Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
heavy that hoisting a single sail threatened to turn her right over. She
was returned to her dock and work began immediately on stripping
away her extra deck and cabins. Banks was furious. He performed an
enraged war dance on the quayside. He wrote angrily to Lord Sand-
wich. He questioned Cook's competence. He withdrew himself and
his staff from the venture. If he thought that the Admiralty would go
down on their knees to beg him to reconsider, he miscalculated. The
scientific posts on the expedition were offered to others. And Banks
went off on a hastily-planned visit to Iceland to salve his bruised
pride.
Before many weeks at sea, Cook may well have wished that
Banks was back aboard the
Resolution,
baggage and all. For the man
who replaced him as naturalist soon proved to be an exceedingly
troublesome travelling companion. He was John Reinhold Forster,
whom we have met briefly already as the translator of Bougainville's
journal. Forster was an impecunious scholar who, despite his un-
doubted abilities, which earned him, among other things, the pat-
ronage of Alexander Dalrymple and a fellowship of the Royal Society,
never quite achieved that position in the academic world which he
believed was his due. One reason was his inability to make himself
agreeable to people who mattered. Indeed, he found it difficult to
make himself agreeable to anybody. He was over-sensitive, censori-
ous and argumentative. He was employed, and assisted by his tal-
ented son George, to study the flora and fauna of all seas and lands
visited and to contribute to an account of the voyage which would
be written on the
Resolution
's return. The Forsters did their job well
but the father managed to upset almost every single person aboard
the flagship and, after his return, became involved in a bitter argu-
ment about the writing of the official account which eventually ob-
liged Cook to undertake the task singlehanded.
However, all that lay in the future when the two ex-colliers
slipped out of Plymouth on a morning tide in the middle of the hot
