Planting the World

Preface

By 1786 Joseph Banks had been President of the Royal Society for eight years – he would continue being elected annually until his death in 1820. It was a position which gave Banks enormous prestige not only in Britain’s scientific community but also further afield. Over the following five years, Banks became a member of at least fifteen other scientific societies, some of them modelled on the Royal Society, some new, some well established, and stretching from Philadelphia to St Petersburg. Banks was now in touch with many of the world’s scientific practitioners, not only those interested in natural history, but ranging over all fields of scientific enquiry. His correspondence files grew accordingly.

Enlightening as it was, and satisfying as it must have been to be fêted by so many scientific institutions, it was Banks’s botanical projects which continued to dominate his attention. By 1786, his first collectors were either in the field or on their way. Francis Masson was at the Cape, on his second visit there, collecting living plants for Kew; Anthony Pantaleon Howe was in southwest Africa on HMS Nautilus; Archibald Menzies was on his way to the Pacific Northwest; John Duncan was already sending plants to Banks and presents to his wife Dorothea from Canton; and on the Coromandel Coast, James Anderson had written his first letter to Banks about his discovery of cochineal.

The tables and other surfaces in the library at Soho Square must have been covered with all the available texts, drawings and maps of the places where his collectors were, as Banks envisioned what they may have been experiencing. And, all the time, plant specimens were arriving, sometime at Soho Square, if, as seeds, they were in envelopes addressed to Banks; and, other times, at Customs House, if they were bulbs or living plants, needing clearance before being sent to Kew.

The geographic scope of these collections was already wide but over the next few years they spread out even further. Howe (now called Hove), who had returned from southwest Africa, was sent to western India on a secret mission; and Menzies, who had left Canton for London, would soon be on his way back to the Pacific as part of a naval convoy, commanded by George Vancouver, who had been on both Cook’s second and third voyage, to keep the delicate recently negotiated peace between Britain and Spain and to continue Cook’s survey of the Pacific coast. Menzies was mainly collecting living plants for Kew, but he also collected botanical specimens and planted seeds given to him in England and at the Cape whenever and wherever he could.

In addition to all this, Banks became involved with three other government-initiated projects before 1791. The first focused on establishing and sustaining Britain’s new penal colony in New South Wales. The second and third projects were concerned with transplanting the breadfruit tree from Tahiti to the British West Indies on specially converted naval vessels.

Banks’s experiences on the Endeavour, now more than a quarter of a century in the past, were still being called upon, and he took all the opportunities that the government projects presented him with to further his own personal project of supplying Kew with living plants from all over the world, on an unprecedented scale.

6

1786: The First and Second Fleet

The extremely disappointing report from HMS Nautilus put paid to the idea of forming a convict settlement on the southwest coast of Africa and paved the way for Botany Bay as the only feasible alternative. Banks, who had so far merely recommended it as a suitable spot for a colony, soon found himself involved in planning the practical details of its day-to-day existence. This was not through the government, but because of Banks’s relationship with yet another of his acquaintances who was interested in natural history, Arthur Phillip. This was Captain Arthur Phillip who was to be the first Governor of New South Wales. He was born in 1738, and so five years older than Banks, and had been at sea since he was nine. First in merchant ships, and then in the Royal Navy, he rose quickly through the ranks. Early in the 1770s, Phillip went on half-pay, and spent some time in France, possibly spying for the British.[1] By 1774 he was back in London, but not for long. Soon he was sent to Lisbon. By mid January 1775 he was a captain in the Portuguese Navy for service in Brazilian waters. The Portuguese had asked the British for naval assistance and Phillip had been recommended. He was described to the Portuguese authorities as highly intelligent, an astute and accurate observer, with extensive naval and military expertise, fluent in French, and other European languages. Phillip was the perfect man for the job.[2]

He was. He stayed with the Portuguese Navy for three years. During this time in Brazil, he was surprised to learn that a colony of cochineal insects had been found living on cactus plants on the Brazilian island of Santa Catarina, the southern naval base between the towns of Santos and Porto Alegre; and the Viceroy of Brazil, the Marquis de Lavradio, had ordered production to be expanded to the point at which Brazilian cochineal could be exported and compete with the Spanish monopoly.[3]

Phillip already knew something about the making of cloth – his wife’s first husband had been a very prosperous cloth merchant and Phillip himself had spent several years in and around the cloth cities of northern France.[4] The valuable cochineal naturally attracted his attention and he became very interested in understanding the insect’s behaviour. While stationed at the island, he actually bred the insects in his cabin and observed their life cycle. Unfortunately, while on patrol in the River Plate, much colder than on Santa Catarina, all the insects died. Nevertheless, Phillip had learned enough about their behaviour to be confident that the insect and the cactus could be transplanted to one of the British islands in the West Indies where the tropical climate would provide the right conditions: and the insect could be ‘bred to the great advantage of the Nation, as well as to the very great profit of the Planter.’[5] Phillip’s cochineal experience would come in very useful later on.

In 1778 Phillip returned to his naval career in Britain and was eventually made Captain of his own Royal Navy ship. He apparently continued to spy on the French, reporting directly to Evan Nepean, Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office.[6]

It seems likely that it was Nepean who recommended Phillip to be Commander of the First Fleet. Not only had he employed him previously, but the two men had become close friends. He would have known Phillip’s service record and maritime experience, which included sailing in both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.[7]

If Nepean did recommend Phillip to the Home Office, it seems the Admiralty were not too keen on appointing him, but eventually they gave way. On 3 September 1786, Lord Howe, the First Lord of the Admiralty, told Lord Sydney, the Home Secretary, that he was satisfied as to Phillip’s abilities, and that the Admiralty would not object further.[8] Phillip was on his way, as Commander of the First Fleet, to be Governor of the first penal colony in New South Wales.[9]

Although there is no record of Phillip meeting with Banks during the seven months of preparation for the voyage to New South Wales, Phillip would undoubtedly have consulted him. Phillip and the government intended that the colony should become self-sufficient in time.[10] Banks’s unique knowledge and experience of the area would have been invaluable in achieving that end. However they collaborated, Banks did not just give advice in planning the agricultural future of the colony. He provided a generous array of cuttings of fruit trees and vegetables, including apples, pears, peaches, nectarines, oranges, lemons and soft fruits; artichokes, garlic and horseradish; and a number of herbs. But this was nothing when compared to what Banks supplied in seed: every conceivable vegetable; wheat, barley, rye and oats. Banks was taking no chances; many of the seeds were duplicated, even triplicated, and distributed over HMS Sirius and HMS Supply, the two naval vessels chosen for the voyage to New South Wales, and over two of the store ships as well.[11] For Banks, this was not just an opportunity to discover which European plants would grow in the southern latitudes: in Phillip, who he knew was interested in natural history, Banks now had a willing collector in a place which, apart from his own brief visit, was hardly known to natural history in the West.

The First Fleet – two naval vessels, three store ships and six convict ships – left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787. Just over two weeks later, on 3 June, it anchored in the harbour of Santa Cruz, the main town of Tenerife. It was from here that Phillip replied to the letter Banks had sent him at Portsmouth. In it Banks had asked him to collect specific plants and seeds from Rio de Janeiro. Phillip sent his letter of agreement in a packet ship that was returning to London.

From Rio de Janeiro, Phillip wrote to Banks that he had managed to get hold of four different types of ipecacuanha. Known in Europe since the middle of the seventeenth century as native to Brazil, ipecacuanha featured as an important element in European materia medica.[12] It was the root of this flowering plant that, when dried and ground into a powder, was used to treat a number of medical conditions. In small doses, ipecacuanha encouraged sweating and coughing; in larger doses, the plant acted as an emetic and cathartic and was used to treat forms of dysentery.[13]

Getting hold of the dried roots of ipecacuanha in Britain was not a problem and it featured in the apothecary’s list of remedies. However, Banks was interested in seeing the whole plant which was, as he must have told Phillip, hardly known in Europe.[14] He sent Banks preserved in rum one of the specimens, which Phillip had been led to believe by a local surgeon to be the best.

In Rio de Janeiro Phillip loaded up with those plants that Banks had been unable to supply him with in London. Many of them were tropical – indigo, cotton, coffee, bananas, tamarind and cacao – (Banks believed that the climate of Botany Bay was similar to that of southern France), but he managed to get some vines and tobacco as well. He also took three ipecacuanha plants potted in earth for cultivation in Botany Bay. In addition to these plants, ‘I have procured every Seed I think likely to grow in NSW,’ he told Banks. Now back in Rio de Janeiro after more than a decade, Phillip did not forget his experience with cochineal when he had successfully reared the insects in his cabin. If only he could keep them alive en route to New South Wales, he thought that they might thrive in their new habitat.[15]

Cape Town was the next destination, which the fleet reached on 13 October 1787. There to welcome Phillip was Francis Masson, Kew’s first dedicated collector, who was collecting for Banks in the Cape, on his second trip there in fifteen years. Phillip loaded his ship with local plants – figs, sugar, apples, oranges and lemons – flour, wheat, barley and bread.[16] On 13 November, the day after the Fleet’s departure, Masson wrote to Banks saying that he had seen Phillip and that his ‘Cabbin was like a Small Green House with plants from Brazil’.[17] Phillip also wrote to Banks assuring him, not for the first time, that he would be sending him seeds and plants from New South Wales.[18]

The ships, each ‘like another Noah’s Ark’, left Cape Town on 11 November.[19] Botany Bay was the fleet’s next and final destination.

Carrying in the region of 1300 people between them, the ships of the First Fleet arrived there between 18 and 20 January 1788. The cold of the southern ocean, disease and accidents had killed off many plants, though some of those that had been put on board at Rio de Janeiro not only survived but began to bloom as the ships approached warmer habitats.[20]

Almost immediately, Phillip decided that it was a mistake to attempt a settlement in Botany Bay: the area was very swampy and there was hardly any fresh water. After quickly investigating Port Jackson, the next bay northward along the coast, which Cook had seen but had not entered, and finding it would meet all of their requirements, Phillip ordered the fleet to remove from Botany Bay and harbour in Sydney Cove. Here, on 26 January 1788, Phillip formally took possession of New South Wales, which was defined as ‘extending from the northern cape or extremity of the coast called Cape York, in the latitude of 10°37’ south, to the southern extremity of the … South Cape, in the latitude of 43°39’ south, and all of the country inland to the westward as far as the one hundred and thirty–fifth degree of longitude’.[21]

On 15 May, Phillip wrote his first despatch to Lord Sydney, in which he recounted his proceedings from the Cape to the Australian coast and explained why he had decamped from Botany Bay. He also sent his first observations of the country around the new settlement; and of the indigenous people. This report, Phillip remarked, was put together over a period of time. He didn’t know when he would get a chance to write such a long letter again, seeing, as he put it, that ‘the canvas house I am under [is] neither wind nor water proof.’[22]

Two months later, on 2 July 1788, Phillip wrote his first letter from New South Wales to Banks. The information about Botany Bay was completely at odds with what Banks had given in evidence to both the Bunbury and the Beauchamp Committees. Phillip didn’t bother going into any detail about why he had abandoned Botany Bay so quickly – he referred him to Evan Nepean, the under-secretary to Lord Sydney, the Home Secretary, for the reasons.

What he wanted Banks to know was that life was not going to be as easy in the settlement as Banks had suggested; that the ‘natives’ were far more numerous and not as welcoming as Banks had found them – three convicts had already been killed; and that food, particularly fish, was not as abundant as Banks had thought. The indigenous people, Phillip added, were having a hard time and there was little he could do to help them.

On the plus side, however, Phillip could now send Banks the first consignment of seeds; and he also threw in a stuffed kangaroo and reported that ‘these Animals are very numerous, but after being fired at grow very shy’.[23]

Though Phillip’s first duty was to the settlement, he did as much as he could to collect seeds and plants for Banks. He knew that this had to be done before the convict ships and the transports left Port Jackson for London. The first ships began to leave in May 1788, but Phillip had nothing for Banks by then and it would take him until the last ships sailed, the convict ship Alexander and the store ships Fishburn and Golden Grove, in November, before the collections were ready. What exactly was sent is not known but some of the ‘Tubs of Plants’ and seeds must have made it because several were introduced into Kew around the time that the ships returned – the consignment included several species of Banksia, orchids and a ‘Kangaroo vine’.[24]

It shows how indebted Phillip felt to Banks that he tried so hard to get him the botanical specimens he’d asked for. Conditions were not good in the fledgling colony. While quite a few of the plants Phillip had brought from Rio de Janeiro and the Cape – including the cochineal insect on its prickly pear cactus – were doing well, these were what Phillip referred to as the luxuries; the basics, especially wheat, were doing very poorly. Added to that, most of the cattle that Phillip had bought at the Cape had not survived or had wandered off into the bush. In his despatches to Lord Sydney and Evan Nepean at the Home Office, and Philip Stephens at the Admiralty, Phillip pleaded that the next convict ships should bring provisions, food, clothing and medicines that would last at least two years.[25]

In the meantime, the colony was facing starvation. To save it, Phillip sent HMS Sirius to Cape Town for vital supplies. The ship left in early October 1788. Because of the winds at that time of the year, it had to go by way of Cape Horn. It didn’t reach Cape Town until 2 January 1789. After filling its hold with enough supplies for a whole year, the Sirius arrived back in New South Wales on 8 May 1789.[26] The ship’s supplies were only just in time to avert disaster.

By then, in London, the Second Fleet, taking more convicts and supplies to New South Wales, was preparing, and Sydney had received Phillip’s letter begging him for more supplies.[27] He wrote to the Admiralty formally instructing that they should get a naval ship ready to sail to New South Wales, though it is clear that, informally, the preparations were already under way.[28]

The ship in question, HMS Guardian, was virtually new, having been no further than the Channel since 1784, when it was completed. Most of the guns were removed in order to make more room for supplies. The 26-year-old Lieutenant Edward Riou received his commission to command the ship on 21 April 1789.[29]

Riou had been a midshipman in 1776 on HMS Discovery, one of two ships on Cook’s third voyage. When the ship returned from its intensive exploration of the Pacific in October 1780, Riou was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. For the next several years he was stationed in the West Indies, in the Channel and, finally, for two years, he was in Newfoundland as second lieutenant to Captain Erasmus Gower (who will crop up again in a later chapter).

Riou thus had experience in the world’s main oceans and though he had not landed in Australia, he came very nearly in sight of Van Diemen’s Land, having sailed across the Southern Ocean from the Cape towards New Zealand.

Within days of Riou’s commission, Banks was involved in preparing the voyage. It seems that Banks saw the Guardian as a suitable vehicle for sending new and interesting plants back from New South Wales for Kew. Banks wrote to Nepean at the Home Office on this exact point less than a week after Riou’s commission. Banks suggested that the area at the stern of the ship bounded by a rail – the taffrail – could be adapted as a storage unit for plants in pots and should be glazed over.[30]

At some point in the next few weeks, plans for the Guardian began to change quite radically. Collecting for Kew in New South Wales remained an objective, but the scope of the ship as a plant carrier was substantially increased. Banks had been in conversation with William Grenville, the new Home Secretary, who had succeeded Lord Sydney, as well as other members of the government and the Admiralty. The upshot of these meetings was the decision that the Guardian should now take to New South Wales ‘such trees and plants as are useful in food or physic, and cannot conveniently be propagated by seed in potts of earth’.[31]

The original idea of using the taffrail was now defunct. A much larger space was needed. On Lieutenant Riou’s invitation, Banks visited the Guardian and had a look.[32] Riou had intended to be there to show Banks around, but, for some reason, the two men missed each other.[33]

Banks began his inspection with the commander’s cabin. It was far too small for what Banks intended; and the volume of supplies the ship was intending to carry meant that there was little spare room below deck. Botanists like John Ellis in Britain and Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau in France had recommended that the best method for transporting living plants across oceans was for them to be packed in organic matter, such as moss and earth, and placed in specially designed containers which would allow air to circulate and which could be moved around the ship to take advantage of the best conditions.[34]

This method worked well for small numbers of plants but the volume that Banks envisioned being moved meant that this time-honoured technique wasn’t appropriate. He needed a radically new solution and he had one in mind. As he told Grenville, he, with the assistance of the ship’s master and a shipbuilder, ‘caused the form of a small coach to be chalked upon the deck in such a manner as they both agreed would not be at all in the way of working the ship’.[35] Coach was the technical term for such a construction but Banks liked to call it an apartment because it was his intention that it would also house a gardener and his equipment. Its dimensions were 16 feet by 12 feet and 5 feet high, and it could be constructed, Banks stated confidently, in little more than one week.[36] It would house 93 pots of plants. Flexibility was built into the design of the coach so that it could respond easily to changing conditions. It had sliding shutters and a canvas cover to be used when the weather was fine but direct sunlight was to be avoided. In cold weather, glazed units in fitted frames took the place of the open gratings and a stove with chimney was provided for even colder weather.[37] Banks knew a lot about greenhouses – he saw them at Kew and he had several of them in his own property at Spring Grove.[38]

On the day he completed his inspection of the ship, Banks left a letter on board for Riou seeking his agreement to the idea of a coach so that an order for construction could be submitted. In addition to laying out the coach’s dimensions and the materials from which it would be made, Banks emphasised that the coach would also serve as a home for the plants Riou would be bringing back from New South Wales for the King.[39]

By return of post, Riou, not surprisingly, agreed to Banks’s plans, both to the construction of the coach and to returning home with plants from New South Wales.[40]

Once that was done, Banks turned his attention to the gardeners who would accompany the plants. James Smith and George Austin had worked at Kew, were experienced and up to the task. They would be going to New South Wales as Superintendent of Convicts, in which capacity they would be supervising convicts in gardening and agricultural work in general with the ultimate aim of passing on their specific expertise to the colony.[41] Smith was going to stay on in New South Wales for three years and would be collecting seeds and plants for Kew whenever he could.[42]

Banks issued two sets of instructions concerning the transport of plants and the duties of the gardeners. The first, to Lieutenant Riou, outlining what he would need to do to accommodate the responsibilities of the gardeners and the health of the plants, both on the outward and return voyages. James Smith, Banks told Riou, was to be given overall charge of the coach and that was where he should live, ready, at a moment’s notice, to open or close windows as necessary; and Riou was to give every possible assistance to Smith in collecting rain water whenever possible on the understanding that in hot conditions, the plants would need plenty of watering. Riou was also told to choose one of the ship’s company to shadow Smith, and to learn from him how to care for plants so that he would become the gardener on the homeward voyage looking after the plants for the King, which would be stowed in the coach in the same manner as the plants on the outward voyage.[43]

The instructions to Smith dealt with the details of how best to keep plants healthy on their outward voyage; how much air and water to allow them and when; how to collect, keep and apportion water; and how to avoid, and to do so at all costs, sea water settling on the plants’ leaves, a situation, which if not remedied immediately, would lead to the plant’s death. As for the coach, Banks continued, ‘plants on board a Ship, like cucumbers in February, require a constant attendance’. Circumstances at sea changed often and abruptly and the gardener had to be prepared to open and shut the coach several times a day. In order to keep a watchful eye and act quickly and decisively, Banks warned him to ‘beware of Liquer, as one drunken bout may render the whole of your Care during the Course of the voyage useless & Put your Character in a very Questionable situation’.[44] Finally, as far as the voyage was concerned, Smith was to be constantly vigilant that shipboard animals – cats, dogs, mice and rats – and cockroaches did not get into the coach. Cat and dogs, Banks commented, could ‘destroy the whole garden in half an hour’. Vermin, like mice and cockroaches, could be dealt with by keeping the coach perfectly clean. As for monkeys and goats, Banks hoped these would not be allowed on board at all.[45]