surprise that Banks was not on board. An incident which a rather bemused Captain
James Cook probably had some delight in reporting to the Admiralty. All these
additional people needed to be accommodated in the manner to which they were
accustomed and this required adding a spar deck over the deep waist of the Resolution
from quarterdeck to forecastle for all the ‘gentlemen passengers’. The result was that
on its sea trials the vessel proved to be completely unseaworthy. No doubt James
Cook could see where all this was headed and he wrote to the Admiralty:
The Resolution sloop under my command was found, upon trial, to be so crank [top
heavy] that she would not bear her proper sail to be set on her, I gave it as my opinion
that it was owing to the additional works that have been built on her in order to make
large accommodation for the several gentlemen passengers intended to embark in her and I
proposed that she might be cut down to her original state.Banks was now suddenly deprived of his special accommodation and in a fit
refused to go, demanding that his party’s enormous amount of baggage and scientific
equipment be removed from the ship. He wrote a letter complaining to Lord Sandwich,
who forwarded his letter to the Navy Board for comment and they tersely replied:
Mr Banks seems throughout to consider the Ships as fitted out wholly for his use; the whole
undertaking to depend on him and his People; and himself as the Director and Conductor of
the whole; for which he is not qualified and if granted to him would have been the greatest
disgrace that could be put on his Majesty’s Naval Officers.Banks was incensed. He had already committed his funds and his gentlemen
passengers to an expedition, so with Dr Solander they sailed to Iceland in the Sir
Lawrence, a vessel he chartered, to observe the volcanoes and collect the sparse plants
that grow in that barren environment. Banks wrote that the country has ‘been visited
but seldom and never at all by any good naturalist to my knowledge’ but his journal
of the voyage is mainly concerned with his continuing grievances against the Navy
Board.
On his return to England, Banks could now devote his energy to the enormous amount
of work needed to store and describe his collection of plants, mammals, reptiles, birds,
insects and marine creatures. Solander had written a great many descriptions while on
board but there were still many additional ones to be done. The drawings made by the
unfortunate Sydney Parkinson had to be completed because he usually made a quick
drawing of each specimen, with an indication of the colours to be painted later. The
Sir Joseph Banks – In London 49