Sir James Edward Smith: portrait (above) and vignette (below) of his ship escaping from Sweden loaded with the Linnaean collections. Stipple and line engraving by W. Ridley, 1800, after J. Russell.

"On the death of the younger Linnaeus in that year [1783] the whole of the library, manuscripts, herbarium, and natural history collections made by him and his father were offered to [Sir Joseph] Banks for 1000 guineas. Banks declined but on his recommendation Smith bought them, with a loan from his father. John Sibthorp, author of Flora Graeca, and the empress of Russia also attempted to purchase them, but with no success. In September 1784 Smith took apartments in Paradise Row, Chelsea, where the Linnaean collections arrived in the following month. The total cost, including freight, was £1088. It is stated (Memoir and Correspondence, 1.126) that Gustav III of Sweden, who had been absent in France, having heard of the dispatch of the collections, vainly sent a belated vessel to the Sound to intercept the ship which carried them. This apocryphal story is perpetuated on the portrait of Smith published in Thornton's Temple of Flora (1799)." (Oxford dictionary of national biography)