Born February 13, 1743,
London, England
Died June 19, 1820,
London, England
Sir Joseph Banks initially became interested in exploration through his love of nature. An Oxford graduate born to wealth and power, he became a talented naturalist and had the vision and resources to pursue his many interests. He also promoted the exploration of Africa and Australia, as well as fostered England’s ambitions to find the Northwest Passage. Banks founded the African Association, a society formed to find the source of the Niger River. Knighted in 1795, Banks was sometimes accused of being despotic by fellow scientists, but his herbarium, or collection of dried plant specimens, was considered the world’s most important, and his collection of books on natural history and travel came to be housed in the British Museum.
Banks was born in London on February 13, 1743. His family lived on a large estate in the English county of Lincolnshire. When Banks was a 14-year-old student at Eton, a famous school in Buckinghamshire, he had an experience that would change his life. Walking back to Eton along a country lane after swimming in a nearby pond, he came upon such a profusion of flowers that he vowed to devote the rest of his life to the study of nature. Banks studied botany at Eton and then went on to Oxford University, but he soon discovered that the only professor of botany at Oxford did not give lectures. His desire to learn was so great that he traveled to Cambridge University, where he hired a professor to return with him to Oxford as a kind of private tutor.
Upon his father’s death Banks inherited the family estate, as well as a great fortune. He graduated from Oxford in December 1763 at the age of 20. Already well known for his knowledge of natural science, Banks was in 1766 made a fellow of the Royal Society, the leading British institution for the study of science. Later that year he sailed on a Fisheries Protection ship called the Niger to visit Newfoundland and collect plant specimens. On his return to England he learned about the upcoming voyage of James Cook (see entry) to the South Pacific. The Royal Society endorsed his request to accompany the explorer as an onboard naturalist. Banks agreed to pay all the expenses for himself and his staff.
Cook’s first expedition, on the Endeavour, left England in 1768. It first stopped in Brazil and then sailed to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America. While the ship was anchored in port, two of Banks’s servants went ashore, drank heavily, and subsequently died of exposure. The Endeavour then went to Tahiti in the South Pacific, where Banks became one of the first Europeans to be tattooed by Polynesian artists; according to reports, he also had romantic attachments with Tahitian women. After leaving Tahiti the explorers went to New Zealand and Australia. On his return to England Banks brought back 1,000 new species of plants, 500 fish, 500 birds, and “insects innumerable.” Lionized by English society, he was received by King George III; the two remained friends for the rest of the king’s life. The great Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus (Carl von Linné), who was the first person to classify plants and animals, was enthusiastic about Banks’s success.
Following this highly successful voyage around the world, Cook was preparing to set out again in 1772. Banks was eager to join Cook on the voyage, but the two men clashed when cabins had to be built to accommodate Banks’s personal party of 15 people, complete with two horn players. Recognizing that the ship could not sail with these obstructions, Cook ordered that the cabins be torn down. Banks was furious. He refused to reduce his party or to compromise his comfort. Eyewitnesses said that he stamped his feet in rage on the dock as Cook sailed away without him.
In 1772 Banks led his own expedition to Iceland, where he stayed for six weeks. It was to be his last journey abroad. Six years later he was elected president of the Royal Society, probably the most prestigious scientific post in the world at that time. He was only 35 years old when he accepted this position, which enabled him to initiate a number of ambitious projects, among them the library for which he became famous. He supported several expeditions that collected plant specimens from around the world, which have since been placed on display at the Royal Botanic Gardens, better known as Kew Gardens. He also sent Captain William Bligh to Tahiti on the Bounty to collect seedlings of the breadfruit tree, which could then be grown in the West Indies to supply food for the slaves in the cane fields.
Banks’s home became a meeting place for a free exchange of ideas, and under his tenure as president he cultivated exchanges with scientists from other countries and generally advanced the cause of science in England. His other great passion was exploration. As early as 1774 he interviewed James Bruce, a Scottish explorer who had just returned from Ethiopia after finding the source of the Blue Nile (a section of the longer Nile River in Africa). At a meeting of interested gentlemen in a London tavern on June 9, 1788, Banks proposed the concept of a society whose sole purpose would be to promote the exploration of Africa. The Africa Association was formed on the following day and set as its first goal the discovery of the headwaters of the Niger River.
Within a month John Ledyard, a 37-year-old American who had attended Dartmouth College for a time and had served with Cook, was on his way to Africa. Ledyard returned penniless and in rags. The Africa Association sent him out again, but he died in Cairo after drinking medication for a stomach ailment. Daniel Houghton, an Irish explorer, was then selected in July 1790, but he also failed to return. The next recruit, hired through a friend of Banks, was the luckless Mungo Park (see entry), a young Scotsman studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh, who had a desire to travel. Park’s mission was also ill-fated. Although he managed to write a book about his first trip, he was killed by natives during his second expedition on the Niger River.
Thus far Banks had tried three approaches to the Niger: from Tripoli with Simon Lucas, from Cairo with Ledyard and Friedrich Hornemann, and from Gambia with Houghton and Park. Undeterred, he now decided on a fourth strategy, an approach from the south. In 1804 the association hired Henry Nicholls to start from one of the trading stations on the Gulf of Guinea and to head north to find the Niger. Nicholls never knew that he came very close to discovering the headwaters of the Niger River because he died of fever soon after arriving at the mouth of the Cross River, just east of the Niger Delta, on January 14, 1805. After the death of Nicholls the African Association became less active, sending out only two more explorers during the period between 1805 and 1831. Lacking resources and membership, the organization was absorbed by the newly founded Royal Geographical Society in 1831.
Banks turned his attention to Australia, where he was to have greater success. In 1801 he sponsored the voyage of Matthew Flinders (see entry) around Australia, paying for the necessary equipment out of his own pocket. Banks encouraged Gregory Blaxland to move to the new British colony in Australia, and Blaxland would later become the first person to find a way through the mountains west of Sydney. In 1817, following the Napoleonic Wars, Banks also became involved in renewed attempts by the British to find the elusive Northwest Passage—a sea route across the North American continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. For years Banks corresponded with the whaling captain William Scoresby, who had written about his Arctic experiences and observations. Banks was also visited by a furloughed naval captain, Edward Parry (see entry), who advocated a concerted effort at northern explorations. This meeting led to the first of four voyages made by Parry and Sir James Ross, the Scottish explorer, to the Arctic. The Northwest Passage was not fully navigated, however, until almost 90 years later, when the feat was accomplished by a Norwegian, Roald Amundsen (see entry), in 1903-06.
As Banks grew older, he suffered from recurring attacks of gout, a disease of the metabolism involving painful inflammation of the joints. Because his movements became increasingly limited, he was confined to a wheelchair in 1804. He died on June 19, 1820, at the age of 77, having experienced a full life and an illustrious career.
This is the complete article, containing 1,464 words
(approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page).
