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
