John Philip Holland and Liscannor, Co. Clare

The town of Liscannor, Co. Clare is the birthplace of John Philip Holland, the Irishman who invented the modern submarine. More on JPH in this previous post.

On a recent visit to Liscannor it was possible to view at least three plaques in the town in honour of the famous scientist and engineer:

One near the church:

One on the main street:

and one marking his birthplace on Holland Street (formerly Castle Street):

There's also a JPH display at the spectacular Cliffs of Moher visitor centre featuring a model of one of his creations:

As if that wasn't enough, the town will unveil a further memorial (pictured below, under construction) on August 31st to mark 100 years since his John Philip Holland's death.

Possibly the most densely commemorated scientist in Ireland, and deservedly so!

The Waterford Mortar

A recent trip to Waterford led to a visit to the excellent new Medieval Museum and Bishop's Palace museum. Together with Reginald's Tower they form a trio of sites which form Waterford's Museum of Treasures.

The Medieval Museum in particular is a stunning addition to the city's tourism offering and must rank as one of the best and most sensitively designed building in Ireland in recent years.

One object that caught my eye in the Bishop's Palace museum is this  bronze mortar used by a Waterford chemist to make up remedies. The mortar would have had an accompanying wooden pestle. Inscribed Michael Tonnery, Apothecary in Waterford 1707, the object was still in use in the 20th century in White's chemists, O'Connell Street.

The object was purchased by the museum with the assistance of Bausch and Lomb.

The Museum(s) of Treasures are certainly worth a visit if you're in Waterford. In particular, the Medieval Museum houses a set of pre-reformation vestments (the only to survive in Britain or Ireland) which are stunning examples of fifteenth century needlework.

"She looks beneath the shadow of my wings"

This plaque in Skibbereen, in West Cork marks the birthplace of the sisters Ellen and Agnes Clerke, both noted writers, particularly on the science of astronomy.

Living together in Skibbereen, Italy and London for most of their lives, the women pursued a common interest in science and, in particular, in the communication and popularisation of the subject.

Ellen was born on 20th of September 1840 in Skibbereen and Agnes was born on February 10th 1842. Their father was a bank manager in the town and a Protestant. Their mother was Catherine Deasy, a Catholic.

Although the family moved to Dublin in 1861 and to Queenstown (Cobh) in 1863, the sisters spent much of their childhood in West Cork. Due to their father's wealth and stature, the family was able to spend the cold winters in Rome (1867 and 68); Naples (1871 and 1872); Florence (1873-76). The sisters made the most of these trips abroad - spending many days reading in the Florence Public Library.

Agnes Mary Clerke (left) and Ellen Mary Clerke

The sisters only brother Aubrey noted the defining influence of their father, John William Clerke, on the scientific aptitude of the sisters:

"Although a classical scholar of Trinity College, Dublin", wrote Aubrey Clerke in 1907,"his interests were for the most part scientific".

"In our earliest years his recreation was chemistry, the consequential odours of which used to excite the wrath of our Irish servants. Later a 'big telescope' (4 inch aperture)was mounted in the garden, and we children were occasionally treated to a glimpse of Saturn's rings or Jupiter's satellites".

"These trivial things show that it was in an environment of scientific suggestion that our early lives were passed", wrote Aubrey Clerke in a foreword to a booklet recalling his sisters' lives.

The Clerke family home in Skibbereen

The family moved to London in 1877 and Agnes published the A Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century in 1885. Her second book The System of the Stars was published in 1890.

Agnes Clerke was not a practicing astronomer and her contribution to the field is largely based on her tireless collation and interpretation of data from other researchers and the communication of that research. She could, perhaps, be best described as a science communicator, using today's vernacular.

Despite not working as an astronomer herself, she had, of necessity a vast knowledge of the area and spent a three month period in 1888 at the Cape Observatory (Cape Town) updating her knowledge.

Clerke Crater on the lunar surface

Agnes Clerke was a recipient, in 1893, of the Actonian Prize from the Royal Institution in London. This award was presented to the person who "in the judgement of the committee of managers for the time being of the Institution, should have been the author of the best essay illustrative of the wisdom and beneficence of the Almighty, in such department of science as the committee of managers should, in their discretion, have selected".

A member of the British Astronomical Association, Agnes was also an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Ellen Clerke is also known for some astronomical writings including the pamphlets "Jupiter and His System" and "The Planet Venus" but she was also known as a journalist, poet, novelist and commentator on religious issues, with a keen interest in Italian matters having lived in the country for several years.

Ellen's poem Night's Soliloquy, beautifully captures her and her sister's love of astronomy.

Agnes has the distinction of having a crater on the surface of the moon named in her honour. Crater Clerke is about 6 km in diameter and located very close to the Apollo 17 landing site - the last landing of humans on the lunar surface.

Ellen died after a short illness on March 2nd 1906. Huggins notes that "these sisters were lovely and pleasant in their lives and in death they were but little divided". Agnes died on January 20th 1907 from complications associated with pneumonia.

Tyndall and Albemarle Street

News that the Royal Institution's magnificent headquarters in Mayfair, London may be placed on the market have caused somewhat of a divide amongst scientists.

While an editorial in the journal Nature called the RI itself "redundant" and argued for its collection of historic equipment and other resources to be bundled off to the Science Museum, other commentators, including Prof. Bruce Hood have argued, convincingly, for the institution to remain and to remain at its Mayfair location.

Hood argued in the Huffington Post that the Faraday lecture theatre at the RI has become the "iconic home of British science" and a "sacred site".

"[It is] a place that trancends a financial value, a cultural heritage that belongs to the world as much as Stonehenge" writes Hood.

Supporters rightly point to Michael Faraday, a physicist who pioneered the notion that science (and scientists) have a duty to communicate their work to a general audience. It was Faraday who began the famous RI Christmas Lectures in 1825 - they have been broadcast on TV since 1966.

Also worthy of mention here is the noted Irish-born scientist John Tyndall, who succeeded Faraday as Director of the Royal Institution in 1867.Tyndall was born in County Carlow in 1820 and studied in Britain and Germany, making significant contributions to a variety of fields including magnetism, heat and atmospherics. However, like Faraday, one of his great contributions was in science communication.

 Having joined the RI originally in 1853 (he was unsuccessful in applying for jobs at Galway, Cork and elsewhere), Tyndall delivered the RI Christmas lectures 12 times, from 1861 to 1884 and, like Faraday, was conscious of the need for science to be communicated to the public. He had developed his style of lecturing as a schoolteacher and in later years, according to Meadows, found that a drink before lectures improved his performance.

In a preface to the third edition of his book Heat: A Mode of Motion, Tyndall noted that his work on public lectures allowed him an opportunity to acquaint himself with the "knowledge and needs of England".

Tyndall and his contemporaries "deprecated and deplored the utter want of scientific knowledge, and the utter absence of sympathy with scientific studies, which mark the great bulk of our otherwise cultivated English public".

He was convinced that "if a scientific man take the trouble, which in my case is immense, of thinking and writing with life and clearness, he is sure to gain general attention. It can hardly be doubted, if fostered and strengthened in this way, that the desire for scientific knowledge will ultimately coerce the anomalies which beset our present system of education".

John Tyndall

"Science must grow", concluded Tyndall. "Its development is as necessary and as irresistible as the motion of the tides, or the flowing of the Gulf Stream. It is a phase of the energy of Nature, and as such is sure, in due time, to compel the recognition, if not to win the alliance, of those who now decry its influence and discourage its advance".

While it is not my place to tell the British scientific community what to do, Prof. Hood is correct in pointing out that the RI building is not just an important site for British science, it is of worldwide significance and would ideally be maintained for its current purpose. Would the worldwide art community permit the French government to sell off the Louvre or the British government to put the National Gallery up for sale?

In a recent letter to The Times of London, David Attenborough, along with 21 scientists wrote that "If Britain loses the Royal Institution, it loses a part of its past. This institution, with its iconic lecture room where almost all the Christmas lectures have been delivered, is just as precious as any ancient palace or famous painting".

"This must not happen in a country that cares about culture, and least of all in one that pins its hopes for future prosperity on a new generation of scientists and engineers."

There is something to be said about public engagement with science being more than just about bricks and mortar. Hands-on experimentation and web-based interaction are all tremendous leaps forward that, I'm sure, Faraday and Tyndall would have approved of. However, they do not replace a rich cultural heritage of science and scientific communication that is represented by the RI building at Albemarle Street, which is of enormous value besides its monetary one.

You can sign a petition to save 21 Albemarle Street as the home of the Royal Institution here.

The Forgotten Botanical Gardens

On the south side of Cork City, between Turners Cross football stadium and Munster Rugby's Musgrave Park, lies the remnants of the southern city's long lost botanical garden.

It's so long ago since the site was used as a botanical gardens and the duration of its existence so short, that the memory of it is almost gone from the public consciousness.

To find the site today, you need to look for Saint Joseph's Cemetery. Once the short-lived gardens were closed, the site became one of the largest public cemeteries  in the city.

The Cork Botanical Gardens were established in 1808 by the Royal Cork Institution, which itself had been founded in 1803. The RCI had a huge influence on educational matters in Cork, supportive of the establishment of Queen's College Cork (now UCC) and the institution itself was a forerunner of Cork Institute of Technology. The gardens were themselves just one element of the RCI's plan to promote scientific and cultural matters in Cork.

James Drummond with one of his grandchildren

The Scottish botanist James Drummond (1786-1863) was chosen to curate the new gardens and he continued to do so until its closure, due to lack of funds, in 1828. Drummond was just 22 when he arrived in Cork from Scotland. On the closure of the park, Drummond, his wife (Sarah Maxwell Mackintosh) and six children travelled to the Swan River Colony (Western Australia) where he took up various roles as Government Naturalist, farmer, and plant collector. A hill and nature reserve in Australia, as well as over 100 plants have been named in his honour. A memorial to Drummond stands in Pelham Reserve, overlooking the family farm at Toodyay, Western Australia.

Drummond's father, Thomas, was a noted bryologist (collector of mosses) in Scotland and his grandfather, also Thomas, was a gardener.

Pinguicula grandiflora

The gardens in Cork had their beginnings when the RCI leased the 5.5 acre site at 'Lilliput', Ballyphehane in 1807. Once Drummond arrived in 1808, he laid out the site with a walled enclosure of about 1-acre at its centre with a glasshouse. As well as his work in the gardens, Drummond botanised widely across the Co. Cork and was elected an associate of the Linnean Society in 1810. He discovered Spiranthes gemmipara near Castletown Berehaven in 1810 and the insectivorous  Pinguicula grandiflora at Macroom in 1809.

Hogan's reclining angel atop the Murphy tomb. The inner wall of the cemetery and botanical gardens is visible in the background.

Once government funding was withdrawn, the garden became untenable and Fr. Theobald Mathew, the 'Apostle of Temperence' purchased the site for use as a public cemetery for Cork's poor. An 1837 description in A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland says the botanical garden/graveyard was "in the style of the Pere la Chaise, at Paris: the graves are distributed over the greater part amid the shrubs, plants, and flowers brought hither at a very great expense by the original proprietors; the ground is intersected by broad gravel walks, and there are several handsome monuments. Among these, one of the most remarkable is that erected over a vault belonging to Messrs. Murphy and O'Connor: it consists of a sarcophagus of Portland stone resting on a base of limestone. On the sarcophagus is the figure of a mourning angel, as large as life, of white Italian marble, wrought in Rome by Mr. John Hogan, a native of Cork". Fr. Mathew was buried at the centre of his own cemetery in 1856.

Grave of Fr. Theobald Mathew

For many years after the closure of the gardens and the opening of the cemetery, it was common for the place to be referred to as the 'Botanic Gardens Cemetery'. A death notice in the Cork Examiner on 31st October 1898 concludes: "Funeral from the South Parish Chapel for the Botanic Gardens on Tuesday (Nov. 1st), at 3 o'clock. R.I.P."

Now, all that remains of the gardens is the inner stone wall which once housed Drummond's glasshouse and which is now crowded with headstones and monuments. No significant planting remains. The street opposite the main gates to the cemetery is still however called Botanic Road. Unfortunately, nothing else marks the site of Cork's first Botanic Garden. Although further public and private botanic gardens were to be established, including that associated with University College Cork, this site at Ballyphehane has a unique place in the cultural and scientific heritage of the City. A place which has been all but forgotten by the general public.

The site should be marked with a suitable and modest marker to celebrate the vision of the Royal Cork Institution and the hard work of James Drummond.

Boole's House: Problem hasn't gone away

The Evening Echo reports that after two and a half long years, the repair works to Grenville Place in Cork City are finally complete.

The quay wall was partially demolished here during the flooding of 2009. The roadway is directly adjacent to the former home of George Boole, a building which partially collapsed in October 2010.

Since then there has been pressure on those responsible, including Cork City Council to save the building and protect Cork's cultural, historic and scientific heritage.

Since Cork City Council had earlier stated that it would "subject to the consent of the owner, establish the level of interest in its future use/development, from the range of bodies which have expressed views to the Council on its historic importance" and given that the building now seems to be for sale on the open market, it's time to act.

The rebuilding of the quay wall was suggested as an obstacle to progressing the project. That obstacle has now, finally been cleared.

Given the length of time taken to deal with the quay wall, I won't hold my breath but Cork City Council and those responsible for the building's present condition would do well to hear that it hasn't gone away, you know.

Cobh: Titanic Connections and Ireland's First Female Pharmacist

Interior of Wilson's Pharmacy

A trip to Cobh in search of Titanic history uncovers a unique piece of Ireland's scientific heritage.

On this day 100 years ago, 123 passengers left Cobh (then Queenstown) in Co. Cork, Ireland to join the Titanic which was moored in Cork Harbour. So began the final journey across the Atlantic which was to end in disaster.

That tragedy has been marked across the globe this week as we approach the 100th anniversary of the ship's sinking.

Earlier in the week, Communicate Science took a visit to Cobh to mark the anniversary. We visited the new Titanic Experience housed in the former White Star Line offices - the very building the Titanic passengers would have walked through and viewed the original White Star pier - badly in need of repair.

If you visit Cobh, Titanic Experience is worth a visit. It is just that; a real experience of life on board and the tragedy that occurred. If you're into the more detailed nitty-gritty of the tragedy, a visit to the nearby Cobh Heritage Centre is highly recommended.

White Star Pier, Cobh

However, while in Cobh, my interest was peaked by a distinctly scientific part of the town's heritage.

Just along the seafront from the Titanic memorial is Wilson's Pharmacy, which has been serving the people of Queenstown, Cobh and the visiting ships for over 100 years.

Opened in 1908 by John and Christina Wilson, it is remarkable that Christina Wilson was the first female pharmacist in Ireland.

Christina (nee Jessop) was born in Dublin in 1879, trained in Furlong's Chemist and was the first female pharmacist to qualify in Ireland in 1900. She went on to work in the South Dublin Union (now Saint James' Hospital) and it was there she met a young pharmacist from Cork who she married.

The couple returned to John's native Cobh and set up the family pharmacy at 18 West Beach. Three of their children, Jasper, John and Maura became pharmacists.

The pharmacy is now owned by Therese Wilson, granddaughter of the original owners.

The shop supplied ships of the White Star Line and, most likely, passengers aboard the Titanic. Much of the original shop fittings are still in place. As a piece of scientific heritage, it's a real find. Its connection with Ireland's first female pharmacist makes it even more impressive.

What region of the earth is not full of our calamities?

You know Spring has arrived when the daffodils, which pushed through the soil early this year, are in full bloom around the country. In fact, today is Daffodil Day in Ireland - a fundraising event organised by the Irish Cancer Society. To celebrate, we remember an Irish plantsman who put Cork on the map in terms of daffodil growing - William Baylor Hartland.

WB Hartland came from a long line of successful horticulturists. His grandfather, Richard Hartland (1745-1821) worked at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew before moving to Ireland to become a gardener to the Earl of Kingston at Mitchelstown. Around 1787,  Richard established a nursery at Bellvue Cottage, Mallow and had three sons. Arthur established a nursery near Turner's Cross in Cork City - where it seems he planted a fine monkey puzzle tree; Richard jnr. opened a nursery at Glasheen which continued in existence up until 1923 as the Lough Nursery. By 1867 the Lough Nursery took up 40 acres and included 18,000 feet of glasshouses.

The third son, William Baylor (the father of our WB Hartland) stayed on at the family nursery at Bellvue.

Our William Baylor Hartland (1836-1912) was only seven years old in 1843 when his father died and left him the business. With the help of his uncles, the business was run successfully and he established his own nursery at Temple Hill, just outside Cork in 1878.  In 1889 he moved the short distance to Ard Cairn in Ballintemple.

Hartland became internationally famous for growing daffodil bulbs and developing new cultivars such as Ard Righ. He published his Little Book of Daffodils in 1896 and by the turn of the 20th century he was exporting bulbs all over the world.

The back cover of his catalogue from around that time (pictured) clearly shows the drive and marketing ability of the man. "The True Home of Daffodils" the advertisement proclaims about Cork. "Hartlands seeds, Daffodils, and bulbs of all sorts, to all parts of the world".

Hartlands Catalogue c. 1900 (Image: The Library, National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin 9)

The map of the world, with Cork at its centre is framed by a quote from Virgil - quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris or What region of the earth is not full of our calamities?

WB Hartland was clearly a wonderful salesman and his name lives on amongst daffodil breeders. He was also interested in new varieties of apple and he developed the Ard Cairn Russet variety. He died in 1912 and his nursery closed in 1917.

Cork Lough and the Lough Nurseries c. 1840. Present day Hartlands Avenue in red

The family name still lives on in Cork. In 1926, Oliver Hartland (who was, by then, running the Lough Nursery) built a road from Glasheen to the Lough. Hartland's Avenue remains as a reminder of the nursery and this family's industry.

Today is Daffodil Day and you can support the work of the Irish Cancer Society by buying a daffodil from sellers around the country. Look out for them and support this worthy cause.


Source: Much of the biographical information for this post comes from
Forrest, M (2010). Nurseries and nurserymen in Ireland from the early eighteenth to the early twenty-first century. Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes: An International Quarterly 30(4): 1460-1176.

Ireland's Geoheritage Uncovered

The National Museum of Ireland, in association with Earth Science Ireland and the Euroscience Open Forum 2012 will host a one-day seminar on Ireland's Geoheritage this month.

The Secrets of Stone aims to increase awareness of Ireland’s geoheritage; what it is, and explaining the diversity of actions and projects in Ireland aimed at making geoheritage accessible to all.

Speakers will include Matthew Parkes, Geological Curator of the Natural History Museum and Sarah Gatley of the Geological Survey of Ireland who will talk on "Geoheritage - why protect a load of old rocks?".

Mary Mulvihill will speak on Earth Science communication - "If the stones could talk" while  Sophie Préteseille, Geologist with the Geological Survey of Ireland will deliver a talk on the growing success of Geoparks.

Patrick Wyse Jackson from Trinity College, Dublin will also give  a talk on "Geological heritage in our museums".

The seminar takes place on Saturday 24th of March and should be of interest to anyone interested in Ireland's scientific history and heritage. For more details on registration, etc. see the Seminar Programme.

Darwin Day Special: Darwin's 'Lost' Fossils

During the Summer of 2011, Howard Falcon-Lang was rummaging around in the windowless vaults of the British Geological Survey when he opened a drawer labelled simply "unregistered fossil plants".

What he found inside was a 'treasure trove' of fossils including some collected by Charles Darwin - who's birth we celebrate this weekend as Darwin Day!

“While searching through an old cabinet, I spotted some drawers marked ‘unregistered fossil plants’. I can’t resist a mystery, so I pulled one open. What I found inside made my jaw drop!” said Falcon-Lang.

“Inside the drawer were hundreds of beautiful glass slides made by polishing fossil plants into thin translucent sheets. This process allows them to be studied under the microscope. Almost the first slide I picked up was labeled ‘C. Darwin Esq.’ This turned out to be a piece of fossil wood collected by Darwin during his famous Voyage of the Beagle in 1834!”

The collection was put together by Darwin's good friend Joseph Hooker while he was employed by the Survey for a short time in 1846.

"The purpose of my visit was to locate some specimens of Carboniferous fossil wood from the Bristol Coalfield", wrote Falcon-Lang in Geology Today. "A rummage quickly turned up the sought after fossils but as we were preparing to leave, my eyes fell on a series of drawers marked ‘unregistered fossil plants’. I can’t resist a mystery, so I pulled one open".

Joseph Hooker

Joseph Hooker (1817-1911) was one of the great botanists of his time and director of Kew Gardens for many years. The slide-mounted samples of fossilised plants in the newly re-discovered collection have the names of donors inscribed on the slides. At least two of the sections of fossil wood were obtained by Darwin during his famous voyage on the Beagle, from 1831 to 1836.

One of the samples (pictured above) comes from Chiloe Island, Chile a place Darwin visited in December 1834 and described it thus: "Chiloe, from its climate is a miserable hole".

There are many specimens from the collection which were not collected by Darwin although understandably given Darwin's fame his samples have stolen a lot of the attention. Other samples are associated with William Nicol, the pioneer of petrography (the detailed study of rocks).

Falcon-Long suggests that the collection probably got lost in the British Geological Survey's storage facility at Keyworth, near Nottingham, UK as a result of bad timing. The Survey didn't start formally registering its acquisitions until 1848. Since then, the samples seem to have been moved around London to various Museums, which at various times held geological collections. It probably arrived in Keyworth in the mid-eighties. Here, a process of cataloguing and photographing is currently ongoing so more fascinating discoveries may yet be waiting around the corner.

You can view a selection from the collection at the British Geological Survey's online museum.

Marie Curie on Google

As well as the death of Alfred Russel Wallace, today is also noteworthy as being the the brithday of Marie Curie- an event celebrated with a Google Doodle. 

A Polish-born French chemist and physicist, she is famous for here work on radioactivity. Amongst her notable achievements:

• Being the first female professor at the University of Paris.

• The first person to recieve two Nobel Prizes - Physics and Chemistry.

• The first woman to win a Nobel Prize.

• Only woman to win in two fields.

• Only person to win in multiple sciences.

Curie coined the term radioactivity, discovered two elements (polonium and radium) and founded the Curie Institute at Paris and Warsaw. She was born on this day in 1867 and died in 1934.

The Plant Collector

Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820)

On this day in 1768, Sir Joseph Banks left England aboard the Endeavour under the command of Captain Cook. The Royal Society had suggested that Banks might be brought along:

'Joseph Banks Esq. Fellow of this Society, a gentleman of large fortune, who is well versed in Natural History being desirous of undertaking the same voyage, the Council very earnestly requests their Lordships (of the Admiralty) that in regard to Mr. Banks' great personal merit, and for the advancement of useful knowledge, he also together with his suite be received on board of the ship under the command of Captain Cook.'

Banks' party included Dr. Solander, a Swedish Botanist who he had become friends with in London, Sporing, a naturalist, as well as three artists and four servants. He had been passionate about botany since childhood, when at the age of fourteen he had reportedly decided: "I will make myself acquainted with all these different plants for my own pleasure and gratification."

The voyage lasted three years and Banks collected many plants along the way. The journey was not without its dangers though: the ship and crew faced shipwrecks, disease and attacks by natives. As Banks himself put it: "The almost certainty of being eat as soon as you come ashore adds not a little to the terrors of shipwreck."

James Cook, captain of HMS Endeavour

In the end, just four of the original party of ten survived the journey: Banks, Solander and two of the servants. The remaining two servants died from the cold in Tierra del Fuego; Buchan, one of the artists died after a 'fit' in Tahiti; and the others (Reynolds, Parkinson and Sporing) all died of Batavian fever.

The trip was not without it's rewards though, as Banks records:

'The number of natural productions discovered in this voyage is incredible; about one thousand species of plants that have not been at all described by any botanical author; five hundred of fishes; as many of birds; with insects, sea and land, innumerable.'

When he returned to England in July 1771, he immediately became famous and this led King George III to choose him to direct the future of Kew Gardens. Having seen the benefit of scientific voyages, Banks dispatched a number of naturalists to far-flung places to bring back plants for Kew.

He sent George Vancouver to the Pacific Northwest (the city of Vancouver still bears his name) and William Bligh to the South Pacific (which led to the Mutiny on the Bounty). When David Nelson, Banks' plant collector on the later voyage, was abandoned along with Bligh by the mutineers, he had to watch as they threw a thousand of his plants over the side. The mutineers had apparently resented the fresh water rations being used to keep the plants alive.

Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis)

The Bounty voyage had had one purpose: to attempt to transplant breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) plants from Tahiti to the British West Indies in the hope that they would provide cheap food for slaves.

Nelson died after forty-seven days voyaging (and 4,500 miles) with Bligh in a small open boat and Bligh noted in his log:

'The loss of this honest man I much lamented; he had with great care and diligence attended to the object for which he was sent. I was sorry I could get no tombstone to place over his remains.'

 Despite the obvious dangers, the plant collection trips continued under Banks' guidance and they added greatly to the gardens at Kew and to the library and Herbarium which were finally built after Sir Joseph Banks' death in 1820.

See our Science Gallery: a series of photos from a recent visit to Kew.

Further Reading:
The Making of Kew by Madeleine Bingham (1975).