After leaving Uppsala,¹ we drove 20 kilometres north to Tensta, the birthplace of Anders Erikson Sparrman, botanist on Cook’s Second Voyage.  He joined the voyage at South Africa in November 1772,² and left at South Africa in April 1775,³ to continue his botanising there. 

Anders Sparrman (1748-1820) was the son of a Swedish clergyman.  At the age of nine he was enrolled at Uppsala University, and began his medical studies when he was just fourteen.  At seventeen he went to sea as a ship’s doctor on a voyage to China lasting two years.  He eventually became one of the leading students of Sweden’s great naturalist, Linnaeus.

Teija and Michael Spiekien

References

1. Cook’s Log, page 26, vol. 38, no. 1 (2015). 
2. Cook’s Log, page 1455, vol. 20, no. 4 (1997).
3. Cook’s Log, page 1741, vol. 23, no. 2 (2000).  

Originally published in Cook's Log, page 3, volume 38, number 2 (2015).