57 Facts About Joseph Banks

1.

Joseph Banks took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage, visiting Brazil, Tahiti, and after 6 months in New Zealand, Australia, returning to immediate fame.

2.

Joseph Banks held the position of president of the Royal Society for over 41 years.

3.

Joseph Banks advised King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and by sending botanists around the world to collect plants, he made Kew the world's leading botanical garden.

4.

Joseph Banks is credited for bringing 30,000 plant specimens home with him; amongst them, he was the first European to document 1,400.

5.

Joseph Banks advocated British settlement in New South Wales and the colonisation of Australia, as well as the establishment of Botany Bay as a place for the reception of convicts, and advised the British government on all Australian matters.

6.

Joseph Banks is credited with introducing the eucalyptus, acacia, and the genus named after him, Banksia, to the Western world.

7.

Joseph Banks was the leading founder of the African Association and a member of the Society of Dilettanti, which helped to establish the Royal Academy.

8.

Joseph Banks was born in Argyll Street, Soho, London, the son of William Joseph Banks, a wealthy Lincolnshire country squire and member of the House of Commons, and his wife Sarah, daughter of William Bate.

9.

Joseph Banks had a younger sister, Sarah Sophia Banks, born in 1744.

10.

Joseph Banks was educated at Harrow School from the age of nine and then at Eton College from 1756; the boys with whom he attended the school included his future shipmate Constantine Phipps.

11.

Joseph Banks continued to attend the university until 1764, but left that year without taking a degree.

12.

Joseph Banks's father had died in 1761, so when Banks reached the age of 21, he inherited the large estate of Revesby Abbey, in Lincolnshire, becoming the local squire and magistrate, and dividing his time between Lincolnshire and London.

13.

Joseph Banks began to make friends among the scientific men of his day and to correspond with Carl Linnaeus, whom he came to know through Solander.

14.

Joseph Banks made his name by publishing the first Linnean descriptions of the plants and animals of Newfoundland and Labrador.

15.

Joseph Banks documented 34 species of birds, including the great auk, which became extinct in 1844.

16.

Joseph Banks funded eight others to join him: the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander, the Finnish naturalist Herman Sporing, artists Sydney Parkinson and Alexander Buchan, and four servants from his estate: James Roberts, Peter Briscoe, Thomas Richmond, and George Dorlton.

17.

Joseph Banks was the godfather of Brand's grandson Christoffel Brand.

18.

The voyage went to Brazil, where Joseph Banks made the first scientific description of a now common garden plant, Bougainvillea, and to other parts of South America.

19.

Joseph Banks kept in touch with most of the scientists of his time, was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1773, and added a fresh interest when he was elected to the Dilettante Society in 1774.

20.

Joseph Banks was afterwards secretary of this society from 1778 to 1797.

21.

Joseph Banks had as librarian and curator of his collections Solander, Jonas Carlsson Dryander, and Robert Brown in succession.

22.

Also in 1779, Joseph Banks took a lease on an estate called Spring Grove, the former residence of Elisha Biscoe, which he eventually bought outright from Biscoe's son, Elisha, in 1808.

23.

Joseph Banks spent much time and effort on this secondary home.

24.

Joseph Banks steadily created a renowned botanical masterpiece on the estate, achieved primarily with many of the great variety of foreign plants he had collected on his extensive travels around the world, particularly to Australia and the South Seas.

25.

Joseph Banks was made a baronet in 1781, three years after being elected president of the Royal Society.

26.

Joseph Banks dispatched explorers and botanists to many parts of the world, and through these efforts, Kew Gardens became arguably the pre-eminent botanical gardens in the world, with many species being introduced to Europe through them and through Chelsea Physic Garden and their head gardener John Fairbairn.

27.

Joseph Banks directly fostered several famous voyages, including that of George Vancouver to the northeastern Pacific, and William Bligh's voyages to transplant breadfruit from the South Pacific to the Caribbean islands.

28.

Joseph Banks was a major financial supporter of William Smith in his decade-long efforts to create a geological map of England, the first geological map of an entire country.

29.

Joseph Banks chose Allan Cunningham for voyages to Brazil and the north and northwest coasts of Australia to collect specimens.

30.

Joseph Banks was to be the greatest proponent of settlement in New South Wales.

31.

In 1779, Joseph Banks, giving evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, had stated that in his opinion the place most eligible for the reception of convicts "was Botany Bay, on the coast of New Holland", on the general grounds that, "it was not to be doubted that a Tract of Land such as New Holland, which was larger than the whole of Europe, would furnish Matter of advantageous Return".

32.

Joseph Banks was continually called on for help in developing the agriculture and trade of the colony, and his influence was used in connection with the sending out of early free settlers, one of whom, a young gardener George Suttor, later wrote a memoir of Banks.

33.

Joseph Banks produced a significant body of papers, including one of the earliest Aboriginal Australian words lists compiled by a European.

34.

Joseph Banks followed the explorations of Matthew Flinders, George Bass, and Lieutenant James Grant, and among his paid helpers were George Caley, Robert Brown, and Allan Cunningham.

35.

However, Joseph Banks backed William Bligh to be installed as the new governor of New South Wales and to crack down on the New South Wales Corps, which made a fortune on the trading of rum.

36.

Joseph Banks was humiliated that Macarthur and Johnston were acquitted from all charges in London and both later returned to Sydney.

37.

Joseph Banks met the young Alexander von Humboldt in 1790, when Joseph Banks was already the president of the Royal Society.

38.

Joseph Banks was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1787 and a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1788.

39.

Joseph Banks worked with Sir George Staunton in producing the official account of the British mission to the Chinese Imperial court.

40.

Joseph Banks was responsible for selecting and arranging engraving of the illustrations in this official record.

41.

Joseph Banks was invested as a Knight of the Order of the Bath on 1 July 1795, which became Knight Grand Cross when the order was restructured in 1815.

42.

Joseph Banks was a large landowner and activist encloser, drainer and 'improver' in Fens at Revesby.

43.

Joseph Banks's health began to fail early in the 19th century and he suffered from gout every winter.

44.

Joseph Banks had been a member of the Society of Antiquaries nearly all his life, and he developed an interest in archaeology in his later years.

45.

In 1807, William Kerr named the Lady Joseph Banks climbing rose after Joseph Banks's wife.

46.

Joseph Banks was made an honorary founding member of the Wernerian Natural History Society of Edinburgh in 1808.

47.

Joseph Banks had sailed with James Cook 50 years earlier and supplied the Russians with books and charts for their expedition.

48.

Joseph Banks died on 19 June 1820 in Spring Grove House, Isleworth, London, and was buried at St Leonard's Church, Heston.

49.

Joseph Banks was a major supporter of the internationalist nature of science, being actively involved both in keeping open the lines of communication with continental scientists during the Napoleonic Wars, and in introducing the British people to the wonders of the wider world.

50.

Joseph Banks was honoured with many place names in the South Pacific: Banks Peninsula on the South Island, New Zealand; the Banks Islands in modern-day Vanuatu; the Banks Strait between Tasmania and the Furneaux Islands; Banks Island in the Northwest Territories, Canada; and the Sir Joseph Banks Group in South Australia.

51.

An image of Joseph Banks was featured on the paper $5 Australian banknote from its introduction in 1967 before it was replaced by the later polymer currency.

52.

In 1986, Joseph Banks was honoured by his portrait being depicted on a postage stamp issued by Australia Post.

53.

In Lincoln, England, the Sir Joseph Banks Conservatory was constructed in 1989 at The Lawn, Lincoln; its tropical hot house had numerous plants related to Banks's voyages, with samples from across the world, including Australia.

54.

Joseph Banks's portrait, painted in 1814 by Thomas Phillips, was commissioned by the Corporation of Boston, as a tribute to one whose 'judicious and active exertions improved and enriched this borough and neighbourhood'.

55.

The Sir Joseph Banks Centre is located in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, housed in a Grade II listed building, which was recently restored by the Heritage Trust of Lincolnshire to celebrate Banks' life.

56.

Joseph Banks appears in the historical novel Mutiny on the Bounty, by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall.

57.

Joseph Banks is featured in Elizabeth Gilbert's 2013 best-selling novel, The Signature of All Things, and is a major character in Martin Davies' 2005 novel The Conjuror's Bird.