On 25 December, 1770, midshipman Patrick Saunders was discovered to be missing as James Cook and Endeavour were about to leave Batavia (Jakarta). There was no time to undertake a search for him, and he was presumed to have deserted, the only person to successfully do so during the voyage. It was also presumed that his disappearance was proof of his guilt in the incident back in May 1770, off Bustard Bay, when clerk, Richard Orton, had his ears cut.
Sydney Parkinson summed up everyone’s suspicions. “One of our midshipmen ran away from us here, and it was suspected that he was the person who cut off Orton's ears”.
Patrick Saunders was never heard of again.
Saunders had joined Endeavour as a midshipman on 22 June 1768 at Deptford. No previous ship, age or place of birth were given for him in the ship’s muster. He remained a midshipman until 23 May, 1770, when he was disrated to able seaman (AB). This action was not reported in any of the journals, but appears against Saunders’s name on the muster roll. That timing strongly suggests that Saunders was already one of the people suspected of involvement in the attack on Orton. He is not mentioned elsewhere in the journals.
So, who was Saunders?
He was probably the Patrick Saunders who was baptised on 16 September 1747 at Banff, Banffshire, Scotland. He was the third son of James Kenneth Saunders and his wife Bathia (nee Leslie), who had married on 21 August, 1742, at Banff., and went on to have nine children. James Kenneth Saunders was a surgeon and physician in Banff, and the author of “An Account of the Effects of Electricity in Different Diseases”.1 He died in 1778, leaving a will in which there is no mention of Patrick.
The oldest son, William Saunders (1743–1817), became a physician, and practiced in London from about 1766. He gave public lectures on chemistry and was, I believe, known to Joseph Banks.
The sixth son, George Saunders (1751-1782), followed Patrick into the navy becoming a lieutenant in 1775. He drowned when HMS Royal George foundered at Spithead in 1782.
The Saunders family had local, northeast Scotland Royal Navy connections. The baptisms of Patrick’s younger siblings, Anne and Robert, had as witnesses Captains Robert Duff and William Gordon, both later promoted admirals. With such connections, it is, perhaps, not surprising that Patrick (as third son) and George (as sixth son) should follow a naval career.
By his desertion, Patrick Saunders never gave himself the opportunity for advancement.
John Robson
References
- Saunders, Dr James. “An Account of the Effects of Electricity in Different Diseases” in Medical Commentaries of Edinburgh. John Murray. 1774. Vol. 3.
Originally published in Cook's Log, page 19, volume 49, number 3 (2026).