George Anson

“ Before the tender sailed for the Downs, Anson discovered that the dockyard men had scamped their work in the Centurion. They had supplied her with a defective foremast "Not fitt for Sarves." High up on the mast was "a rotten Nott eleven inches deep," a danger to spar and ship together. The dockyard officials, who had probably pocketed the money for a good spar, swore that the Nott only "wants a Plugg drove in" to be perfection. Dockyard men at this time and for many years afterwards deserved to be suspended both from their duties and by their necks. ”

“ Anson immediately repaired to Spithead, with a resolution to sail with the first fair wind, flattering himself that all his difficulties were now at an end. For though he knew by the musters that his squadron wanted three hundred seamen of their complement (a deficiency which, with all its assiduity, he had not been able to get supplied) , yet, as Sir Charles Wager informed him, that an order from the Board of Admiralty was dispatched to Sir John Norris to spare him the numbers which he wanted, he doubted not of its being complied with. ”

“ Anson, after weighing from St. Helen's, tided it down the Channel for the first forty-eight hours; and, on the 20th, in the morning, we discovered off the Ram Head the Dragon, Winchester, South Sea Castle, and Rye, with a number of merchantmen under their convoy. These we joined about noon the same day, our commodore having orders to see them (together with the St. Albans and Lark) as far into the sea as their course and ours lay together. When we came in sight of this last mentioned fleet, Mr. Anson first hoisted his broad pennant, and was saluted by all the men-of-war in company. ”

“ Anson presently perceived the bent of this conversation, and enquired of him if he had not received the money from the linguist, and finding he {363} had not, he offered to pay him upon the spot. But this the mandarine refused, having now somewhat more in view than the sum which had been detained. For the next day the linguist was seized, and was doubtless mulcted of whatever he had gotten in the commodore's service, which was supposed to be little less than two thousand dollars; being besides so severely bastinadoed that it was wonderful he escaped with his life. ”

“ An old print represents an officer of the Centurion dropping booty into the apron of a lady friend. Behind him the waggons and their guard proceed, with a great display of flags. The passing of the treasure was acclaimed with much enthusiasm both upon the road and in London. It was no doubt the biggest prize ever brought to England by a single ship. Anson's share made him a rich man. The rest of the survivors profited according to their rank. ”

“ Anson with many more of our officers and great part of our crew, amounting in the whole to a hundred and thirteen persons. Thus were we all, both at sea and on shore, reduced to the utmost despair by this catastrophe; those on shore conceiving they had no means left them ever to depart from the island, whilst we on board, being utterly unprepared to struggle with the fury of the seas and winds we were now exposed to, expected each moment to be our last. ”

“ Anson was always attentive to whatever might be of consequence to those who might frequent these seas hereafter, and as we had observed that there was a double land to the westward of Chequetan, which stretched out to a considerable distance, with a kind of opening that appeared not unlike the inlet to some harbour, the commodore, soon after we came to an anchor, sent a boat to discover it more accurately, and it was found on a {247} nearer examination that the two hills which formed the double land were joined together by a valley, and that there was no harbour nor shelter between them. ”

“ Those only who have endured a long series of thirst, and who can readily recal the desire and agitation which the ideas alone of springs and brooks have at that time raised in them, can judge of the emotion with which we eyed a large cascade of the most transparent water, which poured itself from a rock near a hundred feet high into the sea at a small distance from the ship. ”

“ Anson taking it for granted that this enterprize had succeeded, and that Porto Bello perhaps might be then garrisoned by British troops, he hoped that on his arrival at the isthmus he should easily procure an intercourse with our countrymen on the other side, either by the Indians, who were greatly disposed in our favour, or even by the Spaniards themselves, some of whom, for proper rewards, might be induced to carry on this intelligence, which, after it was once begun, might be continued with very little difficulty ”

“ By this management we never wanted turtle for the succeeding four months in which we continued {205} at sea; and though, when at the island of Quibo, we had already been three months on board, without otherwise putting our feet on shore than in the few days we stayed there (except those employed in the attack at Paita) , yet in the whole seven months from our leaving Juan Fernandes to our anchoring in the harbour of Chequetan, we buried no more in the whole squadron than two men ”

“ We now learnt that the Gloucester was in a most dreadful condition, having scarcely a man in health on board, except those they received from us: and, numbers of their sick dying daily, it appeared that, had it not been for the last supply sent by our long-boat, both the healthy and diseased must have all perished together for want of water. These calamities were the more terrifying as they appeared to be without remedy: for the Gloucester had already spent a month in her endeavours to fetch the bay, and she was now no farther advanced than at the first moment she made the island ”

“ In consequence of these orders, we had fresh beef sent on board us continually for our daily expence, and what was wanting to make up our allowance we received from our victualler the Anna pink, in order to preserve the provisions on board our squadron entire for our future service. The season of the year growing each day {58} less favourable for our passage round Cape Horn, Mr. Anson was very desirous of leaving this place as soon as possible, and we were at first in hopes that our whole business would be done and we should be in a readiness to sail in about a fortnight from our arrival ”

“ Anson, like most captains, took care that the men in his boat's crew all dressed alike. The marines wore their regimental uniforms.
Life at sea has always been, and may always be, a harder life than the hardest of shore lives.
Life ashore in the early and middle eighteenth century was, in the main, both hard and brutal. Society ashore was made up of a little, brilliant, artificial class, a great, dull, honest, and hardworking mass, and a brutal, dirty, and debased rabble. ”

“ Anson considered that our arrival in that harbour would soon be known at Acapulco; and therefore he hoped that on the intelligence of our being employed in port, the galeon might put to sea, especially as Chequetan is so very remote from the course generally steered by the galeon. He therefore ordered the cutter to cruise twenty-four days off the port of Acapulco, and her commander was directed, on perceiving the galeon under sail, to make the best of his way to the commodore at Chequetan. As the Centurion was doubtless a much better sailor than the galeon, Mr. ”

“ In its first onset we received a furious shock from a 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 from the blow; amongst the rest, one of the straps of the main dead-eyes was broke, as was also a main-shroud and puttock-shroud, 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 ”

“ The Chilian Indians too abhorred a chief who was descended of a race which, by its lieutenants, had first attempted to inslave them, and had necessitated the stoutest of their tribes for more than a century to be continually wasting their blood in defence of their independency. ”

“ From this time until what was left of the squadron reached Juan Fernandez, sickness and death took continual toll. It is shocking to see the Centurion's muster lists slowly decreasing, by one or two a week, till she was up to the Horn, then dropping six, ten, twenty, or twenty-four a week, as the scurvy and the frost {xvi} took hold. Few but the young survived. What that passage of the Horn was like may be read here at length; but perhaps nothing in this book is so eloquent of human misery as the following entries from Anson's private record ”

“ And the vigorous vegetation which constantly takes place there, furnishes such a prodigious quantity of vapour that all the night, and great part of the morning, a thick fog covers the whole country, and continues till either the sun gathers strength to dissipate it, or it is dispersed by a brisk sea-breeze. ”

“ Notwithstanding the great improvement of navigation within the last two centuries, a voyage round the world is still considered as an enterprize of so very singular a nature, that the public have never failed to be extremely inquisitive about the various accidents and turns of fortune with which this uncommon attempt is generally attended. ”

“ The sea now broke most surprizingly all round us, and a large tumbling swell threatened to poop us, by which the long-boat at this time, moored astern, was on a sudden canted so high that it broke the transon of the commodore's gallery, whose cabin was on the quarter-deck, and would doubtless have risen as high as the trafferel had it not been for the stroke, which stove the boat all to pieces ”

“ All I have aimed at in what I have advanced is only to evince that, in some instances, both the cure and prevention of this malady is impossible to be effected by any management, or by the application of any remedies which can be made use of at sea. Indeed, I am myself fully persuaded that, when it has got to a certain head, there are no other means in nature for relieving the sick but carrying them on shore, or at least bringing them into the neighbourhood of the land. ”

“ Considering the scarcity of other provisions on some part of the coast of the South Seas, it appears wonderful that a species of food so very palatable and salubrious as turtle, and there so much abounding, should be proscribed by the Spaniards as unwholesome, and little less than poisonous. Perhaps the strange appearance of this animal may have been the foundation of this ridiculous and superstitious aversion, which is strongly rooted in the inhabitants of those countries, and of which we had many instances during the course of this navigation. ”

“ It may now perhaps be wondered at that an island so exquisitely furnished with the conveniencies of life, and so well adapted not only to the subsistence but likewise to the enjoyment of mankind, should be entirely destitute of inhabitants, especially as it is in the neighbourhood of other islands, which in some measure depend upon this for their support. ”

“ For we soon esteemed ourselves to be driven just upon the shore, and the night was so extremely dark that we expected to discover the island no otherwise than by striking upon it; so that the belief of our destruction, and the uncertainty of the point of time when it should take place, occasioned us to pass several hours under the most serious apprehensions that each succeeding moment would send us to the bottom. ”

“ For, as these are the weapons with which they are to engage, what greater inequality can there be betwixt two contending parties than that one side should perfectly understand the management of them, and should have the skill to employ them in the most effectual manner for the annoyance of their enemy; while the other side should, by their awkward handling of their arms, render them rather terrible to themselves than mischievous to their antagonist? ”

“ 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. For as the Spaniards were sensible of the disaffection of their prest hands, and were also conscious of their barbarity to their prisoners, they imagined the conspiracy was general, and considered their own destruction as infallible ”

“ Thus then it appears that on our arrival in the South Seas we might have found the whole coast unprovided with troops and destitute even of arms: for we well know, from very particular intelligence, that there were not three hundred fire-arms, of which too the greatest part were matchlocks, in all the province of Chili. Whilst at the same time, the Indians were ripe for a revolt, the Spaniards disposed to mutiny, and the governors enraged with one another, and each prepared to rejoice in the disgrace of his antagonist. ”

“ This is an inconvenience so sensibly felt by the commerce at Manila, that it is always recommended to the Governor of Guam to use his best endeavours for the discovery of some secure port in the neighbouring ocean. How industrious he may be to comply with his instructions I know not; but this is certain, that notwithstanding the many islands already found out between the coast of Mexico and the Philippines, there is not any one safe port to be met with in that whole track, though in other parts of the world it is not uncommon for very small islands to furnish most excellent harbours. ”