Joseph Banks

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For other people named Joseph Banks, see Joseph Banks (disambiguation).
Sir Joseph Banks, Bt
Joseph Banks 1773 Reynolds.jpg
Joseph Banks, as painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1773
Born

24 February 1743 (13 February O.S.)

30 Argyll Street, London

Died

19 June 1820 (aged 77)

Spring Grove House, Isleworth, London, England

Nationality

British

Fields Botany
Institutions

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Alma mater

Christ Church, Oxford

Known for

Voyage of HMS Endeavour, exploration of Botany Bay

Author abbrev. (botany)

Banks

Signature

Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS (24 February [O.S. 13 February] 1743 19 June 1820)[1] was an
English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences.
Banks made his name on the 1766 natural history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador. He took
part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage (17681771), visiting Brazil, Tahiti, and, after 6 months in
New Zealand, Australia, returning to immediate fame. He held the position of President of the Royal
Society for over 41 years. He advised King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and by sending
botanists around the world to collect plants, he made Kew the world's leading botanical gardens.
Banks advocated British settlement in New South Wales and colonisation of Australia, as well as the
establishment of Botany Bay as a place for the reception of convicts, and advised the British government
on all Australian matters.

He is credited with introducing the eucalyptus, acacia, and the genus named after him, Banksia, to the
Western world. Approximately 80 species of plants bear his name. He was the leading founder of the
African Association and a member of the Society of Dilettanti which helped to establish the Royal
Academy.
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early life
1.2 Education
1.3 Newfoundland and Labrador
1.4 Endeavour voyage
1.5 Return home
1.6 Colonisation of New South Wales
1.7 Later life
2 Legacy
3 See also
4 Notes
5 References
5.1 Primary resources
5.2 Secondary resources
5.2.1 Select unpublished monographs
5.2.2 Fiction
6 External links
Biography[edit]
Early life[edit]

A 1757 portrait of Banks with a botanical illustration. Unknown artist, but attributed to Lemuel Francis
Abbott or Johann Zoffany[2]

Banks was born in London to William Banks, a wealthy Lincolnshire country squire and member of the
House of Commons, and his wife Sarah, daughter of William Bate.
Education[edit]
Banks was educated at Harrow School from the age of 9 and at Eton College from 1756; his fellow
students included Constantine John Phipps.
As a boy, Banks enjoyed exploring the Lincolnshire countryside and developed a keen interest in nature,
history and botany. When he was 17, he was inoculated with smallpox, but he became ill and did not
return to school. In late 1760, he was enrolled as a gentleman-commoner at the University of Oxford. At
Oxford, he matriculated at Christ Church, where his studies were largely focused on natural history
rather than the classical curriculum. Determined to receive botanical instruction, he paid the Cambridge
botanist Israel Lyons to deliver a series of lectures at Oxford in 1764.[3]
Banks left Oxford for Chelsea in December 1763. He continued to attend the university until 1764, but
left that year without taking a degree.[4] 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. He became a
Freemason sometime before 1769.[5]
Newfoundland and Labrador[edit]
In 1766 Banks was elected to the Royal Society, and in the same year, at 23, he went with Phipps aboard
the frigate HMS Niger to Newfoundland and Labrador with a view to 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.[6][7] 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.[8]
Endeavour voyage[edit]

Dr Daniel Solander, Sir Joseph Banks, Captain James Cook, Dr John Hawkesworth and Earl Sandwich by
John Hamilton Mortimer.[9] Use a cursor to see who is who.[10]
Main article: First voyage of James Cook

Banks was appointed to a joint Royal Navy/Royal Society scientific expedition to the south Pacific Ocean
on HMS Endeavour, 17681771. This was the first of James Cook's voyages of discovery in that region.
Banks funded seven others to join him: the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander, the Finnish naturalist
Herman Spring, two artists, a scientific secretary, and two black servants from his estate.[11]
The 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.[7] While they were in Australia Banks, Daniel Solander
and the Finnish botanist Dr. Herman Spring 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.

Satire on Banks titled "The Botanic Macaroni", by Matthew Darly, 1772. A macaroni was a pejorative
term used for a follower of exaggerated continental fashion in the 18th Century
Return home[edit]
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[7] aboard Sir
Lawrence and returned with many botanical specimens. In 1773, he toured south Wales in the company
of artist Paul Sandby.[12] 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,[7] a position he was to hold with great distinction for over 41 years.

Banks as painted by Benjamin West in 1773.

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.
Also in 1779, Banks took a lease on an estate called Spring Grove, the former residence of Elisha Biscoe
(17051776),[13] which he eventually bought outright from Biscoe's son also Elisha in 1808. The picture
shows the house in 1815. Its thirty-four acres ran along the northern side of the London Road, Isleworth
and contained a natural spring, which was an important attraction to him. Banks spent much time and
effort on this secondary home. He steadily created a renowned botanical masterpiece on the estate,
achieved primarily with many of the great variety of foreign plants he had collected on his extensive
travels around the world, particularly to Australia and the South Seas. The surrounding district became
known as 'Spring Grove'.

Banks' house in Isleworth

The house was substantially extended and rebuilt by later owners and is now part of West Thames
College.
Banks was made a baronet in 1781,[7] three years after being elected president of the Royal Society.
During much of this time he was an informal adviser to King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens,
Kew, a position that was formalised in 1797. Banks dispatched explorers and botanists to many parts of
the world, and through these efforts Kew Gardens became arguably the pre-eminent botanical gardens
in the world, with many species being introduced to Europe through them and through Chelsea Physic
Garden and their head gardener John Fairbairn. He directly fostered several famous voyages, including
that of George Vancouver to the northeastern Pacific (Pacific Northwest), and William Bligh's voyages to
transplant breadfruit from the South Pacific to the Caribbean islands. Banks was also a major financial
supporter of William Smith in his decade-long efforts to create a geological map of England, the first
geological map of an entire country. He also chose Allan Cunningham for voyages to Brazil and the north
and northwest coasts of Australia to collect specimens.

Sir Joseph Banks (center), together with Omai (left) and Daniel Solander, painted by William Parry, ca.
177576.
Colonisation of New South Wales[edit]
It was Banks's own time in Australia, however, that led to his interest in the British colonisation of that
continent. He was to be the greatest proponent of settlement in New South Wales. A genus of
Proteaceae was named in his honour as Banksia.[7] In 1779 Banks, giving evidence before a committee
of the House of Commons, had stated that in his opinion the place most eligible for the reception of
convicts "was Botany Bay, on the coast of New Holland", on the general grounds that, "it was not to be
doubted that a Tract of Land such as New Holland, which was larger than the whole of Europe, would
furnish Matter of advantageous Return".[14] His interest did not stop there, for when the settlement

started, and for 20 years afterwards, his fostering care and influence was always being exercised. He was
in fact the general adviser to the government on all Australian matters. He arranged that a large number
of useful trees and plants should be sent out in the supply ship HMS Guardian which, however, was
wrecked, and every vessel that came from New South Wales brought plants or animals or geological and
other specimens to Banks. He was continually called on for help in developing the agriculture and trade
of the colony, and his influence was used in connection with the sending out of early free settlers, one of
whom, a young gardener George Suttor, afterwards wrote a memoir of Banks. The three earliest
governors of the colony, Arthur Phillip, John Hunter, and Philip Gidley King, were continually in
correspondence with him. Bligh was also appointed governor of New South Wales on Banks's
recommendation. He followed the explorations of Matthew Flinders, George Bass and Lieutenant James
Grant, and among his paid helpers were George Caley, Robert Brown and Allan Cunningham.
Later life[edit]

This 1812 print depicts Banks as president of the Royal Society, wearing the insignia of the Order of the
Bath

In The great South Sea Caterpillar, transform'd into a Bath Butterfly (1795), James Gillray caricatured
Banks's investiture with the Order of the Bath as a result of his expedition.
Banks was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in
1788.[15] Among other activities, Banks found time to serve as a trustee of the British Museum for 42
years.[16] He was High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1794.
He worked with Sir George Staunton in producing the official account of the British mission to the
Chinese Imperial court. This diplomatic and trade mission was headed by Lord George Macartney.
Although the Macartney Embassy returned to London without obtaining any concession from China, the
mission could have been termed a success because it brought back detailed observations. This multivolume work was taken chiefly from the papers of Lord Macartney and from the papers of Sir Erasmus
Gower, who was Commander of the expedition. Banks was responsible for selecting and arranging
engraving of the illustrations in this official record.[17]
Banks's health began to fail early in the 19th century and he suffered from gout[7] every winter. After
1805 he practically lost the use of his legs and had to be wheeled to his meetings in a chair, but his mind
remained as vigorous as ever. He had been a member of the Society of Antiquaries nearly all his life, and
he developed an interest in archaeology in his later years. He was made an honorary founding member
of the Wernerian Natural History Society of Edinburgh in 1808. In 1809, his friend Alexander Henry
dedicated his travel book to him. In May 1820 he forwarded his resignation as president of the Royal
Society, but withdrew it at the request of the council. He died on 19 June 1820 in Spring Grove House,

Isleworth, and was buried at St Leonard's Church, Heston. Lady Banks survived him, but there were no
children.[7]