchamp began, ‘would be glad to know where in your Voyage with Captain Cook it occurred to you that there were any places in the newly discovered Islands to which persons of such Description might be sent in a Situation where they might be able by Labour to support themselves?’[40]

Banks could have suggested a number of places where he had been: Tahiti, New Zealand, Endeavour River and Botany Bay. From this list of possibilities, he chose Botany Bay, in which he had spent the least amount of time. Why Botany Bay over the others? Banks never explained this. He may not have recommended New Zealand because the reception of the Endeavour by the local people was hardly friendly; he may have thought Tahiti too small and densely populated; and ruled out Endeavour River because its climate was too warm and too humid for the British constitution. In his answers to the committee’s questions, Banks spoke very highly of Botany Bay in much the same way as he had six years earlier in front of the Bunbury Committee. He reiterated his key observations: the land was fertile and there was fresh water; the climate was similar to that of Europe; the natives were not hostile, and in any case they were armed only with spears made of fish bones; they would make way for the newcomers. When asked about the provision of women for the male convicts, Banks answered that he did not foresee a problem: ‘I have no doubt’, he said, ‘that they might be obtained from the South Sea Islands at no other Expence than the Charge of fetching them.’[41]

Banks repeated his observation that there were no ‘wild Beasts’ – or predators – and that though he had seen quadrupeds, they were unlikely to be a food source, unlike the plentiful supply of birds. Banks summed up his opinion succinctly: ‘From the Fertility of the Soil the timid Disposition of the Inhabitants and the Climate being so analogous to that of Europe I give this place the preference to all that I have seen.’[42]

Matra and Banks made their case eloquently and with conviction. After all, they had actually been there. The Committee at this point were sufficiently convinced to ask for costings from other witnesses. When these were put before the Committee, it was clear that settling Botany Bay would be no more expensive than keeping convicts in hulks.[43] On the second to last day of the hearings, Matra was called back again – his third appearance – and this time the conversation turned to issues of procuring livestock for the fledgling settlement, and the competing claims to the territory from other European powers. Matra assured the Committee that livestock could easily be purchased from the Indonesian islands to the north and that Britain was alone in claiming the land.

Everything seemed to point to Botany Bay.[44] But then on 25 May 1785, the very last day of the proceedings, Sir John Call, who had previously authored a proposal to settle New South Wales, drew the Committee’s attention to a part of the world no one had yet considered – Das Voltas Bay in present-day Namibia.[45] Call, an MP and member of the Committee, had previously given evidence in the first stage of the hearings. Based on his acquaintance with the West African coast going back to the 1750s, he categorically dismissed the area as being suitable for transportation. But now, and at the last moment, he offered a new suggestion.

Within government circles, the idea of the southwestern coast of Africa as a convict destination was not entirely new. Commodore Edward Thompson, who was in command of the Africa station of the Royal Navy, had advocated it almost two years earlier, in July 1783, and then again just before the Committee’s proceedings began.[46]

The Committee never called anyone to testify on the suitability of this part of the world and the hearings came to an end as scheduled. Two months later, on 28 July 1785, the Committee reported its findings and recommendation to the House of Commons. Not a single word was devoted to Botany Bay. It is as though Banks’s and Matra’s exhaustive testimony had never taken place. Instead, the report concluded that on the basis of the evidence laid before them only Das Voltas Bay was suitable as a destination and eventually a settlement. As the report argued, both convicts and American Loyalists could be accommodated; the area had not been claimed by anyone else and lay in a good geopolitical space, with the Portuguese to the north and the Dutch to the south; Brazil, and its offshore whaling areas, was not far away; and the sailing time to England was reasonable.[47]

Why did the Das Voltas scheme trump that of Botany Bay? The documentary record is unfortunately silent on this question. Speculations have taken the place of solid facts but these need not detain us here.[48] What matters is that less than a month after the report was made, on 22 August 1785, Lord Sydney, the Home Secretary, asked the Admiralty to send a naval vessel to the area, to judge its suitability for settlement and to find the most likely location for it.[49]

It fell naturally to Edward Thompson to sail there and report back. Under the cover of a regular visit to inspect the British West African slaving stations, Thompson prepared to set sail in two ships. He carried secret orders that at an appropriate time he should send HMS Nautilus, the smaller of his two ships, southward towards Das Voltas Bay to survey the area.[50]

Banks was back in the picture, now advising the government about the new African destination. The government, Banks told William Aiton at Kew, in a letter dated 29 August 1785, wanted a naturalist to accompany Thompson to the coast of Africa, to a part ‘unknown to us in the Article of Natural History’.[51] This man, Banks explained, should be an enthusiastic gardener; he should know some botany; he should know how to collect and dry specimens; and he should be able to distinguish between different kinds of soils. But most of all, he should be a keen observer and recorder. In Banks’s own words: ‘He should be ready to write down his opinion of every thing which occurs in his department & to enable him to do so I shall draw up full instructions of the things he is expected to notice.’

Banks had clearly been drawn into the government’s confidence and he told Aiton not to waste a moment choosing ‘the best who offers’. But there was more to this than satisfying the government’s request. The voyage, Banks emphasised, would also result in entirely new specimens for him and seeds for Kew. He pressed Aiton. ‘If it can be done well we have future opportunities … for God’s sake be active and do not let such an opportunity slip you.’ Banks was loath to lose any opportunity to collect for the royal garden at Kew.

As it was summer, the time of the year that Banks habitually spent at Revesby Abbey to tend to estate matters, he left it to Jonas Dryander, his Swedish librarian and a trained botanist, and to Dr Charles Blagden, his close friend and Secretary of the Royal Society, to make the final choice of best candidate. Aiton did not have a name at hand, but, fortunately, Johann Graefer, a German gardener working in London, went to see Blagden and brought with him a young Pole, a Mr Au, who was then working at Kew.[52] At some point Au had worked at a nursery garden in Islington owned partly by Graefer and this was how the two men had met.[53] Banks, apparently, also knew Au, having recommended him to Aiton at some point, and was pleased with the suggestion of his appointment.[54] There was no one else, but there was a problem that made Banks anxious.[55] Evan Nepean, Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office, had raised an objection to having a ‘foreigner’ entrusted with such a sensitive mission.[56] Nepean asked Au to attend an interview.[57] It was getting tense.

Several days passed and letters from Blagden, Dryander and Banks crisscrossed but finally, thanks to Blagden’s personal intervention and Banks’s arguments in Au’s favour, Nepean withdrew his objection and Au was given the go-ahead on 15 September 1785 to join Thompson’s convoy to Africa.[58]

Blagden seemed to know instinctively that he had got the right man. As he told Banks: ‘He is literally the only person that offered; & yet fortunately much superior to any one we could have expected.’ Almost without pause Blagden listed his attributes: ‘his education has been far beyond his present situation in life,’ he had an excellent writing style, could draw, knew many languages and several sciences, ‘attended the hospitals in London’, knew surgery, ‘is bold, active & animated with the most laudable ambition of being distinguished’.[59] Fine words, indeed.

Blagden spoke with Thompson who expected Au in Portsmouth – ‘everything seems well settled,’ Blagden assured Banks.[60] Banks now drew up his promised ‘Instructions’. The document detailed every aspect of Au’s substantial task: if he found signs of agriculture, he was to report on the nature of the soil, the tools and manure used, and the crops harvested; he was to collect specimens of everything that was cultivated; he was to describe the topography, the water quality, the forests, and take samples of every living botanical specimen, flowers, fruits, roots and seeds. And, without detracting from this objective, he was ‘to collect such seeds as he shall find ripe or bulbous roots as he may dig up which on his return home may furnish the Royal Gardens at Kew with something valuable to that magnificent collection’.[61] There is no doubt that Banks had high hopes for this mission. The settlement of convicts was not his aim – that was the government’s business: appropriating the natural history of somewhere new was, and he relished the anticipated results.

HMS Grampus and HMS Nautilus sailed for Africa on 28 September 1785. Au was on board but not under that name. Both the instructions drawn up for him and his entry in the ship’s muster announced a change of name: the man whose education, according to Blagden, far surpassed his station in life was now known as Antoni, and then Anthony Pantaleon Howe – it wouldn’t be the last time he changed his name.[62]

By the turn of the year the two ships were nearing the point where they would separate. Then disaster struck. On 16 January 1786, Commodore Thompson suddenly became very ill and died the very next day. George Tripp, the second-in-command, took over the Grampus and with it charge of the Africa station. The command of HMS Nautilus fell to the nineteen-year-old Thomas Boulden Thompson, the late Commodore’s ‘nephew’ and heir.[63]

On 2 February, the two ships parted as planned. The voyage to southwest Africa now began and it proved to be long and dull but, finally, on 21 March 1786, the ship arrived in St Helena Bay, about 150 kilometres to the north of Cape Town. The plan was to survey the coast northward from this point, including finding Das Voltas Bay, whose precise location was disputed.

It didn’t begin well and it continued badly. On 11 April they found Das Voltas Bay but the soil looked barren and dry. On 27 April they entered Walvis Bay and met four local people whose homes, located some way inland, looked poverty-stricken, more like huts than houses: they resembled, Thompson remarked, ‘the halves of bee hives, with the backs to the wind’.[64] It was all too depressing and on 17 May, Thompson decided that he had seen enough and took the Nautilus to the west heading for the island of St Helena, leaving the African coast for good. His terse comments in his journal on that day said it all: ‘completed the Survey of the Coast from Lat 32.47.47 S. to 16.0.0 S. without finding a Drop of fresh Water or seeing a Tree’.[65]

HMS Nautilus was back in Spithead on 23 July 1786. Immediately Thompson went to London to see Lord Sydney. Over a period of three weeks, the two men discussed the voyage and Thompson’s conclusions.[66] Sydney would have found the disappointing news painful. The government had invested so much in the hope of a settlement in southwest Africa and now it was over.[67]

A settlement at Das Voltas was deemed impossible and a substitute place was desperately needed. There were at least 1300 felons on hulks who had been sentenced to transportation and they needed to be moved.[68] On 18 August, Lord Sydney wrote a letter to the Treasury. The report of the officers of the Nautilus, he remarked, concluded that ‘the coast [was] sandy and barren, and from other Causes unfit for a settlement.’ He then went on: ‘His Majesty has thought it advisable to fix on Botany Bay situated on the coast of New South Wales.’[69] Banks was not mentioned by name as recommending the destination, but, incorrectly, Cook was.

There was no need for a survey. Cook had already done that when the Endeavour was on the coast. Events moved very quickly. By the end of the month Lord Sydney had informed the Admiralty of the decision and of the King’s command that a warship and a tender should be prepared to accompany a fleet of ships carrying 750 convicts to Botany Bay. A month after that, the Admiralty confirmed that they had ordered two ships to be fitted and that the lead ship, HMS Sirius, would be under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip.[70]

The newspapers were soon on to the story.[71] Botany Bay and transportation became inseparably linked.[72] The Europeanisation of Australia would now begin.

Anthony Pantaleon Howe had returned with a collection of seeds from some of the places HMS Nautilus anchored.[73] They went to Kew. Though it was not a voluminous collection, Banks was pleased with the way Howe had conducted himself.

Howe would soon be sent on another, and much more, daring mission.