Summary of Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Joseph Banks, official botanist to HM Bark Endeavour, first clapped eyes on the island of Tahiti, 17 degrees South, 149 degrees West. He had been told that this was the location of Paradise: a wonderful idea, although he did not quite believe it.

#2 When the British landed on King George the Third’s Island, they were met by some hundreds of the inhabitants, who gave them a green bough as a sign of peace. They then set up camp.

#3 The first European ship to land in Tahiti was the HMS Endeavour, commanded by Lieutenant James Cook. He was very skeptical about the island’s reputation as a sexual paradise, and had every member of his crew examined for venereal infections four weeks before landing.

#4 The Endeavour expedition was sent to Tahiti to observe a Transit of Venus across the face of the sun. The solar parallax depended on observing the exact timing at which the silhouette of Venus first entered, and then exited from, the sun’s disc.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822517691

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Insights on Richard Holmes's The Age of Wonder

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Joseph Banks, official botanist to HM Bark Endeavour, first clapped eyes on the island of Tahiti, 17 degrees South, 149 degrees West. He had been told that this was the location of Paradise: a wonderful idea, although he did not quite believe it.

#2

When the British landed on King George the Third’s Island, they were met by some hundreds of the inhabitants, who gave them a green bough as a sign of peace. They then set up camp.

#3

The first European ship to land in Tahiti was the HMS Endeavour, commanded by Lieutenant James Cook. He was very skeptical about the island’s reputation as a sexual paradise, and had every member of his crew examined for venereal infections four weeks before landing.

#4

The Endeavour expedition was sent to Tahiti to observe a Transit of Venus across the face of the sun. The solar parallax depended on observing the exact timing at which the silhouette of Venus first entered, and then exited from, the sun’s disc.

#5

Banks and Cook were a strange pair, but they formed a surprisingly effective team. They were divided by background, education, class, and manners, but they still managed to gather a mass of plant and animal specimens and make an early anthropological study of Tahitian customs.

#6

Banks was a naturalist, and he began collecting rare plants, wildflowers, herbs, shells, stones, animals, insects, fish, and fossils. He converted to botany at the age of fourteen, and his destiny was to be a naturalist.

#7

The first scientific protégé of James Banks was Israel Lyons, who taught him botany at Oxford. He then recommended him to an Admiralty expedition.

#8

The Royal Society organized the expedition to explore the southern hemisphere. It had four main objectives: observing the Transit of Venus on Tahiti, charting and exploring the Polynesian islands west of Cape Horn, exploring the landmasses between the 30th and 40th parallels, and collecting botanical and zoological specimens.

#9

The imperial instructions were not really so secret. Both Banks and Solander knew about them before departure, and even Linnaeus was informed. However, neither Banks nor Cook believed in the mysterious southern continent.

#10

Banks was very careful about marriage, and rarely brought lifelong happiness. He was also very careful about dangers, and loved excelling in his favorite studies.

#11

The first death on the voyage was the result of an accident with an anchor chain in Madeira. The next two deaths occurred on land, and involved Banks. He had been leading a field expedition in Tierra del Fuego when a sudden blizzard cut off their retreat to the ship.

#12

The third death was a suicide in the Pacific. The initial days on Tahiti were exciting, but curiously tense. There was the unfortunate shooting in the first week, and the scare over the quadrant in the third.

#13

The Europeans had a completely different view on theft, which was a violation of legal ownership and private property. To the Tahitians, it was a way to balance their poverty against overwhelming European superfluity.

#14

The crew of the Endeavour spent a lot of time bargaining for sex. They used any sort of usable metal object as currency, and the rate soon hyper-inflated. The Tahitians well understood a market economy.

#15

Banks’s skill with language allowed him to become the chief trading officer for the Endeavour. He established himself in a canoe drawn up on the shore outside Fort Venus every morning, and would negotiate for food and supplies.

#16

From May 1769, Banks’s journal entries became more and more anthropological. He was becoming an ethnographer, a human investigator, more and more sympathetically involved with another community.

#17

The Transit of Venus, on 3 June 1769, provided a good opportunity for Banks’s new approach. He set up three astronomical observation points to insure against the possible interference of localised cloud cover. He left the telescopes, and waited down by the beach with the king of the island, Tarróa, and his sister Nuna.

#18

Banks’s friend Terapo, a woman, was constantly crying and bleeding. She would not explain why, and instead began collecting pieces of cloth that had fallen during her bleeding. She threw them into the sea, as if wanting no one to be reminded of her action.

#19

The expedition went to explore the western end of the bay, and to bargain for some wild pigs rumored to be held by the local chieftain, Dootah. When they were benighted in Dootah’s village, Banks’s clothes were stolen.

#20

The Tahitians had developed surfboards, which they used for their Paradise sport. They were scornful of all danger, and exultant in their physical skills. They did it for the sheer delight of the thing.

#21

By mid-June, Banks was ready to abandon European inhibitions, including his