Richard Walter

“ Even half a century after their association had been broken up the memory of their inhuman barbarity was so vivid that no Spanish prisoner ever mounted Anson's deck without a lively dread, which was only equalled by the general surprise at his kindly and courteous treatment. The sight of an English sailor woke terror in every heart. ”

“ As these Straits are often considered as the boundary between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and as we presumed we had nothing now before us but an open sea till we arrived on those opulent coasts where all our hopes and wishes centred, we could not help flattering ourselves that the greatest difficulty of our passage was now at an end, and that our most sanguine dreams were upon the point of being realised, and hence we indulged our imaginations in those romantic schemes which the fancied possession of the Chilean gold and Peruvian silver might be conceived to inspire. ”

“ Suamarez came on board them, they received him at the side with the strongest tokens of the most abject submission, for they were all of them (especially the passengers, who were twenty-five in number) , extremely terrified and under the greatest apprehensions of meeting with very severe and cruel usage. But the lieutenant endeavoured with great courtesy to dissipate their fright, assuring them that their fears were altogether groundless, and that they would find a generous enemy in the Commodore, who was not less remarkable for his lenity and humanity than for his resolution and courage. ”

“ Indeed, the effects of this disease were in almost every instance wonderful; for many of our people, though confined to their hammocks, appeared to have no inconsiderable share of health, for they ate and drank heartily, were cheerful, and talked with much seeming vigour, and with a loud, strong tone of voice; and yet on their being the least moved, though it was only from one part of the ship to the other, and that in their hammocks, they have immediately expired ”

“ The wind being northerly when we first made the island, we kept plying all that day and the next night, in order to get in with the land; and wearing the ship in the middle watch, we had a melancholy instance of the most incredible debility of our people; for the lieutenant could muster no more than two quarter-masters and six foremast men capable of working; so that without the assistance of the officers, servants, and boys, it might have proved impossible for us to have reached the island after we had got sight of it ”

“ And as we now began to want a harbour to refresh our people, the uncertainty of our present situation gave us great uneasiness, and we were very solicitous to get some positive intelligence, which might either set us at liberty to consult our necessities, if the galleon was arrived, or might animate us to continue on our present cruise with cheerfulness if she was not. With this view the Commodore, after examining our prisoners very particularly, resolved to send a boat, under colour of the night, into the harbour of Acapulco to see if the Manila ship was there or not. ”

“ The storm which drove the Centurion to sea blew with too much turbulence to permit of either the Commodore or any of the people on shore hearing the guns which she fired as signals of distress, and the frequent glare of the lightning had prevented the explosions from being observed; so that when at daybreak it was perceived from the shore that the ship was missing, there was the utmost consternation amongst them. For much the greatest part of them immediately concluded that she was lost, and entreated the Commodore that the boat might be sent round the island to look for the wreck ”

“ For at this place only we could hope to put a period to those terrible calamities we had so long struggled with, which had already swept away above half our crew, and which, had we continued a few days longer at sea, would inevitably have completed our destruction. For we were by this time reduced to so helpless a condition, that out of two hundred and odd men who remained alive, we could not, taking all our watches together, muster hands enough to work the ship on an emergency, though we included the officers, their servants, and the boys. ”

“ The eastern monsoon was now, we reckoned, fairly settled, and we had a constant gale blowing right upon our stern, so that we generally ran from forty to fifty leagues a day. But we had a large hollow sea pursuing us, which occasioned the ship to labour much, whence we received great damage in our rigging, which was grown very rotten, and our leak was augmented; but happily for us our people were now in full health, so that there were no complaints of fatigue, but all went through their attendance on the pumps, and every other duty of the ship, with ease and cheerfulness. ”

“ By the latitude of this land we fell in with, it was agreed to be a part of Tierra del Fuego, near the southern outlet of the Straits of Magellan. It was indeed most wonderful that the currents should have driven us to the eastward with such strength; for the whole squadron esteemed themselves upwards of ten degrees more westerly than this land. And now, instead of having our labours and anxieties relieved by approaching a warmer climate and more tranquil seas, we were to steer again to the southward, and again to combat those western blasts which had so often terrified us ”

“ Rivals as yet Spain had none, whether in Europe or beyond the seas. There was only one great military monarchy in Europe, only one great colonising power in the New World, and that was Spain. While England was still slowly recovering from the prostration consequent upon the Wars of the Roses, and nearly a century had to run before she established her earliest colony in Newfoundland, the enterprise and disciplined courage of the Spaniards had added an enormous empire across the Atlantic to the already great dominions of the Spanish crown. ”

“ In its first onset we received a furious shock from the sea which broke upon our larboard quarter, where it stove in the quarter gallery, and rushed into the ship like a deluge; our rigging, too, suffered extremely, so that to ease the stress upon the masts and shrouds we lowered both our main and fore yards, and furled all our sails, and in this posture we lay to for three days, when, the storm somewhat abating, we ventured to make sail under our courses only. ”

“ Seldom has an undertaking been more remorselessly dogged by an adverse fate than that of Anson. Seldom have plain common sense, professional knowledge, and unflinching resolution achieved a more memorable triumph. ”

“ The port of Acapulco is by much the securest and finest in all the northern parts of the Pacific Ocean, being as it were, a basin surrounded with very high mountains, but the town is a most wretched place and extremely unhealthy, for the air about it is so pent up by the hills that it has scarcely any circulation. The place is, besides, destitute of fresh water, except what is brought from a considerable distance, and is in all respects so inconvenient that except at the time of the mart, whilst the Manila galleon is in the port, it is almost deserted. ”

“ The greatest part of our sick were so infirm that we were obliged to carry them out of the ship in their hammocks, and to convey them afterwards in the same manner from the waterside to their tents, over a stony beach. This was a work of considerable fatigue to the few who were healthy; and therefore the Commodore, with his accustomed humanity, not only assisted herein with his own labour, but obliged his officers, without distinction, to give their helping hand.
The excellence of the climate and the looseness of the soil render this place extremely proper for all kinds of vegetation ”

“ No finer testimony to his skill in choosing and in training his subordinates can be found than in the list of men who served under him in the Centurion and afterwards rose to fame. "In the whole history of our Navy," it has been said, "there is not another instance of so many juniors from one ship rising to distinction, men like Saunders, Suamarez, Peircy Brett, Keppel, Hyde Parker, John Campbell." ”

“ But even this we could not do long, for the next day, which was the 7th, we had another hard gale of wind, with lightning and rain, which obliged us to lie to again all night.
And now, after all our solicitude, and the numerous ills of every kind to which we had been incessantly exposed for near forty days, we had great consolation in the flattering hopes we entertained, that our fatigues were drawing to a period, and that we should soon arrive in a more hospitable climate, where we should be amply repaid for all our past sufferings. ”

“ Thus, with the most gloomy persuasion of our approaching destruction, we stood from the island of Anatacan, having all of us the strongest apprehensions either of dying of the scurvy or perishing with the ship, which, for want of hands to work her pumps, might in a short time be expected to founder. ”

“ The sending away our prisoners* was our last transaction on the American coast, for no sooner had we parted with them than we and the Gloucester made sail to the south-west, proposing to get a good offing from the land, where we hoped in a few days to meet with the regular trade-wind. It has been esteemed no uncommon passage to run from hence to the easternmost parts of Asia in two months, and we flattered ourselves that we were as capable of making an expeditious passage as any ship that had ever run this course before us; so that we hoped soon to gain the coast of China. ”

“ When the Commodore first put to sea from Macao, they practised an artifice of another kind, for as the Chinese never object to the eating of any food that dies of itself, they took care, by some secret practises, that great part of his live sea-store should die in a short time after it was put on board, hoping to make a second profit of the dead carcases which they expected would be thrown overboard, and two-thirds of the hogs dying before the Centurion was out of sight of land, many of the Chinese boats followed her only to pick up the carrion. ”

“ It is most remarkable that, by the concurrent testimony of all the Spanish navigators, there is not one port, nor even a tolerable road, as yet found out betwixt the Philippine Islands and the coast of California and Mexico,* so that from the time the Manila ship first loses sight of land she never lets go her anchor till she arrives on the coast of California, and very often not till she gets to its southernmost extremity. ”

“ Anson constantly exerted his utmost endeavours to efface these inhuman impressions they had received of us, always taking care that as many of the principal people among them as there was room for should dine at his table by turns, and giving the strictest orders, too, that they should at all times and in every circumstance be treated with the utmost decency and humanity. ”

“ It gave us great uneasiness to find that we had so needlessly altered our course when we were, in all probability, just upon the point of making the island; for the mortality amongst us was now increased to a most dreadful degree, and those who remained alive were utterly dispirited by this new disappointment and the prospect of their longer continuance at sea. Our water, too, began to grow scarce, so that a general dejection prevailed amongst us, which added much to the virulence of the disease, and destroyed numbers of our best men ”

“ The violence of the current, which had set us with so much precipitation to the eastward, together with the force and constancy of the westerly winds, soon taught us to consider the doubling of Cape Horn as an enterprise that might prove too mighty for our efforts, though some amongst us had lately treated the difficulties which former voyagers were said to have met with in this undertaking as little better than chimerical, and had supposed them to arise rather from timidity and unskilfulness than from the real embarrassments of the winds and seas. ”

“ It is true, the yells of the Indians, the groans of the wounded and the confused clamours of the crew, all heightened by the obscurity of the night, had at first greatly magnified their danger, and had filled them with the imaginary terrors which darkness, disorder, and an ignorance of the real strength of an enemy never fail to produce. ”

“ So that we conceived we should be necessitated to content ourselves with what few prizes we could pick up at sea before we were discovered, after which we should in all probability be obliged to depart with precipitation, and esteem ourselves fortunate to regain our native country, leaving our enemies to triumph on the inconsiderable mischief they had received from a squadron whose equipment had filled them with such dreadful apprehensions. ”

“ The mandarins therefore asked the Spaniards how they came to be overpowered by so inferior a force, and how it happened, since the two nations were at war, that they were not put to death when they came into the hands of the English. To the first of these enquiries the Spanish replied that though they had more hands than the Centurion, yet she, being intended solely for war, had a great superiority in the size of her guns, and in many other articles, over the galleon, which was a vessel fitted out principally for traffic. ”

“ When we reached the trade wind, and it settled between the north and the east, yet it seldom blew with so much strength but the Centurion might have carried all her small sails abroad with the greatest safety, so that now, had we been a single ship, we might have run down our longitude apace, and have reached the Ladrones soon enough to have recovered great numbers of our men who afterwards perished. ”

“ We now began to grow impatient for a sight of land, both for the recovery of our sick and for the refreshment and security of those who as yet continued healthier. When we departed from St. Helens, we were in so good a condition that we lost but two men on board the Centurion in our long passage to Madeira. But in this present run between Madeira and St. Catherine's we had been very sickly, so that many died, and great numbers were confined to their hammocks, both in our own ship and in the rest of the squadron ”