(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 Esqr, 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,
