2 Joseph Banks – The Voyage of the Endeavour
Joseph Banks was born in 1743 into a family of wealthy landowners who had no fewer
than fourteen country estates in Lincolnshire. He grew up in the Manor at Revesby
surrounded by 340 acres of woods and garden, where as a young boy he became very
fond of fishing and other country pursuits. He would have had private tutors before
being sent to school at Harrow when he was nine years old. Here his masters describe
him as an extremely active boy, much given to play, but who could not be convinced
of any reason to study his books. At thirteen his father sent him to Eton where life
could be brutal for a sensitive young boy, but fortunately Banks was big for his age,
strong and active. Books were still a problem but with the help of a tutor he was able
to learn some Latin and a letter sent to his father at Revesby reads:
Sir,It gives me great pleasure to find you think Master Banks improved. To be able to
construe a Latin Author into English with Readiness and Propriety is undoubtedly no less
necessary than to be able to turn an English one into Latin. They ought indeed to go hand in
hand together. And I hope we shall by degrees bring Master Banks to a tolerable perfection
in the former; tho’ the Point, which I have hitherto been chiefly labouring, is to improve him
in the latter, because of his great Deficiency in that Respect when He came to us.At fifteen years of age Joseph Banks underwent a dramatic conversion from a boy
interested in only games and sports to someone with an overwhelming interest in nature.
He recounts how that summer after bathing in the river with his friends he wandered
home alone through country lanes whose banks were covered in wildflowers lit by the
setting sun. He was so struck by their beauty and perfection that in that moment he
decided to become a student of natural history. Telling himself that ‘surely it is more
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