Exotic Intruders
[Sir Joseph Banks]
.jpg)
Sir Joseph Banks
In June 1768 Cook was informed by the secretary to the Admiralty that he was to receive on board 'Joseph Banks Esq. and his Suite comprising eight persons with their Baggage, bearing them as supernumeraries for Victuals only, and Victualling them as the Bark's Company during their Continuance on board.' Joseph Banks was a most unusual man: a Lincolnshire landowner of considerable substance, who had been to Eton and Harrow and had insisted on studying botany when he went to Oxford (putting the authorities into a state of embarrassment—a lecturer in Botany had to be imported for the unusual demand, but Banks paid for the fellow's transfer from Cambridge). Joseph Banks had influential friends, so that a note from Lord Sandwich from the Royal Society had been sufficient to guarantee berths on the Endeavour for the young man and his retinue.
Bank's party included the botanist Solander, the naturalist Sporing, two draughtsmen from Scotland, one of whom was an epileptic, two footmen and two coloured servants. Besides these bodies to be housed, there was a mountain of luggage: jars for specimens, easels, writing materials, books, nets, trawls, insect preserving machines, wax for embedding seeds—and two large greyhounds. Perhaps Cook had been chosen for the job on the strength of his reputation for forebearance.