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A little before Banks became involved in the potential location of penal colonies, he had been focusing on the Pacific Northwest. It began with the fur trade, in particular the pelt of the sea otter, but, as usual, Banks saw an opportunity for collecting plants.

On 7 October 1780, the Resolution and the Discovery, the ships of Cook’s third Pacific voyage, anchored in Deptford, after a four-year voyage to find a passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The trip had been a disaster: no passage was found, Cook was killed in a skirmish on Hawaii on 14 February 1779, and his successor, Charles Clerke, had died on the return voyage.

The tragic news of Cook’s death had travelled overland across Russia to reach London many months before the return of the ships.[1] John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich and First Lord of the Admiralty, was nominally responsible both for the expedition and for the publication of its narrative. Whatever enthusiasm he may have had for the expedition, he lacked any for the publication and, no sooner had the ships docked, than he was in touch with Banks hoping for help. Montagu had all the journals of the voyage to hand but, as he told Banks, ‘I had so much trouble about the publication of the last two voyages, that I am cautious or rather unwilling to take upon me to decide in what manner & for whose emolument the work shall be undertaken.’[2] Banks immediately came to his aid and wrote to James King, who had taken command of HMS Discovery after Clerke died, asking him to write the narrative. King was delighted to accept and thereby came under the patronage of Banks, someone he admired and whom he referred to as ‘the common Center of we discoverers’.[3]

Until the ships returned, no one in London had any detailed knowledge of the expedition’s proceedings. It was all in the logs and journals, which had only arrived with the ships and would now be put at King’s disposal and, by extension, at that of Banks, who was in overall charge of the publishing project.

At some point during the writing of the narrative Banks must have learned, either by reading it in draft form or hearing of it from King, that during April 1778, while the Resolution and the Discovery lay at anchor in Nootka Sound (the indigenous name which Cook renamed King George’s Sound), Vancouver Island, the ships’ company, officers and crew alike, were treated to an unusual sight. Cook noted in his journal that no sooner had they entered the bay than they were surrounded by canoes filled with furs of various animals but, in particular, those of what Cook called the ‘sea beaver’ (but which we know as the sea otter). The indigenous people were there to trade and seemed to know what they were about and what they wanted. ‘For these things’, Cook remarked, ‘they took in exchange, Knives, chisels, pieces of iron & Tin, nails, Buttons, or any kind of metal. Beads they were not fond of and cloth of all kinds they rejected.’[4]

Banks would not have been surprised to learn this. Though he had never been to this part of the world he knew a lot about it. He would have known that the Russians, beginning with Vitus Bering’s expedition to the North Pacific in 1741, had discovered the fur-bearing mammals in the area and, soon afterwards, began trading them to the Chinese. He would have known that Georg Steller, the expedition’s naturalist, produced the first description of the sea otter and, particularly its pelt, the gloss of which, he reported, ‘surpasses the blackest velvet’.[5] Banks would also have been familiar with Peter Simon Pallas’s published account of his travels in Russia, which provided a detailed account of the trade in furs from Russia to China at the Siberian–Chinese border trading post of Kyakhta.[6] William Coxe’s 1780 publication, Account of the Russian Discoveries Between Asia and America, the first of its kind in English, also spoke glowingly of the trade in furs, and was only the latest in the long line of publications that discussed the Pacific fur trade.[7] Banks would have concluded from all this information that there was no reason why the British could not follow the Russians into this lucrative space.

The possibilities of a British-controlled Pacific fur trade had, in fact, already been advocated by both James Matra and Banks when their proposal for settling Australia, dated 23 August 1783, was put before the government.[8] The plan, it will be recalled, proposed a community of free settlers with the addition of American Loyalists who would produce for export to Britain and re-export to Europe a number of crops suited to the climate and which could be imported for cultivation from India, the nearby Spice Islands, New Zealand and elsewhere. Because Matra and Banks were imagining a settlement that would not be an expense to Britain, but rather increase its wealth, they proposed that commerce should be opened between New South Wales and the fur-rich Pacific coast which Cook had surveyed. The conclusive element, Matra and Banks emphasised, was the fantastic return on investment that the fur trade guaranteed. ‘The skins which they procured’, Matra and Banks wrote referring to Cook’s third voyage, ‘then sold in China at 400 hard Dollars each, though for the few they brought home, of the same quality, they only received about Ten Pounds each.’ And there was more. ‘As our situation in New South Wales, would enable us to carry on this Trade with the utmost facility, we should no longer be under the necessity of sending such immense quantities of Silver for the different Articles we import from the Chinese Empire’.

The government, as seen in a previous chapter, did not take up Matra’s proposal for settling Australia with free settlers and American Loyalists, and the commercial possibilities of a Pacific fur connection were not pursued. But the idea of British ships plying a trade between Nootka Sound and China remained attractive.

It got a tremendous boost when James King’s authoritative telling of Cook’s final voyage was published on 4 June 1784. King laid it out simply and starkly in a chapter in volume three which described the journey of the Resolution and the Discovery from Macao, the Portuguese settlement at the mouth of the Pearl River in southern China, to the main port city of Canton, almost 100 kilometres further up river. The whole stock of sea otter pelts that were sold in Canton fetched just under £2000. Considering that by the time the ships got to Canton, some of the pelts had already been sold on the Kamchatka Peninsula and others had been spoiled, this figure represented an enormous profit margin.[9] King also mentioned that some of the ship’s company were so obsessed by the potential wealth they were on the point of mutiny, intending to force the ships to return to the Pacific coast of America. Indeed, as it turned out, while they were in Canton two seamen from the Resolution commandeered the ship’s cutter. A search was made but to no avail. ‘It was supposed’, King wrote, ‘that these people had been seduced by the prevailing notion of making a fortune, by returning to the fur islands.’[10]

King remarked that the British fur trade should be an extension of the East India Company’s trade in Canton and, with two ships making the return voyage to Nootka Sound from Canton annually, they could bring as many sea-otter skins as possible to this lucrative market. At the time the East India Company held a monopoly of all British trade in most of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. King added that in order to have something with which to trade at Nootka Sound, each ship would need to carry five tons of unwrought iron, ‘a forge, and an expert smith, with a journeyman and apprentice, who might be ready to forge such tools, as it should appear the Indians were most desirous of … iron is the only sure commodity for their market.’[11]

At a price of just under £5, King’s three-volume account of Cook’s last voyage was not cheap. The entire print run, however, sold out in three days and a contemporary reviewer commented that second-hand sets were changing hands for more than twice the original price.[12] No doubt much of the attraction was the account of Cook’s death but some readers must have been keen to learn about the fur bonanza that was the Pacific Northwest.

Richard Cadman Etches was just the sort of person to be intrigued by the promise of the fur trade. Born in Derbyshire, Etches came to London in 1779, the same year as Cook died, and seems to have established himself quickly in the City’s tea and wine business, going into partnership with Robert Hanning Brooks.[13] Details about his activities are at best sketchy but on 13 March 1785, Etches met with Banks to discuss his proposal: to send two ships to the Pacific Northwest to obtain furs for trade in Canton as King had recommended.

Banks thought that Etches should be more ambitious. Japan, for example, should be included as a possible market.[14] Banks had been led to think about Japan as a commercial possibility probably as early as 1774 when John Blankett, a British naval officer, wrote a report to Lord Sandwich at the Admiralty on the potential of Japan and the nearby islands as a market.[15] But what impressed Banks the most was most likely the visit to Soho Square by Carl Peter Thunberg, who had been with Francis Masson collecting plants at the Cape, and who had been at the Dutch East India Company settlement in the Bay of Nagasaki for more than a year in 1775 and 1776. Thunberg had stayed at Banks’s home in late 1778 and early 1779 on his way back to Sweden from Japan, and while he was there he had spoken to Banks about the potential of Japan as a market.[16]

Banks agreed to write to Thunberg, who by then was in Uppsala, asking him to expand on the Japanese market and, specifically, his opinion of the likelihood of British ships being allowed to trade in the ‘northern Provinces’, something which Thunberg had said was possible.[17]

Banks also suggested that Etches should think bigger in terms of how he wanted to finance the venture. Etches agreed with him and, in addition to the £20,000 subscription he had arranged to fit out the two ships, he would try to increase the nominal capital to £200,000 if the first venture were a success – which he didn’t doubt it would be.[18]

Not long after the meeting with Banks, Etches floated his new business, which he appropriately called ‘The King George’s Sound Company’. It had nine partners: Richard Cadman Etches, his brother John, a number of other merchants, and two naval officers from Cook’s third voyage, George Dixon, who served as an armourer on HMS Resolution, and Nathaniel Portlock, who was appointed on HMS Discovery as master’s mate and then transferred to HMS Resolution following Cook’s death.

Portlock may already have worked for Etches but apparently he didn’t know Dixon. Banks, however, did know him. Dixon had been in contact with him in late August 1784 to propose an expedition across America starting in Quebec. Dixon wanted it to be as much a scientific expedition as a commercial one. He volunteered to undertake the astronomical work and to assign David Nelson, whom he knew from the Resolution, to be responsible for natural history. As Banks had recommended Nelson to be the naturalist on the Resolution, he would have been pleased with this suggestion.[19] All the other personnel, thirty or forty men, Dixon thought he could get in Quebec where there was a greater likelihood of finding men who knew the trade and even some indigenous languages.[20] In his reply Banks welcomed the idea but thought the time was not right, since a new nation, the United States, had just been declared on that continent.[21]

As a consolation, Banks may have suggested to Dixon that he should attach himself to a commercial venture to the Pacific, and it is very likely that it was Banks who told Dixon about Etches.[22] However the connections were made, what was important was that by including two veterans of Cook’s final voyage, Etches was drawing a line directly from Cook to himself, coupling London, again, to Nootka Sound.

Thunberg’s reply to Banks has not survived, but it is highly likely that he repeated his positive opinion of Japan. In Etches’ proposal to the East India Company to allow him to trade at Canton, he referred to his having received ‘the most flattering encouragement from conversation of Gentlemen of the greatest eminence and abilities (for knowledge of Japan)’.[23] The East India Company granted approval in the early part of May for the venture to proceed and to open up commercial relations with Japan.[24]

Etches then bought two ships and began fitting them out for the voyage. By the beginning of June the ships were being provisioned and then a problem was discovered. Etches also needed the permission of the South Sea Company, whose charter included the Northwest Coast of the Pacific, to trade. Negotiations, conducted by George Rose, Secretary to the Treasury, were quickly begun and by 4 August, all the paperwork was in order.[25]

On 29 August, a distinguished party assembled at Deptford to inspect the ships. In the group were George Rose and Joseph Banks; his schoolfriend Constantine Phipps, now Baron Mulgrave, a member of the Board of Control for India and the Board of Trade; and Sir John Dick, British Consul at Leghorn from 1754 to 1776, a civil servant who had taken an early and keen interest in the venture.[26] Though the ships were ready they had still not been named. George Rose named the larger of the two the King George, and Banks, charged with naming the smaller ship, christened it Queen Charlotte.[27]

And so, on 31 August 1785, the first two ships of the King George’s Sound Company left Gravesend, but it took two more weeks, until 16 September, before they could clear the English coast for the long voyage to the Pacific Northwest by way of Cape Horn and the Hawaii Islands. Portlock was in overall command of the expedition, and captained the King George, while Dixon took responsibility for the Queen Charlotte.[28]

Too impatient to wait for news of the first expedition, which was somewhere in the Pacific, Etches began to plan a second.[29] He found another veteran of Cook’s voyages to command it – James Colnett, who had served as a midshipman for three and a half years under Cook on HMS Resolution on his second voyage to the Pacific.[30]

In the summer of 1786, Colnett, now a first lieutenant, took leave from the Royal Navy (it was peacetime and many naval officers were on half-pay), and, in his own words: ‘Having been recommended to a Company of Merchants trading to the NW side of America, the beginning of July 1786 I receiv’d a Letter from their Secretary offering me the command of a Cutter to perform a Voyage to KING GEORGE’S or NOOTKA SOUND …’[31] That ship was named the Prince of Wales. Its tender was the Princess Royal, under the command of Charles Duncan, a naval man like Colnett.

Preparations for the voyage were quick and even though they missed their sailing date of early August, on 23 September 1786 the ships left Deptford for the Pacific. The second Etches expedition was on its way and this time Banks had a botanical collector on board – Archibald Menzies.

Menzies had first written to Banks at the end of May 1784, when he sent him a letter and a small parcel of seeds from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Menzies explained that he was doing this ‘at the request of Dr. Hope, Professor of Botany at Edinburgh’.[32] While Banks did not know Menzies, he certainly knew John Hope well, having been corresponding with him since 1766 at least.[33] Hope, a physician and an early and ardent supporter of the Linnaean system, had been Regius Professor of Botany in the University of Edinburgh since 1768 and in charge of the Royal Gardens (forerunner of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh).[34] Menzies had been born in Weem near Aberfeldy, Perthshire in 1754, the son of a tenant farmer. He had attended Hope’s botany lectures while studying medicine at the university. He also worked for Hope as a gardener between 1775 and 1778.[35]

Menzies never got his medical degree but may have been granted a licence to practise surgery. This would have been enough for him to apply as a surgeon’s mate in the navy, which he did in 1782, and joined HMS Nonsuch that year.[36] A year later he was on HMS Assistance as assistant surgeon and, when he wrote to Banks, he was stationed in Halifax, the base of the North American Station of the Royal Navy, on the same ship.

In 1784, Menzies, now thirty years old, returned to Halifax from cruising the waters of the Caribbean, as part of the duties of the British naval presence in the region.[37] The parcel for Banks contained seeds from where the ship had called: Barbados, Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis in the West Indies, and Sandy Hook, near New York. For those plants he could examine, Menzies remarked, he included their Linnaean names.[38] Menzies ended his letter by telling Banks that the land around Halifax promised excellent botanising and that he would ‘wholly devote [his] vacant hours to natural history … I have no doubt that I shall be enabled to send you another parcel early in the autumn.’[39]

He was as good as his word. On 2 November 1784, Menzies sent Banks a second parcel – the first one he knew had arrived safely and was much appreciated – of seeds from Nova Scotia, several of which he could not find mentioned in the edition of Linnaeus he had with him.[40]

Over the next two years Menzies continued to remain in contact with Banks and sent him seeds, including some from the Bahamas. Unfortunately, as Menzies had to admit, he had been unable to find the species of plants that Banks had specifically asked for.[41]

Still, Banks must have been very pleased. Not only did he have specimens of plants from Nova Scotia but he was now in touch with a professional collector who might just be called a botanist – Menzies’s command of the Linnaean system qualified him for that appellation.

On 12 July 1786, a day before the East India Company gave Etches permission to trade in the Pacific Northwest, Banks got a letter from Menzies that he would soon be in England.[42] A little over five weeks later, 21 August 1786, Menzies wrote to Banks from Chatham to announce his arrival. He said that he was forwarding another parcel of seeds to him and expected to be in London himself in a matter of a few days. He added that he had heard that ‘there is a Ship, a private adventurer, now fitting out at Deptford to go round the World – Should I be so happy as to be appointed Surgeon of her, it will at least gratify one of my greatest earthly ambitions, & afford one of the best opportunities of collecting seeds & other objects of Natural History for you …’[43]

What happened next is unclear but, on 7 September, Menzies told Banks that he had been appointed surgeon to the expedition and was expecting to sail soon.[44] Menzies was the perfect candidate: he had served on naval vessels, had studied with John Hope, knew his plants and the Linnaean system well. He even had a highly glowing reference from his old teacher.[45]

Did Banks recommend him or was it Hope? Menzies’s letter to Banks, unfortunately, reveals nothing.[46] All we can be certain of is that Menzies did ask Banks to intervene with Etches to allow him more freedom to collect on the voyage and that Etches agreed; and that Menzies visited Soho Square on 27 September while Banks was at Revesby to offer some more plants from Halifax (including an orchid, which Jonas Dryander, Banks’s librarian, thought superb) and presumably to acquaint himself with Banks’s Pacific collection.[47]

Though Menzies kept predicting an early departure, in fact, the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal did not leave the English coast until 16 October 1786.[48] On 16 November, when the ships were in the Cape Verde Islands, Menzies wrote his first letter to Banks. He thanked him for writing to Etches to give him more freedom to collect than was originally stated because ‘the west coast of N. America presents to me a new & an extensive field for Botanical researches … & I can assure you that I shall lose no Opportunity in collecting whatever is new, rare or useful.’[49] Menzies emphasised that his confidence was supported by experience: before he had left for the voyage, William Aiton at Kew had shown him a specimen of Houstonia caerulea (popular name little or azure bluet) which he had raised from seed sent to him from Nova Scotia, the implication being that if he could do it once he could do it again and again.[50]

The ships would be heading for Cape Horn before entering the Pacific. Colnett had planned to stop at what was then called Staten Island, but which now has the name of Isla de los Estados, and which lies about twenty miles off the southernmost tip of Tierra del Fuego. His instructions were to land Samuel Marshall, a naval lieutenant, and the son of Captain Samuel Marshall, whom Colnett had befriended in Cowes, with a party of fifteen men, to establish a sealing settlement.[51] Menzies was going to take this opportunity to collect specimens of Drymis winteri (then referred to as Wintera aromatica and popularly known as Winter’s bark), from which an anti-scurvy medicament could be prepared – its properties were first noted by Captain John Winter, after whom the plant is named, in 1578, and reiterated forcefully by Hans Sloane in 1693. (Banks, who had seen the plant when he was in Tierra del Fuego on the Endeavour, had specifically asked for it to be collected.)[52]

On 17 November, the day after Menzies wrote his letter, the ships continued their voyage, passing from the hot and humid tropics to the squally and snowy South Atlantic. On 26 January 1787, the ships anchored in New Years Harbour, Staten Island, almost in the exact same spot as the Resolution when it was there – with Colnett – in 1775. While the main task – landing the sealing party – was proceeding, Menzies lost no time botanising.

As the ships were about to depart, Menzies wrote to Banks. The weather had not been kind ‘in this wild and inhospitable clime’ but he had managed to make several excursions and find many plants that were not listed in Linnaeus. Of equal, if not greater importance, Menzies was delighted to have found the Wintera aromatica growing everywhere and in flower – ‘This beautiful tree … loads the circumambient Air with a most pleasing aromatic Odor.’[53] Menzies had collected and potted some twenty young plants and, as he had no possibility of keeping them alive during his voyage, he was assured by Lieutenant Marshall that he would take them back to England on the relief ship that was to be sent from London for the party, together with seeds which he would collect for Menzies.[54]

Menzies carefully told Banks that though the plants were addressed to him, he was to send some of them to John Hope in Edinburgh. Menzies did not know that two days before he arrived in Cape Verde, Hope had died in Edinburgh – when Menzies did finally learn of Hope’s death, he referred to him as ‘my best and only friend’.[55] The plants fared just as badly, as it turned out. The Duke of York, the relief ship owned by Etches, left on 21 April 1787 for Staten Island but, on 11 September, while at New Years Harbour it went down. The crew and the sealing party were all saved as they managed to leave in boats, but the plants went down with the ship.[56]

Though the intention was to sail to Hawaii, which Cook had visited in January 1778, Colnett decided to go straight for Nootka Sound.[57] The decision certainly meant that Colnett would be arriving at his destination sooner than anticipated but, on the other hand, the long sea voyage was bringing on scurvy. Everyone was thankful that on 5 July 1787, after about five months at sea, the coastline of Vancouver Island was sighted: the next day they were visited by several canoes bearing a few furs.[58]

From now on the season and the weather would dictate the expedition’s plans. The general idea was to begin at Nootka Sound and move northward along the coast, trading as much as possible. But progress turned out to be slow as the ships were in poor shape. After sailing along Vancouver Island, they set course for the Queen Charlotte Islands where they anchored for two weeks during the second half of August 1787. Colnett, fearing more damage to the ships, sailed across the strait – Hecate Strait – that separated the islands from the coast, and he made base on an island which Menzies named for his London patron – Banks Island. There they remained for almost three months to repair the damage, by which time, as Colnett remarked, winter had definitely closed in: ‘the Country half cover’d from the summits of its hills to the water’s Edge with snow’. On 19 November, the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal departed the Pacific Northwest to spend the winter in Hawaii.[59]

However, the time there did not go well: violent confrontations soured relations and trade. Colnett must have been anxious to leave and, on 13 March 1788, full of provisions and now with three Hawaiians on board, who wished to join the voyage, the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal headed back to the Pacific Northwest.[60] They arrived safely in April.

For the next three or four months both ships traded, one southward and the other northward with the intention of meeting at any one of several predetermined points. This never happened, but thanks to the information that was left in letters in the safe-keeping of Haida chiefs on the coast, Colnett knew that Charles Duncan, in command of the Princess Royal, was safe. Within a day of each other, on 17 and 18 August 1788, both ships left the coast for Hawaii with their cargo of pelts, the Princess Royal having out-performed the Prince of Wales.[61]

All along, Menzies had been botanising whenever he could and had found many plants that were new to western science, including a variety of penstemon with large lavender to purple flowers, that was named in his honour.[62] He continued to collect specimens, whenever he could, some of them which were new to Europe such as the trailing raspberry (Rubus pedatus), and Sanguisorba menziesii, a plant with grey-green leaves and red flowers, in the shape of bottlebrushes.[63]

The first part of the expedition was now over. It was time to realise the proceeds of the venture, to sell the pelts in Canton during the trading season which would begin in October.

On 12 September, the two ships met at a familiar anchorage in Moloka’i. Once provisioning for the next leg of the voyage was completed, the ships left Hawaii on 30 September and arrived in Macao on 12 November 1788, a little over two years since leaving England.[64]

The furs, almost two thousand of them, did not sell as well in Canton as Colnett had predicted, but the return, at just over £20,000, nevertheless justified the outlay.[65] Colnett did better than any of his predecessors in the Pacific Northwest, so much so that the original plans were altered substantially.[66] John Etches, Richard Cadman Etches’s brother, and the Prince of Wales supercargo, the merchant responsible for the sale of the ship’s cargo, decided to join forces with another fur-trading scheme headed by a group of private traders in Canton. The decision was taken that the Princess Royal would remain behind in Canton and join three other ships for the next season and that the Prince of Wales would return to England.[67]

Now under the command of James Johnstone, previously the ship’s chief mate and a close friend of Menzies’s (they had been together on HMS Assistance in the eastern Atlantic), the Prince of Wales set sail for England from Macao on 1 February 1789 – Charles Duncan having relinquished command of the Princess Royal because of ill health was returning home as a passenger, as was Menzies. After stopping briefly at Sumatra, where Menzies collected some fine plants, and St Helena, the Prince of Wales anchored off the Isle of Wight on 14 July 1789 and was back on the Thames several days later.[68]

What had Menzies accomplished? Without a plant list to consult, it is impossible to be precise, but it has been estimated that Menzies collected in the region of one hundred plants.[69] This may not seem a lot, but given that many of the specimens were new to European botany the figure is much more impressive than it sounds. Banks was, of course, a recipient of both dried plants and seeds, but so were other renowned botanists.[70] Professor Daniel Rutherford, John Hope’s successor at Edinburgh, got seeds and dried plants from the ship’s major calling places; as did James Edward Smith, the President of the newly founded Linnean Society of London.[71]

When he returned to London, Menzies spent a lot of time at Soho Square to try to make sense of his collection, comparing the specimens with those in Banks’s herbarium and supported by the vast textual and illustrative material in the library.[72]

With the return of Menzies from his circumnavigation, Banks’s interest in the Pacific fur trade faded. His relationship with Menzies, however, would soon enter a new and more extensive phase: a second and longer circumnavigation.

While it was a minor part of the Pacific Northwest story from Banks’s point of view, during the time Menzies was in the Pacific, China moved centre stage into Banks’s life.