Joseph Banks

51

Joseph Banks : biography

13 February 1743 – 19 June 1820

Banks left Oxford for Chelsea in December 1763. He continued to attend the university until 1764, but left that year without taking a degree.Banks was however awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University upon his return from his voyage to the South Seas. See; Banks, Sir Joseph,Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Scribner, 1970. His father had died in 1761, so when he turned 21 he inherited the impressive estate of Revesby Abbey, in Lincolnshire, becoming the local squire and magistrate, and sharing his time between Lincolnshire and London. From his mother’s home in Chelsea he kept up his interest in science by attending the Chelsea Physic Garden of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries and the British Museum, where he met Daniel Solander. He began to make friends among the scientific men of his day and to correspond with Carl Linnaeus, whom he came to know through Solander. As Banks’s influence increased, he became an adviser to King George III and urged the monarch to support voyages of discovery to new lands, hoping to indulge his own interest in botany.

Newfoundland and Labrador

In 1766 Banks was elected to the Royal Society, and in the same year, at 23, he went with Phipps aboard the frigate to Newfoundland and Labrador with a view of studying their natural history. He made his name by publishing the first Linnean descriptions of the plants and animals of Newfoundland and Labrador. His diary, describing his expedition to Newfoundland, was rediscovered recently in the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia.Tuck, Leslie. Montevecchi, William. Nuttall Ornithological Club (1987). Newfoundland Birds, Exploitation, Study, Conservation, Harvard University. Banks also documented 34 species of birds, including the Great Auk, which became extinct in 1844. On 7 May, he noted a large number of "Penguins" swimming around the ship on the Grand Banks, and a specimen he collected in Chateau Bay, Labrador, was later identified as the Great Auk.

Endeavour voyage

Banks was promptly appointed to a joint Royal Navy/Royal Society scientific expedition to the south Pacific Ocean on HMS Bark Endeavour, 1768–1771. This was the first of James Cook’s voyages of discovery in that region. This voyage went to Brazil, where Banks made the first scientific description of a now common garden plant, bougainvillea (named after Cook’s French counterpart, Louis Antoine de Bougainville), and to other parts of South America. The voyage then progressed to Tahiti (where the transit of Venus was observed, the overt purpose of the mission), to New Zealand and to the east coast of Australia, where Cook mapped the coastline and made landfall at Botany Bay and at Endeavour River (near modern Cooktown) in Queensland, where they spent almost seven weeks ashore while the ship was repaired after becoming holed on the Great Barrier Reef. While they were in Australia Banks, the Swedish botanist Daniel Solander and the Finnish botanist Dr. Herman Spöring Jr. made the first major collection of Australian flora, describing many species new to science. Almost 800 specimens were illustrated by the artist Sydney Parkinson and appear in Banks’ Florilegium, finally published in 35 volumes between 1980 and 1990.

Return home

Banks arrived back in England on 12 July 1771 and immediately became famous. He intended to go with Cook on his second voyage, which began on 13 May 1772, but difficulties arose about Banks’ scientific requirements on board Cook’s new ship, Resolution. The Admiralty regarded Banks’ demands as unacceptable and without prior warning withdrew his permission to sail. In July of the same year he and Daniel Solander visited the Isle of Wight, the western islands of Scotland and Iceland aboard Sir Lawrence and returned with many botanical specimens. In 1773, he toured south Wales in the company of artist Paul Sandby.Colley, Linda (2009), , The Guardian, 7 November 2009. When he settled in London he began work on his Florilegium. He kept in touch with most of the scientists of his time, was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1773, and added a fresh interest when he was elected to the Dilettante Society in 1774. He was afterwards secretary of this society from 1778 to 1797. On 30 November 1778 he was elected President of the Royal Society, a position he was to hold with great distinction for over 41 years. In March 1779, Banks married Dorothea Hugessen, daughter of W. W. Hugessen, and settled in a large house at 32 Soho Square (now comprising British offices for 20th Century Fox). It continued to be his London residence for the remainder of his life. There he welcomed the scientists, students and authors of his period, and many distinguished foreign visitors. His sister Sarah Sophia Banks lived in the house with Banks and his wife. He had as librarian and curator of his collections Solander, Jonas Carlsson Dryander and Robert Brown in succession.