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THE ROYAL SOCIETY of which Banks became a fellow in 1766 was a body of some 360 ordinary and 160 foreign members. It had increased greatly in size since the days when Wren, Boyle and a few of their friends discussed “the founding of a Colledge for the promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimentall Learning”, and if it had not increased proportionately in reputation this may be put down to the fact that men like Newton, Hooke and Halley are not to be found in every generation and to the ease with which candidates were elected: a wealthy Englishman was almost sure of success, particularly if he was also a peer, and so was a reasonably well recommended foreigner. Banks himself, though full of zeal for botany, had published nothing; and Lord Sandwich’s scientific zeal was confined to fishing, though indeed he was well disposed towards men of science and he was in a position to support their projects.

Yet with all its faults the Society was still a most respectable institution – the list of 1768, the first in which Banks’s name appears, does show 46 lords temporal or spiritual, but a peerage does not necessarily make a man a fool and in any case there were 339 other members, including Henry Cavendish, Daines Barrington, Pennant, Priestley, William Hamilton (Nelson’s friend) and perhaps more surprisingly Joshua Reynolds, while among the foreigners appeared such names as d’Alembert, Buffon, Euler, Linnaeus, Montesquieu and Voltaire.

From the earliest days some part of the public had made game of the Society for weighing air, dissecting fleas and so on, and even in the 1760s many people thought entomology a pursuit unworthy of a grown man; but also from the earliest days the government had taken advantage of that pool of science, asking the Royal Society to supervise the observatory at Greenwich, for example, and to give advice on a great many subjects, such as that change in the calendar which lost us eleven days, never to be recovered; and on being informed somewhat later that Venus would pass over the face of the sun in 1761, so that with due attention the sun’s parallax might be determined, to the great advantage of navigation, the ministry turned to the Society once again.

The reply was that observations of this rare phenomenon would indeed be of great value, and the Rev. Nevil Maskelyne was sent to St Helena, while Mason and Dixon (the same who traced the line between Maryland and Pennsylvania) went to the Cape of Good Hope. But at the critical moment clouds lay thick over St Helena; the weather was little better at the Cape; and the astronomers were obliged to console themselves with the reflection that there would be other transits in 1769 and 1874.

Banks, though as ardent a natural philosopher as any of his colleagues, was not much concerned with stars; in his surviving letters of this period there is not the least sign of any interest in transits, past or present. His immense energy was directed to having his specimens from Newfoundland and Labrador painted, to setting up house in New Burlington Street with his sister, Mrs Banks remaining in Chelsea, to travelling about south-western England and Wales, to making new acquaintances and to consolidating older friendships.

He was particularly fortunate in his painters. Georg Ehret, a friend of Linnaeus, had been brought forward in England by Sir Hans Sloane, Dr Mead and the Duchess of Portland; he was now at the head of his profession and he figured at least twenty-three of Banks’s flowers, most delicately painted on vellum. Many of the animals (animals in the widest sense) were painted by an amiable, conscientious, highly talented young man from Edinburgh, Sydney Parkinson, who was introduced to Banks by James Lee the nurseryman. The others were painted by Peter Paillou: he too was a gifted man, but little seems to be known of him except that he was connected with Thomas Pennant.

Pennant in his turn was connected with Banks’s journeys in the south and west, since one of them was directed towards Downing, his house in North Wales. Pennant was nearly twenty years older than Banks, and he had published the first part of his British Zoology as early as 1766: it has already been observed that Pennant knew Daines Barrington, the lawyer, antiquary and naturalist, and that both knew Gilbert White, whose enchanting Natural History of Selborne takes the form of letters to them; but it is worth repeating because both White and Banks, who could rarely have been deceived by even a half-seen bird or plant, were at least in some cases incapable of fine discrimination where their friends were concerned. Banks eventually got rid of the invasive, self-seeking Pennant, but there were others he endured all his life.

A far more important and increasing friendship was that with Solander, who was now firmly established at the British Museum, but who in spite of working hard still had time to survey the Duchess of Portland’s wonderful collections, to attend the meetings of the Royal Society, of which he too was a Fellow, to help Banks catalogue his American plants, to dine out pretty often, and at least to contemplate a visit to Downing.

There can be little doubt that it was Solander’s growing influence that led Banks to form the plan of going to Uppsala to study under Linnaeus and even to push on and travel in Lapland. After a tour in the west country (where he was “almost bit to death” by gnats at Glastonbury) he wrote Pennant a letter which contained this passage:

“What will you say to me if I should be prevented from paying my respects to you in N: Wales this year tho I so fully intended it nothing but your Looking upon it with the Eye of an unprejudiced nat: Historian can bring any excuse to be heard with Patience Look then with Zoologick Eyes & tell me if you could blame me if I Sacraficed every Consideration to an opportunity of Paying a visit to our Master Linnaeus & Profiting by his Lectures before he dies who is now so old that he cannot Long Last.”¹ [Banks was twenty-four, Linnaeus sixty.]

The visit to Downing was not in fact put off: Banks went there in the late summer, together with his eminent colleague William Hudson of the Flora Anglica. It is possible that Pennant, who was no great admirer of Linnaeus (“his work too superficial except in botany – little opinion of him as a zoologist”) may have poured cold water on the scheme, but if he did so Banks obviously remained undamped, for in a letter of January 1768, when Banks was travelling from Chester to London, a letter from Pennant spoke of his going “thro all the perils of snow and ice, a good foretaste of your Lapland Journey”.² And other correspondence of the time speaks of it as quite settled.

From Pennant’s letters it is clear that Banks meant to take Parkinson with him as a draughtsman on his northern journey. But in the event the voyage they made together was one of greater consequence by far.

Well before 1769 the Royal Society, and particularly Dr Maskelyne, now the Astronomer Royal, had begun to prepare for the coming transit. In 1766 they determined to send observers to various parts of the world and to invite Father Boscowitz of Pavia to be one of them; in 1767 the President, Lord Morton, was in correspondence with the unhelpful Spanish ambassador about the astronomer’s journey to California; in the same year, having discarded California, the Society decided on three places for their observers, Hudson’s Bay, the North Cape, and a suitable island in the Pacific; and probably in the same year they drew up the following undated memorial, the Council approving and signing it on 15 February 1768.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty. The Memorial of the President, Council and Fellows of the Royal Society of London for improving Natural Knowledge Humbly sheweth –

That the passage of the Planet Venus over the Disc of the Sun, which will happen on the 3rd of June in the year 1769, is a Phaenomenon that must, if the same be accurately observed in proper places, contribute greatly to the improvement of Astronomy on which Navigation so much depends …

The memorial also showed that apart from the ships needed to carry the observers the expedition would cost four thousand pounds, which the Society did not possess, and it ended:

The Memorialists, attentive to the true end for which they were founded by your Majesty’s Royal Predecessor, the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, conceive it to be their duty to lay these sentiments before your Majesty with all humility and submit the same to your Majesty’s Royal Consideration.

The memorial was presented at the right time and to the right monarch. King George III was no more than thirty, and although his political education may have been deplorable, he was full of energy, enterprise, and good intentions; there were certainly unofficial discussions both before and after the formal memorial, but the request was granted, and fully granted, as early as March 1768.

Once the expedition had been decided upon, the Admiralty moved with surprising speed: Sir Edward Hawke, the admiral who “did bang Mounseer Conflang” in Quiberon Bay in 1759, taking or sinking five of his ships and running more aground, was then First Lord, and he was accustomed to brisk action. In March 1768 the Navy Board was directed to find a suitable vessel; the Royal Society was firmly told that the claims of Mr Dalrymple, a distinguished hydrographer with much experience of the north-western Pacific in the East India Company’s service whom it put forward as principal observer, to direct the voyage were “entirely repugnant to the regulations of the Navy”; and Mr James Cook, the former surveyor of the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador and a master in the Royal Navy, was sent for, commissioned as a lieutenant on 5 May and given the command. (In passing it may be observed that masters in the Royal Navy, a race long since extinct, were responsible for the navigation of the ship: they were relics of a time when sailors did the sailing of a man-of-war and soldiers, commanded by gentlemen, the fighting: although they usually began as midshipmen and although they messed in the wardroom or gunroom, they were only warrant officers, and as masters they had reached the highest point in their career. Lieutenants, on the other hand, were commissioned officers, to whom all masters were subordinate in command, and they might be promoted to commander, to post-captain and thence by seniority to the various grades of admiral. It was quite rare for a master to be given a commission, and the only cases that come readily to mind are those of Mr Bowen, who handled Lord Howe’s flagship so well on the Glorious First of June, and the unfortunate Mr Bligh of the Bounty.)

The Royal Society bowed to Hawke’s decision: they too knew Cook quite well, for not only had he published admirable sailing directions for the regions he had surveyed but he had also contributed his accurate observations of the 1766 solar eclipse to the Society’s Philosophical Transactions; and since Dalrymple refused to go except in command, thus leaving the main scientific post vacant, they asked Cook to come and see them. After a short interview on 5 May 1768 the Council appointed him the Society’s chief observer of the transit, allowing him £120 a year for victualling himself and the second observer, Charles Green of Greenwich, undertaking to produce “such a gratuity as the Society shall think proper” (it turned out to be a hundred guineas), and to provide two telescopes, a quadrant, a sextant and some other instruments.

Then on 20 May Captain Wallis brought the Dolphin home from her second voyage round the world, this time with news of Tahiti, which its discoverer, reaching it a few months before Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, had named King George’s Island, and with a song that ended

Then we plow’d the South Ocean, such land to discover

As amongst other nations has made such a pother. We found it, my boys, and with joy be it told, For beauty such islands you ne’er did behold. We’ve the pleasure ourselves the tidings to bring As may welcome us home to our country and king. For wood, water, fruit, and provision well stor’d Such an isle as King George’s the world can’t afford. For to each of these islands great Wallis gave name, Which will e’er be recorded in annals of fame. We’d the fortune to find them, and homeward to bring The tidings a tribute to country and king.³

Since the island was well within the southern zone that Dr Maskelyne had laid down as the best for observing the transit (“any place not exceeding 30 degrees of Southern Latitude and between the 140th & 180th degrees of longitude west of your Majesty’s Royal Observatory in Greenwich park”), the Society wrote to the Admiralty on 9 June asking them to agree that Tahiti should be the place for the observation. The letter continued “Joseph Banks Esq^r, Fellow of the Society, a Gentleman of large fortune, who is well versed in natural history, being Desirous of undertaking the same voyage the Council very earnestly request their Lordships, that in regard to Mr Banks’s great personal merit, and for the Advancement of useful knowledge, He also, together with his Suite, being seven persons more, be received on board of the ship, under command of Captain Cook.”

The news of Tahiti may possibly have increased Banks’s desire to go on the voyage, but it was quite certainly not the first cause. Just when the Pacific displaced Lapland in his mind is not clear, but the idea was firmly implanted before the Dolphin’s return, and it may have arisen when the memorial was under discussion – when it became apparent that there was a real likelihood of a ship’s being sent to the Great South Sea.

Their Lordships had no objection to the Society’s request, and on 22 July their secretary directed Cook to receive “Joseph Banks Esq and his Suite consisting of eight Persons with their Baggage, bearing them as Supernumeraries for Victuals only, and Victualling them as Barks Company during their continuance on board.”

This is the official sequence of events; but there is no doubt that private arrangements preceded the public announcements both with regard to Banks and Cook. Cook had earned golden opinion at the Admiralty, and it is probable that this command, so admirably suited to his talents, was intended for him as soon as it was decided upon; Captain Hugh Palliser, his friend and patron from the beginning, had great influence with the Navy Board (he was Comptroller in 1770) and it is therefore not surprising that a north-country cat, or to be more precise a Whitby collier, the kind of vessel in which Cook had learnt his calling, was chosen for the expedition, perhaps at Cook’s suggestion. This is not to imply that the Endeavour was not the most suitable for the purpose – she was – but only to emphasize the fact that Cook and his friends were intimately acquainted with that suitability, not always evident to those whose service had been confined to men-of-war. And it is quite clear that Banks knew he would be a member of the expedition long before his formal acceptance in July. Lord Sandwich was not only a friend of long standing and a fellow member of the Royal Society, but he also formed part of the government and in a few months he was to return to the Admiralty (where he had many friends) as First Lord: he was therefore ideally placed for those unofficial contacts that can give an early assurance of success even in the present century. Besides, as early as April 1768 Pennant was urging Banks to take umbrellas, both the fine silk kind and the strong oilskin kind, as well as oilskin coats; and in any event a satisfactory suite of eight persons, all willing to go to the ends of the earth, with no certainty of return, could hardly be gathered together in a few weeks: still less could Banks and Solander have accumulated all the equipment that Ellis described in a letter⁴ to Linnaeus – equipment that was said to have cost ten thousand pounds. “No people ever went to sea better fitted out for the purpose of Natural History, nor more elegantly. They have got a fine library of Natural History; they have all sorts of machines for catching and preserving insects; all kinds of nets, trawls, drags and hooks for coral fishing … All this is owing to you and your writings.” There was however one remark in the letter that Sandwich or any other friend of Banks’s with long experience of the world would have read with some uneasiness: “After … their observations on the transit of Venus they are to proceed under the direction of Mr Banks, by order of the Lords of the Admiralty, on further discoveries of the great Southern continent …”

Whether this was a mistake on Ellis’s part or whether Banks or possibly Solander had been boasting or had even been facetious about who was to direct whom there is no telling. What is certain is that on 30 July 1768 the Endeavour dropped down the river from Gallions Reach (she had been fitting in Deptford Yard) and anchored in the Downs; Cook joined her there, having received his orders, and sailed for Plymouth on 8 August. He had a tedious passage down the Channel, but six days later he was able to send an express to London, telling Banks and Solander to come directly.

On 15 August, the day the message reached him, Banks was at the opera with Miss Harriet Blosset, a ward of the Hammersmith nurseryman James Lee. Horace de Saussure, the Swiss botanist and physicist, met them there and went back with them to sup at the Blossets’ house, he being acquainted with the family. He speaks of them as being engaged, of Miss Blosset’s being desperately in love and of Banks drinking heavily to hide his feelings, since he was to leave the next day. Yet since Banks could not speak a word of French, as Saussure points out, there was no communication between them, and Saussure’s testimony⁵ would not be worth recording but for the fact that it is confirmed by others. Not only was the matter taken up in ill-natured squibs and scandal-sheets when Banks returned famous from the voyage, but Beaglehole quotes two letters from Daines Barrington to Thomas Pennant in the Turnbull Library at Wellington in New Zealand, the first of which reads in part “Upon his arrival in England he took no sort of notice of Miss Blosset for the first week or nearly so at the same time that he went about London and visited other friends and acquaintances. On this Miss Blosset set out for London and wrote him a letter desiring an interview of explanation. To this Mr Banks answer’d by a letter of 2 or 3 sheets professing love &c but that he found he was of too volatile a temper to marry.”

The interview took place, and although the account, which Barrington received from a lady, is confused, it was obviously very painful (“Miss Bl: swoon’d &c”) but no marriage came out of it; yet later, to quote Dr Lysaght, “the Blosset family was rumoured to have withdrawn with a substantial sum of money from Banks [Lee 1810] to console her for all the knitted waistcoats with which she had sought to enmesh him.”

But this is to anticipate: on 16 August 1768 Banks and Solander set out for Plymouth – the “suite” was already there – and they arrived on the twentieth. The Endeavour had taken in all her stores; the shipwrights and joiners had finished their work on the gentlemen’s cabins; the ship had been brought out into the Sound; and if the wind had been kind Cook would have sailed the next day. But instead of weighing his anchor, he was obliged to let go another because of gales and thick weather, while the “gentlemen” (this was Cook’s term for those of his passengers who were not servants) had nothing to do but contemplate their vessel through the pouring rain.

Although her captain no doubt loved her, she was nothing much to look at, being only a rather small cat-built bark, a north-country collier: to a sailor the cat part of her name meant that she was built in the northern way, remarkably strong, and that she was distinguished by a narrow stern, projecting quarters, a deep waist and no ornamental figure on the prow, while the bark part implied that she was smallish, square-sterned, and without headrails – that is to say she did not have that elegant cut-away dip in front through which the bowsprit rises that was so marked a feature of the contemporary men-of-war and larger merchantmen, but ended prosaically in a point, and rather a blunt one at that. Logically enough most barks were also bark-rigged, carrying square sails on the fore and main masts and fore-and-aft sails on the mizen. But to the seaman this was not at all a necessary consequence, and in fact the Endeavour was square-rigged on all three.

Her bows were bluff; she was wall-sided, with no handsome inward slope or tumblehome; her homely lines made it clear that she would be slow and her flat bottom meant that she would not be a very weatherly ship – that she would find it difficult to claw off a lee shore. But her flat bottom and her straight sides gave her wonderfully roomy holds – she had eighteen months’ stores aboard – and a shallow draught; and if she was slow her great strength of construction meant that she was also sure: at least as sure as any vessel could hope to be on the sea, that wholly unreliable element. She was one hundred and six feet long and twenty-nine feet two inches at the widest; she drew fifteen feet abaft with six months’ stores, she gauged 368 tons, she carried ten four-pounder carriage guns and twelve swivels, and her complement numbered eighty-five, including a dozen Marines under a sergeant.

Although she was a king’s ship, wearing a pennant at the main, she had obviously been built for the coal or timber trade and she must have looked a commonplace, shabby little object in Plymouth Sound among all the regular men-of-war. But there was nothing commonplace or shabby about her captain, although he too had spent his early days at sea carrying coal and wood: James Cook was a big, unusually good-looking man with a strong, determined face, and he would have stood out even on a particularly distinguished quarterdeck; he had all the marks of a seaman, and from everything one hears or reads, all the seaman’s amiable qualities: courage, resolution, modesty, and the gift of being good company, as well, of course, as great professional abilities and natural authority. Yet like Cochrane or Sir Francis Chichester he did not go to sea until he was relatively old. Cook was born in 1728 and as a boy and a youth in Yorkshire he helped his father, a farm labourer, at the same time getting a little education at the village school; and when he was seventeen he was apprenticed to a grocer at Snaith, not far from the port of Whitby. Eighteen months of grocering was all he could bear however and in 1746 he went to sea in a Whitby collier, the strangely named Freelove, plying the difficult and often very dangerous sea between Newcastle and London. Other ships followed and a great deal of sea-time, and in 1752 he became mate of the Friendship, also belonging to Whitby. In 1755 war between England and France became almost certain, and although it was not declared until the next year, press warrants were already out: the Navy had to be manned, if necessary by force. Cook’s ship was in the London river, the most likely place to be taken, and after some hesitation he decided to volunteer, “having a mind to try his fortune that way”, and entering of course as a foremast hand. His first ship was the Eagle of sixty guns.

He did uncommonly well, finding an appreciative captain who changed his rating from able seaman to master’s mate: this was not a rank held by warrant, still less by commission, but strictly a rating, like that of midshipman. Yet it did bring him aft to the quarterdeck in an officer’s uniform, messing with the surgeon’s mates, the other master’s mates and the senior midshipmen. Then Captain Hugh Palliser took over the Eagle: he at once distinguished Cook and encouraged him, and in 1757, having passed the necessary examination at Trinity House, Cook was given a warrant as master of the Pembroke, also of sixty guns. The war now took him to Canada, 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 domestic as it were, speaking of their daily life at sea, the dinners he and his shipmates must have shared, and giving us something of their conversations, characters and amusements.

The journal itself, the original version written by Banks, is in the Mitchell Library in New South Wales, and in 1962 it was edited with the most scrupulous scholarship and copious notes by Dr J. C. Beaglehole of the Victoria University of Wellington, the same gentleman who edited Cook’s journals in four volumes and a portfolio, published by the Hakluyt Society in 1955, upon which I have also drawn. The Endeavour journal was handsomely brought out in two illustrated volumes by the Public Library of New South Wales in association with Angus and Robertson as the first part of the State’s memorial to Sir Joseph Banks, and it is with their permission that I make the following extracts.

My plan is to give the entries just as Banks wrote them, leaving his scientific nomenclature and his rendering of Polynesian words as they stand, keeping notes to the minimum. Obviously some connecting material must be supplied – much more than in the case of the Newfoundland journal – and from time to time it may be as well to quote from Cook’s own account to show particular incidents from another point of view, but otherwise the essence of the two following chapters is pure Banks.

August 1768 Plymouth

25 After having waited in this place ten days, the ship, and everything belonging to me, being all that time in perfect readyness to sail at a moments warning, we at last got a fair wind, and this day at 3 O’Clock in the even weigd anchor, and set sail, all in excellent health and spirits perfectly prepard (in Mind at least) to undergo with Cheerfullness any fatigues or dangers that may occur in our intended Voyage.

26 Wind still fair, but very light breezes; saw this Even a shoal of those fish which are particularly calld Porpoises by the seamen, probably the Delphinus Phocaena of Linnaeus, as their noses are very blunt.

27 Wind fair and a fine Breeze; found the ship to be but a heavy sailer, indeed we could not Expect her to be any other from her built, so are obligd to set down with this Inconvenience, as a necessary consequence of her form; which is more calculated for stowage, than for sailing.

28 Little wind today; in some sea water, which was taken on board to season a cask, observed a very minute sea Insect, which Dr Solander describd by the name of Podura marina. In the Evening very calm; with the small casting net took several specimens of Medusa Pelagica, whose different motions in swimming amus’d us very much: among the appendages to this animal we found also a new species of oniscus. We also took another animal, quite different from any we have Ever seen; it was of an angular figure, about 3 inches long and one thick, with a hollow passing quite through it. On one end was a Brown spot, which might be the stomach of the animal.

Four of these, the whole number that we took, adherd together when taken by their sides; so that at first we imagind them to be one animal, but upon being put into a glass of water they very soon separated and swam briskly about the water.

29 Wind foul: Morning employd in finishing the Drawings of the animals taken yesterday till the ship got so much motion that Mr Parkinson could not set to his pencil; in the Evening wind still Fresher so much as to make the night very uncomfortable.

30 Wind still foul, ship in violent motion, but towards Evening much more quiet: Now for the first time my Sea sickness left me, and I was sufficiently well to write.

31 Wind Freshend again this morn; observ’d about the Ship several of the Birds calld by the seamen Mother Careys chickens, Procellaria Pelagica Linn. which were thought by them to be a sure presage of a storm, as indeed it provd, for before night it blew so hard as to bring us under our Courses,^* and make me very sea sick again.

But this was not to last; they had almost crossed the Bay of Biscay, and early in September they passed Cape Finisterre, sailing into calm seas that among many other things provided a salp, a creature not unlike a mollusc, which “was possest of more beautiful Colouring than any thing in nature I have ever seen, hardly excepting gemms. He is of a new genus and calld of which we took another species who had no beauty to boast, but this which we called opalinum shone in the water with all the splendor and variety of colours that we observe in a real opal; he livd in the Glass of salt water in which he was put for examination several hours; darting about with great agility, and at every motion shewing an almost infinite variety of changeable colours. Towards the evening of this day a new phaenomenon appeard, the sea was almost coverd with a small species of Crabbs Cancer depurator of Linnaeus, floating upon the surface of the water, and moving themselves with tolerable agility, as if the surface of the water and not the bottom was their Proper station.”

By this time the bark had settled down into the routine of a long voyage, the Royal Navy’s routine; for although the Endeavour might not look much like a king’s ship she was run in strict man-of-war fashion, as precise in the little bark of which Cook was the commander as ever it had been in sixty-gun line-of-battle ships in which he had been the master, the unchanging pattern of her days and nights punctuated by bells and and bosun’s pipes, her upper decks scrubbed and swabbed at dawn, her hammocks piped up at seven bells in the morning watch, hands piped to breakfast at eight bells, lower decks cleaned, and then at midday the ceremony at which all the officers and midshipmen took the sun’s altitude and the master reported noon and the latitude to the officer of the watch, whereupon the officer of the watch, stepping across the quarterdeck and taking off his hat, reported it to the captain, who would reply “Make it twelve, Mr —”, thus formally and legally beginning the nautical day. Immediately after this eight bells was struck and the hands were piped to dinner, just as they would be piped to supper in the evening and then to quarters; while a little later still hammocks would be piped down, the watch set, and the order of the night would begin. And this very long-established form of communal life was repeated indefinitely: except in times of extreme crisis its groundwork never varied: and it is this continual near-repetition, day after day, more than a thousand entries in the log as the degrees crept by, that gives a sense of the immense length of the Endeavour’s voyage – a sense that no abridged account, with its merely factual statement of weeks, months, and years, can give with anything like the same force.

Banks and Solander lived on the periphery of this well-knit traditional community, and they might have had a sad time of it; but sailors are friendly creatures upon the whole, and although Cook was a firm disciplinarian he never made any difficulty about unimportant things: the Endeavour carried a longboat, pinnace and yawl, but Banks also had a lighterman’s skiff of his own, and he could have it hoisted out whenever the operation did not hold up the ship’s progress, and this he did with great profit during the calms that followed until 7 September, when

The wind was now fair and we went very pleasantly on towards our destined port, tho rather too fast for any natural Enquiries, for my own part I could well dispence^* with a much slower pace, but I fancy few in the ship, Dr Solander excepted, are of the same opinion, tho I believe Every body envyed our easy contented countenances during the last Calm, which brought so much food to our pursuits.

8 Blew fresh today, but the wind was very fair so nobody complaind, nor would they was the wind much stronger, so impatient has the Calms and foul wind made every body; by the reckoning we were off Cape St Vincent so shall soon bid adieu to Europe for some time.

10 Since the northerly wind began to blow it has not varied a point, the Sea is now down and we go on pleasantly at the rate of about 6 Knotts; could any contrivance be found by the help of which new subjects of natural history could be taken Dr Solander and myself would be Quite happy, we are forc’d to be content; three days are now passd since any thing has been taken or indeed seen, except a stray turtle who swam by the ship about noon, but was left far behind before any instrument could possibly have been got to hand.

On 12 September Madeira came in sight and that night the Endeavour anchored in Funchal Bay. As soon as the ship had been given pratique the next morning, Cook, with his usual kindness, sent Banks and Solander ashore; here they were received with equal kindness by the English consul, who provided them with beds, permits, guides, horses and everything necessary for a rapid and determined exploration of the island, an exploration very much helped by the presence of Dr Thomas Heberden, a resident physician, a fellow member of the Royal Society and, though this was not his main interest, something of a botanist (they named Heberdenia excelsa after him). They only had five days, and one of these was largely wasted, to their fury, by a courtesy-visit from the Governor, but even so they collected 18 fishes and 246 plants (including cryptogams), in spite of the fact that in September nearly everything but the vines had died down. Banks also had time to make some remarks about the people (exceedingly idle, exceedingly conservative), the wine (ill made, ill cultivated, and carried on men’s heads in goatskins), the friars and their admirable hospital, and the nuns (civil, but wonderfully talkative); yet although he sounds a little censorious and No-Popery, it is clear that he enjoyed himself very much indeed, as well he might, having seen the banana in great abundance, the guava, the pineapple, the cinnamon tree and the mango.

On 18 September they sailed away, the light airs carrying them south and presently allowing them to catch “a most beautifull species of Medusa, of a colour equaling if not exceeding the finest ultramarine; it was described and call’d Medusa azurea.” Then in 30°7’N, 15°55’W they saw the Dry Salvages; and two days later they were called up very early in the morning to be shown Tenerife a great way off. “While we were engagd in looking at the hill a fish was taken which was describd and called Scomber serpens; the seamen said they had never seen such a one before except the first lieutenant, who remembered to have taken one before just about these Islands; Sr Hans Sloane in his Passage out to Jamaica also took one of these fish which he gives a picture of, Vol I, T.1.f.2.”

Off the Canaries they picked up the north-east trade wind, and on 25 September Banks wrote in his journal:

Wind continued to blow much as it had done so we were sure we were well in the trade; now for the first time we saw plenty of flying fish, whose beauty especialy when seen from the cabbin windows is beyond imagination, their sides shining like burnished silver; when seen from the Deck they do not appear to such advantage as their backs are then presented to the view, which are dark colourd.

26 Went as usual and as we expect to go these next two months; flying fish are in great plenty about the ship. About one today we crossed the tropic, the night most intolerably hot, the Thermometer standing all night at 78 in the cabbin tho every window was open.

Their expectations were justified; the trade wind bowled the Endeavour along towards Brazil at seven knots, a very fine pace for her, and although this put an end to Banks’s boating, there were often birds in the rigging and there were always, of course, the traditional sharks. The first of a long series was taken on 29 September:

About noon a young shark was seen from the Cabbin windows following the ship, who immediately took a bait and was caught on board: he proved to be the Squalus Charcharias of Linn and assisted us in clearing up much confusion which almost all authors had made about that species; with him came on board 4 sucking fish, echineis remora Linn. who were preserved in spirit. Notwithstanding it was twelve O’Clock before the shark was taken, we made shift to have part of him stewd for dinner, and very good meat he was, at least in the opinion of Dr Solander and myself, tho some of the Seamen did not seem to be fond of him, probably from some prejudice founded on the species sometimes feeding on human flesh.

Day after day the north-east trade carried them southwards, not leaving them until 3 October, when the Endeavour reached latitude 12^°14’ and the northern edge of the doldrums, the uncomfortable, oppressive zone of calms and squalls between the north-east and the south-east trades. The zone varies in position and width, and sometimes it was so broad and so windless that ships spent weeks or even months in getting across; this year however it was comparatively narrow – too narrow for Banks’s liking, for the doldrums provided him with wonderful opportunities for fishing, collecting and bathing – and they picked up the south-east trade well north of the equator on 17 October. A fine brisk breeze, but it brought a certain amount of unhappiness: in the first place Banks “trying as I have often (foolishly no doubt) done to exercise myself by playing tricks with two ropes in the Cabbin I got a fall which hurt me a good deal and alarmed me more, as the blow was on my head, and two hours after it I was taken with sickness at my stomach which made me fear some ill consequence.” He survived however and on 20 October he could write “Quite well today, employd in describing and attending the Draughtsmen.” But only the next day “the cat killed our bird M.Avida [a wagtail that had been captured in the rigging] who had lived with us ever since the 29th of Septr intirely on the flies which he caught for himself; he was hearty and in high health so that probably he might have livd a great while longer had fate been more kind.” And then the day after that “Trade had got more to the Southward than it usually has been, which was unlucky for me as I proposed to the Captain to touch for part of a day at least at the Island of Ferdinand Norronha, which he had no objection to if we could fetch it: that however seemd very uncertain.” Uncertain it was, alas, and the island had to wait for Darwin sixty-four years later; but there were whales, and there was the equator, which they cut on 25 October, with the usual ceremonies. Those who had not crossed before were required either to submit to being ducked three times from the yardarm or to pay a forfeit in rum or wine; Cook, Banks and Solander paid up, but a score of men and boys were dipped. All this was very cheerful and in the purest tradition, but what was a little unusual was that the names of the dogs and cat were down in the list. Banks may have compounded for his dogs, a greyhound and a nondescript bitch, but whether the cat paid or submitted does not appear.

South of the equator they sailed into a wonderfully luminous sea, luminous in itself and luminous in its inhabitants – luminous jellyfish, luminous crabs, luminous barnacles, several of which they caught, finding them to their delight to be new species and even new genera. Southward still day after day, and Cook knew very well that the coast of Brazil lay no great way to the westward; he had no chronometer to fix his longitude, but in Dr Maskelyne’s recently completed lunar tables he had the next best thing, and he was one of the earliest scientific navigators to sail with them. Indeed, as Banks recorded on 8 November:

At day break today we made the Land which Provd to be the Continent of S. America in Lat. 21.16; about ten we saw a fishing boat who told us that the country we saw belonged to the Captainship of Espirito Santo.

Dr Solander and myself went on board this boat in which were 11 men (9 of whom were blacks) who all fished with lines. We bought of them the cheif part of their cargo consisting of Dolphins, two kinds of large Pelagick Scombers, Sea Bream and the fish calld in the West Indies Welshman, for which they made us pay 19 shillings and Sixpence. [It was enough for the whole ship’s company.]

Soon after we came on board [Endeavour] a Sphynx^* was taken which proved to be quite a new one, and a small bird also who was the Tanagra Jacarini of Linn; it seemd however from Linnaeus’s description as well as Edwards’s and Brisson’s that neither of them had seen the Bird which was in reality a Loxia nitens.

Now with varying breezes Cook took the Endeavour down the coast until 13 November, when “This Morn the Harbour of Rio Janeiro was right ahead about 2 leagues off.”

As Banks said in a letter he wrote to Lord Morton, the President of the Royal Society, “On the 13th of this Month we arrivd here having saild up the river with a very light breeze and amusd ourselves with observing the shore on each side coverd with Palm trees a production which neither Dr Solander or myself had before seen and from which as well as every thing else which we saw promis’d ourselves the highest satisfaction.” But their promises were fallacious; with all the delights of a new flora and a new fauna within their reach they met with little but the bitterest frustration. It has been said that the Portuguese viceroy did not believe the Endeavour was a king’s ship, and that he supposed she was some kind of a pirate or smuggler; at all events he forbade anyone but the captain and the hands needed for watering and victualling to go ashore. Cook told him that the bark had to be given a heel to clean her sides and that it would be very unpleasant for people to live aboard in such conditions, and he reminded him of his predecessor’s traditionally kind and helpful reception of Byron in the Dolphin only a few years before; but neither this nor the repeated memorials that Cook and Banks sent his Excellency had any effect. The ship might victual and water, but her people were not to go ashore; and guards were placed to enforce the order.

“Your lordship”, said Banks in another part of his letter, “can more easily imagine our situation than I can describe it all that we so ardently wishd to examine was in our sight we could almost but not quite touch them never before had I an adequate Idea of Tantalus’s punishment but I have sufferd it with all possible aggravations three weeks have I staid aboard the ship regardless of every inconvenience of her being heeld down &c. &c. which on any other occasion would have been no small hardships but small evils are totaly swallowd up in the Larger bodily pain bears no comparison to pure in short the torments of the damnd must be very severe indeed as doubtless my present ones Cannot nearly Equal them.”

In spite of the very real danger of violence and imprisonment if nothing worse, Banks or his servants did in fact slip ashore occasionally and collect for a few hours, and he was able to botanize among the fodder brought for the livestock and the greenstuff brought for the bark’s company; but his list did not amount to more than about three hundred plants – very miserable poverty indeed when compared with the prodigious wealth only a few hundred yards away.

It is pleasant to know that on 7 December, when the Endeavour sailed and when they were at last free of the viceroy and his troublesome guardboat, they “immediately resolved to go ashore on one of the Islands in the mouth of the harbour; their ran a great swell but we made shift to land on one called Raza, on which we gatherd many species of Plants and some insects. Alstromeria salsilla was here in tolerable plenty and Amaryllis mexicana, they were the most specious plants; we stayed till about 4 oClock and then came aboard the ship heartily tired, for the desire of doing as much as we could in a short time had made us all exert ourselves in a particular manner tho exposd to the hottest rays of the sun just at noonday.”

This entry is followed by a long, conscientious but understandably jaundiced account of Rio gathered from those who like Monkhouse the surgeon were allowed to visit the town, but then Banks’s energy seems to have dwindled; as the Endeavour sailed into the cooler seas south of the tropic of Capricorn his journal amounted to little more than a couple of lines a day, generally saying that the wind was fair, sometimes that it was foul.

December 17 Wind foul, blew rather fresh, so the ship heeld much which made our affairs go on rather uncomfortably.

18 Calm at night, wind to the northward; we began to feel ourselves rather cool tho the thermometer was at 76 and shut two of the Cabbin windows, all of which have been open ever since we left Madeira.

22 This morn quite calm. [Pilot whales appeared] When they were gone Dr Solander and myself went out in the boat and shot one species of Mother Careys chickens and two shearwaters, both proved new, Procellaria Gigantea and sandaliata. The Carey was one but ill described by Linnaeus, Procellaria fregata. While we were out the people were employed in bending the new set of sails for Cape Horn.

25 Christmas day; all good Christians that is to say all hands got abominably drunk so that at night there was scarce a sober man in the ship, wind thank God very moderate or the lord knows what would have become of us.

By that time the Endeavour was well down in the South Atlantic, in cold waters immensely rich in all forms of life from plankton to whales, and now they began to see much greater numbers of birds, petrels of many, many kinds, shearwaters, albatrosses of several species: for in the new year they were coming into a new world entirely.

January 1769

1 New years day today made us pass many Compts, and talk much of our hopes for success in the year 69. Many whales were about the ship today and much sea weed in large lumps but none near enough to be caught.

In the Evening rather squally; the true sea green colour upon the surface of the water was often to be seen now between the squalls, or rather under the black clouds when they were about half a mile from the ship. I had often heard of it before but never seen it in any such perfection, indeed most of the seamen said the same, it was very bright and perfectly like the stone calld aquamarine.

They paid for their pretty sea, however: they were in the latitude of the Falklands at this point (indeed, Banks hoped they might land there) and the wind began to blow strong and cold – their first real touch of antarctic weather with its enormous gales and monstrous seas. Magellan jackets made of thick wool were served out to all hands, and Banks put on thick trousers and a flannel jacket and waistcoat. Seals and penguins appeared, and Banks thought it probable that he had seen a black bird described by Linnaeus as Procellaria aequinoctialis, but he could not quite make out the colour of its bill. Everyone was agreed that “the ship during this gale has shewn her excellence in laying too remarkably well, shipping scarce any water tho it blew at times vastly strong; the seamen in general say that they never knew a ship lay too so well as this does, so lively and at the same time so easy.”

For the next few days the weather was kinder; the Endeavour sailed south among seals, albatrosses, dolphins and diving petrels, and then Banks wrote in his journal

11 This morn at day break saw the land of Tierra del Fuego, by 8 O’Clock we were well in with it, the weather exceedingly moderate. Its appearance was not near so barren as the writer of Ld Ansons voyage has represented it, the weather exceedingly moderate so we stood along shore about 2 leagues off, we could see trees distinctly through our glasses and observe several smokes made probably by the natives as a signal to us. The captain now resolved to put in here if he can find a convenient harbour and give us an opportunity of searching a country so intirely new.

Because of foul winds and the furious tides that drove the ship out of the strait Le Maire between Staten Island and Tierra del Fuego three times, this could not be done until 14 January, when Banks and Solander went ashore for four hours while Cook stood on and off, there being no holding ground for an anchor. They found about a hundred plants, all of them “new and intirely different from what either of us had before seen”, as well as the antiscorbutic Winter’s bark, wild celery and scurvy grass. But the next day was much better; they anchored in the Bay of Good Success after dinner and made contact with the timid but quite amiable natives: “Dr Solander and myself then walked forward 100 yards before the rest and two of the Indians advanc’d also and set themselves down about 50 yards from their companions. As soon as we came up they rose and each of them threw a stick he had in his hand away from him and us, as a token no doubt of peace, they then walked briskly towards the other party and wavd to us to follow, which we did and were receivd with many uncouth signs of friendship. We distributed among them a number of Beads and ribbands which we had brought ashore for that purpose at which they seem’d mightily pleased.” The journal goes on:

16 This morn very early Dr Solander and myself with our servants and two Seamen to assist in carrying baggage, accompanied by Msrs Monkhouse and Green, set out from the ship to try to penetrate into the countrey as far as we could, and if possible gain the tops of the hills where alone we saw places not overgrown with trees. We began to enter the woods at a small sandy beach a little to the westward of the watering place and continued pressing through pathless thickets, always going up hill, till 3 o’Clock before we gained even a near view of the places we intended to go to. The weather had all this time been vastly fine much like a sunshiny day in May, so that neither heat nor cold was troublesome to us nor were there any insects to molest us, which made me think the travelling much better than what I had before met with in Newfoundland.

Soon after we saw the plains we arrived at them, but found to our great disappointment that what we took for swathe was no better than low bushes of birch about reaching a mans middle; these were so stubborn that they could not be bent out of the way, but at every step the leg must be lifted over them and on being plac’d again on the ground was almost sure to sink above the anckles in bog. No travelling could possibly be worse than this which seemd to last about a mile, beyond which we expected to meet with bare rock, for such had we seen from the tops of lower hills as we came: this I particularly was infinitely eager to arrive at expecting there to find the alpine plants of a countrey so curious. Our people tho rather fatigued were yet in good spirits so we pushd on intending to rest ourselves as soon as we should arrive at plain ground.

We proceeded two thirds of the way without the least difficulty and I confess I thought for my part that all difficulties were surmounted when Mr Buchan fell into a fit. A fire was immediately lit for him and with him all those who were most tird remained behind, while Dr Solander Mr Green Mr Monkhouse and myself advancd for the alp which we reachd almost immediately, and found according to expectation plants which answerd to those we had found before as alpine ones in Europe do to those which we find in the plains.

The air was here very cold and we had frequent snow blasts. I had now intirely given over all thoughts of reaching the ship that night and thought of nothing but getting into the thick of the wood and making a fire, which as our road lay all down hill seemd very easy to accomplish, so Msrs Green and Monkhouse returnd to the people and appointed a hill for our general rendezvous from whence we should proceed and build our wigwam. The cold now increasd apace, it might be near 8 O’Clock tho yet exceedingly good daylight so we proceeded for the nearest valley, where the short Birch, the only thing we now dreaded, could not be ½ a mile over. Our people seemd well despite the cold and Mr Buchan was stronger than we could have expected. I undertook to bring up the rear and see that no one was left behind. We passd about half way very well when the cold seemd to have at once an effect infinitely beyond what I have ever experienced. Dr Solander was the first who felt it, he said he could not go any farther but must lay down, tho the ground was coverd with snow, and down he laid notwithstanding all I could say to the contrary. Richmond a black Servant now began also to lag and was much in the same way as the dr: at this Juncture I dispatched 5 forwards of whom Mr Buchan was one to make ready a fire at the very first convenient place they could find, while myself with 4 more staid behind to persuade if possible the dr and Richmond to come on. With much persuasion and intreaty we got through much the largest part of the Birch when they both gave out; Richmond said that he could not go any further and when told that if he did not he must be Froze to death only answerd that there he would lay and dye; the Dr on the contrary said that he must sleep a little before he could go on and actually did full a quarter of an hour, at which time we had the welcome news of a fire being lit about a quarter of a mile ahead. I then undertook to make the Dr Proceed to it; finding it impossible to make Richmond stir left two hands with him who seemd the least affected with Cold, promising to send two to releive them as soon as I should reach the fire. With much difficulty I got the Dr to it and as soon as two people were sufficiently warmd sent them out in hopes that they would bring Richmond and the rest; after staying about half an hour they returnd bringing word that they had been all round the place shouting and hallowing but could not get any answer. We now guess’d the cause of the mischeif, a bottle of rum the whole of our stock was missing, and we soon concluded that it was in one of their Knapsacks and that the two who were left in health had drunk immoderately of it and had slept like the other.

For two hours now it had snowd almost incessantly so we had little hopes of seeing any of the three alive: about 12 however to our great Joy we heard a shouting, on which myself and 4 more went out immediately and found it to be the seaman who had wakd almost starvd to death and come a little way from where he lay. Him I sent back to the fire and proceeded by his direction to find the other two, Richmond was upon his leggs but not able to walk the other lay on the ground as insensible as a stone. We immediately calld all hands from the fire and attempted by all the means we could contrive to bring them down but finding it absolutely impossible, the road was so bad and the night so dark that we could scarcely ourselves get on nor did we without many Falls. We would then have lit a fire upon the spot but the snow on the ground as well as that which continually fell renderd that as impracticable as the other, and to bring fire from the other place was also impossible from the quantity of snow which fell every moment from the branches of the trees; so we were forc’d to content ourselves with laying out our unfortunate companions upon a bed of boughs and covering them over with boughs also as thick as we were able, and thus we left them hopeless of ever seeing them again alive which indeed we never did.

In these employments we had spent an hour and a half expos’d to the most penetrating cold I ever felt as well as continual snow. Peter Briscoe, another servant of mine, now began to complain and before we came to the fire became very ill but got there at last almost dead with cold.

Now might our situation truely be calld terrible: of twelve our original number were 2 already past all hopes, one more was so ill that tho he was with us I had little hopes of his being able to walk in the morning, and another very likely to relapse into his fitts either before we set out or in the course of our journey: we were distant from the ship we did not know how far, we knew only that we had been the greatest part of a day in walking it through pathless woods: provision we had none but one vulture which had been shot while we were out, and at the shortest allowance could not furnish half a meal: and to compleat our misfortunes we were caught in a snow storm in a climate we were utterly unacquainted with but which we had reason to beleive was as inhospitable as any in the world, not only from all the accounts we had read or heard but from the Quantity of snow which we saw falling, tho it was very little after midsummer: a circumstance unheard of in Europe for even in Norway or Lapland snow is never known to fall in the summer.

17 The Morning now dawnd and shewd us the earth coverd with snow as well as all the tops of the trees, nor were the snow squalls at all less Frequent for seldom many minutes were fair together; we had no hopes now but of staying here as long as the snow lasted and how long that would be God alone knew.

About 6 O’Clock the sun came out a little and we immediately thought of sending to see whether the poor wretches we had been so anzious about last night were yet alive, three of our people went but soon returnd with the melancholy news of their being both dead. The snow continued to fall tho not quite so thick as it had done; about 8 a small breeze of wind sprung up and with the additional power of the sun began (to our great Joy) to clear the air, and soon after we saw the snow begin to fall from the tops of the trees, a sure sign of an approaching thaw. Peter continued very ill but said he thought himself able to walk. Mr Buchan thank god was much better than I could have expected, so we agreed to dress our vulture and prepare ourselves to set out for the ship as soon as the snow should be a little more gone off so he was skinnd and cut into ten equal shares, each man cooking his own share which furnished about 3 mouthfulls of hot meat, all the refreshment we had had since our cold dinner yesterday and all we were to expect till we could come to the ship.

About ten we set out and after a march of about 3 hours arrivd at the beach, fortunate in having met with much better roads in our return than we did in going out, as well as in being nearer to the ship than we had any reason to hope; for on reviewing our track as well as we could from the ship we found that we had made a half circle round the hills, instead of penetrating as we thought we had done into the inner part of the countrey. With what pleasure then did we congratulate each other on our safety no one can tell who has not been in such circumstances.

It scarcely seems believable that later the same day Banks, “considering our short Stay & the Uncertainty of the weather” as the master put it in his journal, asked for a boat in order to haul the seine, or that two days later, after some very heavy weather and a good deal more snow, both he and Solander should have gone ashore to collect shells and plants and to visit an Indian settlement, inquiring as closely as they could into the Fuegian way of life; but such is the case.

On 21 January the Endeavour sailed, having completed her water at Good Success Bay, and four days later she was probably off the Horn in moderate weather, but too foggy for them to be certain of the Cape. Cook made sure that he was clear of the land by keeping to his south-westerly course day after day, until by the end of the month they reached sixty degrees of south latitude: and here, in seventy-five degrees of longitude west of Greenwich, with plenty of sea-room all round him, Cook shaped his general north-west course for Tahiti.

Something in the nature of four thousand miles lay between this point and the island on which he was to observe the transit of Venus: four thousand miles that is to say in a straight line, which no ship dependent upon wind could possibly hope to follow. These were largely unknown waters, for although by this time about a dozen sailors had taken their ships round the world and although Cook and Banks between them possessed either these captains’ own accounts or Charles de Brosses’ or Harris’s or Alexander Dalrymple’s versions of them (Dalrymple, in spite of his feeling of ill-usage, had handsomely given Banks his printed but as yet unpublished octavo Account of the Discoveries made in the South Pacifick Ocean previous to 1764 with its valuable chart), vast areas were wholly unknown, the comparatively few reports of winds and currents could not be relied upon as giving a general rule, and since the earlier voyagers had travelled without chronometers or accurate tables of lunar distance, they could not lay down the longitude of the various islands and reefs they had seen with any accuracy. Obviously the Endeavour had to proceed with caution; 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: