Seed and plant man

Bones: The Life and Adventure of Doctor Archibald Menzies
by Graeme Menzies

Dunbeath, Scotland: Whittles Publishing, 2024
$23.95 /  9781849955911

Reviewed by Ron Verzuh

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When we think about the men who came to British Columbia’s western shores centuries ago, we don’t imagine nice gentlemen dressed in tricorn hats and colourful uniforms that set out be kind to the indigenous people. After all, the intent was to rob and pillage in the worldwide quest for wealth and empire. Well, Dr. Archibald Menzies (1754-1842) is here to tell us another kinder side of that story.

No, that does not mean the pillaging didn’t go on relentlessly. Images come to mind of a rowdy bunch of armed marauders who are here to steal whatever they can regardless of who they encounter. We also think of the British class system with its ready supply of workers being gang-pressed into service for the Royal Navy. The job: seize land for the ever vaster British Empire.

But Archibald – author Graeme Menzies uses his given name rather than his surname – is vocally against the plundering and abuse of the First Nations his ships encountered. In fact, he befriended them during his two round-the-world voyages that brought him to the west coast of Vancouver Island. The second time it is aboard the Discovery captained by George Vancouver. The ship was once under the command of Captain James Cook, so it had plenty of history to share, including how Cook died at the hands of indigenous Hawaiians.

Vancouver’s mission was to map the west coast in hopes of finding a northwest passage to the trading riches of Asia. Archibald was tasked with the lesser task of collecting samples of plants, seeds, and animal and bird life through the Pacific west coast to send home to his benefactor, the redoubtable Joseph Banks.

Banks, having made three world adventures with Cook in the 1780s, was Britain’s chief seed and plant man of the age. He was in charge of a huge treasury of exotic snipping and plucking that made the empire richer by the shipload. It was the dutiful Archibald who helped make that possible.

Not just “a mere protege” of Banks, Archibald was “a physician, botanist, and a man of action and adventure” who earned his keep partly by fumigating ships, treating battle wounds, and developing new treatments for ailments encountered on board ship and in the new land.

Besides Banks and the British Admiralty, Archibald had many people to thank for his success. In particular, Menzies explains that he owed much credit to First Nations women for revealing the curative qualities of the local vegetation, including a recipe for spruce beer that acted as a preventative remedy against scurvy, the dreaded disease of sailors everywhere.

They also provided an early warning signal for him. For example, female relatives of the great chief Maquinna “shewed so much solicitude for my safety,” Archibald wrote in his journal, “that they often warned me in the most earnest manner of the dangers to which my Botanical rambles in the Woods exposed me.”

But not all experiences with indigenous women were so helpful. In an incident involving faulty weapons traded to the Tlingit people, “their female conductress . . . put forth all the powers of her turbulent tongue to excite, or rather to compel the men, to act with hostility towards us.” Vancouver and his crew just managed to escape but not before spears were hurled and in some cases hit their mark.

It wasn’t only medicine, plants, and animal species that interested Archibald, but the cultural habits of First Nations people as well. For example, he may have been the first European to describe a potlach ceremony a practice that was banned in 1885. He also observed burial ceremonies where bodies were wrapped and preserved above ground in hoisted canoes. Rather than dismissing such habits and customs as barbaric, he was able to compare them with those of his native Scotland.

Of the many experiences, Archibald shared in his journal, the Nootka Sound diplomatic incident between Vancouver and the suave and older Spanish commander Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra was perhaps the most fraught with violent possibility. In the end, he witnessed a non-violent handover from Spain to Britain, but there were some tense moments.

One involved a midshipman named Thomas Pitt, who was related to Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and used his status to wreak havoc in Nootka and vengeance back home in London. Vancouver administered the usual punishment of a lashing to young Pitt for violating ship’s conduct rules. After inheriting his family’s fortune he tried unsuccessfully to goad Vancouver into a duel. Vancouver declined and Pitt later died in another dueling incident.

While this review specifically covers Archibald’s sojourns to these lands, Menzies also provides accounts of the doctor’s exploits in Macao and Hawaii, where Archibald befriended King Kamehameha and other Hawaiians. In the Caribbean, he was part of the British battleship fleet that defeated the French Navy at the Battle of the Saintes.

Archibald married in his late 40s. He and his wife Janet lived happily in financial security. The couple had no children and he outlived her by many years. In retirement, he saw many events unfold in the nineteenth century among them the deaths of Captain William Bligh of HMS Bounty and his friend King Kamehameha to name but two.

In many ways, his biggest legacy was his enduring belief in equality. Author Menzies does much speculating about what Archibald might have thought, but his speculation about his subject’s sense of justice was sound. “Archibald would have been affronted by the post-Confederation Indian Act . . . which essentially made indigenous people wards of the state and alienated them from direct control of their land, rights and culture.”

Toward the end of his career, Archibald was appointed apothecary to the Royal household in 1819, a suitable post for the aging adventurer. His memory is preserved in BC with some artifacts held at the Royal BC Museum and Archives in Victoria and a bronze bust that can be viewed at the VanDusen Botanical Gardens in Vancouver.

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Ron Verzuh is a writer and historian. [Editor’s note: Ron has recently reviewed books by Ron Base and Prudence Emery, Geoff Mynett, John Moore, Tom Langford, Ron Thompson, John Ibbitson (ed.), and Bob McDonald for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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