The questions they asked: Joseph Banks and naturalists in the Pacific Ocean

ABSTRACT

Did Arcadia actually exist as a place? How do species evolve? Would it be possible to harness and tame a whale for human use? Natural scientists and explorers pondered a range of fascinating – and sometimes amusing – questions as they circumnavigated the globe in search of novel discoveries. Yet historians and other scholars tend to privilege the end results of scientific exploration rather than the process of inquiry itself. Joseph Banks initiated the role of naturalist-at-sea for government-sponsored voyages in the Pacific Ocean; among his legacies was a long genealogy of both highly trained naturalists and amateurish collectors on voyages from many imperial nations. What questions did these naturalists pose and who contributed to the alleged answers?

KEYWORDS:

• Joseph Banks
• science
• Tahiti
• James Cook
• Arcadia
• James Dwight Dana
• Pacific Ocean
• naturalists
• Ludwig Choris
• North-west Passage
• Kadu
• discovery

Notes

1 Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 1, 252.

2 Fara, Sex, botany and empire.

3 Gascoigne, Science in the service of empire, 5.

4 Pagden, Enlightenment, 161–83.

5 On these and other questions, see Williams, Naturalists at sea; Raj, Relocating modern science.

6 Reynolds, Private journal, 13.

7 Igler, Great ocean.

8 Solnit, ‘Notes on California as an island’.

9 Turnbull, ‘Cook and Tupaia’.

10 Alden Vaughan provides the telling example of how Epenow, kidnapped from Capawack (present-day Martha’s Vineyard) in 1611 and subsequently house servant to Sir Ferdinando Gorges in England for three years, plotted his own transatlantic return by promising to reveal the location of a rich mine near Capawack. He succeeded in this ruse, although his escape from Captain Nicholas Hobson resulted in the death of numerous Indians. See Vaughan, Transatlantic encounters, 65–6.

11 Banks to William Philp Perrin, 16 Aug. 1768, in Banks, Indian and Pacific correspondence, vol. 1, 26.

12 Banks to Don Antonio Rolim de Moura, Conde d’Azambuja, 17 Nov. 1768, in ibid., 29.

13 Fara, Sex, botany and empire, 51. On the term ‘nature’s economy’, see Worster, Nature’s economy.

14 ‘The Instructions’, Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 1, cclxxxii.

15 ‘Hints offered to the consideration of Captain Cooke, Mr. Bankes, Doctor Solander, and the other Gentlemen who go upon the Expedition on Board the Endeavour’, Cook, Journals, vol. 2, 514–15.

16 See Banks’s long passage ‘Manners and customs of S. Sea Islanders’, in Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 1, 333–86.

17 Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 1, 40. On this transformation, see Williams, Naturalists at sea, 80–81.

18 Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 2, 20.

19 Salmond, Two worlds, 252.

20 Belich, Making peoples, 20.

21 Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 1, 455.

22 For further details of this incident, see Salmond, Two worlds, 87–9.

23 Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 1, 428.

24 Banks, Endeavour journal, vol. 2, 38.

25 Malaspina, La expedición Malaspina, vol. 4, 128–32.

26 For the correspondence and the infamous ‘Ferrer Maldonado’ document, see Malaspina, Malaspina expedition, vol. 2, 417–84.

27 Ibid., 104.

28 Ibid., 126.

29 Ibid., 106.

30 Sandwich to Banks, 10 Jan. 1780, in Banks, Indian and Pacific correspondence, vol. 2, 265; Banks to Dundas, Admiralty, 20 Nov., in Banks, Letters, 335.

31 Banks to Dundas, Admiralty, 20 Nov. 1817, in Chambers, Letters, 334.

32 Cloris, Voyage pittoresque.

33 Chamisso, Voyage, 129, 139.

34 Kadu receives only brief attention in the literature. See D’Arcy, ‘Connected by the sea’, 173–8; Vinkovetsky, Russian America, 119–20; Liebersohn, Travelers’ world, 157–61; and Igler, Great ocean, 139–40.

35 On Kadu’s questions, see Chamisso, Voyage, 166, 172, 186, 266, 352.

36 Choris, Journal, 262–3. Choris’s diary entries at this point in the voyage are filled with commentary about Kadu. Choris is actively gathering information about Kadu’s background and beliefs, and the artist is especially interested in Kadu’s thoughts about the different people they encounter in the North as well as the different cultural practices in the Marshall and Caroline islands.

37 Eschscholtz to Chamisso, 9 June–6 July 1820, in Lukina, Eschscholtz, 132–3.

38 Darwin to Lyell, 31 Aug. 1849, in Darwin, Correspondence, vol. 4, 290.

39 Dana, Geology, 2, 280, 612–14; Dana, ‘Origins’, 398; Dana, ‘Volcanoes of the Moon’, 343.

40 Dana, ‘Earth’s contraction’, 179.

41 Banks to Franklin, 29 Mar. 1780, in Banks, Letters, 54.

42 Chamisso, Voyage, 94.

43 Banks to Menzies, 22 Feb. 1791, in Banks, Indian and Pacific correspondence, vol. 3, 199–202.