



Produced by Al Haines








[Illustration: Frontispiece]

To THE WISE MAN ALL THE WORLD'S A SOIL--BEN JONSON



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  A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD
  _in the years 1740-4 by_
  LORD ANSON



  LONDON: PUBLISHED by J. M. DENT & SONS Ltd.
  AND IN NEW YORK BY E. P. DUTTON & CO



{vii}

INTRODUCTION

The men-of-war in which Anson went to sea were built mostly of oak.
They were painted externally yellow, with a blue stripe round the upper
works.  Internally, they were painted red.  They carried cannon on one,
two, or three decks according to their size.  The biggest ships carried
a hundred cannon and nearly a thousand men.  The ship in which this
famous voyage was made was of the middle size, then called the
fourth-rate.  She carried sixty cannon, and a crew of four hundred men.
Her lower gun deck, a little above the level of the water, was about
140 feet long.  She was of about a thousand tons burthen.

Though this seems small to us, it is not small for a wooden ship.  It
is not possible to build a long wooden ship.  The _Centurion_, though
short, was broad, bulky, and deep.  She was fit for the sea.  As she
was built more to carry cannon than to sail, she was a slow sailer.
She became slower as the barnacles gathered on her planks under the
water.  She carried three wooden masts, each fitted with two or three
square sails, extended by wooden yards.  Both yards and masts were
frequently injured in bad weather.

The cannon were arranged in rows along her decks.  On the lower gun
deck, a little above the level of the water, she carried twenty-six
twenty-four-pounders, thirteen on a side.  These guns were
muzzle-loading cannon which flung twenty-four-pound balls for a
distance of about a mile.  On the deck above this chief battery, she
carried a lighter battery of twenty-six nine- or twelve-pounder guns,
thirteen on a side.  These guns were also muzzle-loading.  They flung
their balls for a distance of a little more than a mile.

On the quarter-deck, the poop, the forecastle, and aloft in the tops
(the strong platforms on the masts), were lighter guns, throwing balls
of from a half to six pounds' weight.  {viii} Some of the lightest guns
were mounted on swivels, so that they could be easily pointed in any
direction.  All the guns were clumsy weapons.  They could not be aimed
with any nicety.  The iron round shot fired from them did not fit the
bores of the pieces.  The gun-carriages were clumsy, and difficult to
move.  Even when the carriage had been so moved that the gun was
accurately trained, and when the gun itself had been raised or
depressed till it was accurately pointed, the gunner could not tell how
much the ball would wobble in the bore before it left the muzzle.  For
these reasons all the effective sea-fights were fought at close range,
from within a quarter of a mile of the target to close alongside.  At a
close range, the muskets and small-arms could be used with effect.

The broadside cannon pointed through square portholes cut in the ship's
sides.  The ports were fitted with heavy wooden lids which could be
tightly closed when necessary.  In bad weather, the lower-deck gun
ports could not be opened without danger of swamping the ship.
Sometimes, when the lower-deck guns were fought in a gale, the men
stood knee deep in water.

In action the guns were "run out" till their muzzles were well outside
the port, so that the flashes might not set the ship's side on fire.
The shock of the discharge made them recoil into a position in which
they could be reloaded.  The guns were run out by means of side
tackles.  They were kept from recoiling too far by strong ropes called
breechings.  When not in use, and not likely to be used, they were
"housed," or so arranged that their muzzles could be lashed firmly to
the ship's side.  In a sea way, when the ship rolled very badly, there
was danger of the guns breaking loose and rolling this way and that
till they had knocked the ship's side out.  To prevent this happening,
clamps of wood were screwed behind the wheels of the gun-carriages, and
extra breechings were rove, whenever bad weather threatened.

The great weight of the rows of cannon put a severe strain upon the
upper works of the ship.  In bad weather, during excessive rolling,
this strain was often great enough to open the seams in the ship's
sides.  To prevent this, and other costly damage, it was the custom to
keep the big men-of-war in harbour from October until the Spring.  In
the {ix} smaller vessels the strain was made less by striking down some
of the guns into the hold.

The guns were fired by the application of a slow-match to the priming
powder in the touch-holes.  The slow-matches were twisted round wooden
forks called linstocks.  After firing, when the guns had recoiled,
their bores were scraped with scrapers called "worms" to remove scraps
of burning wad or cartridge.  They were then sponged out with a wet
sponge, and charged by the ramming home of fresh cartridges, wads, and
balls.  A gun's crew numbered from four to twelve men, according to the
size of the piece.  When a gun was trained aft or forward, to bear on
an object before or abaft the beam, the gun's crew hove it about with
crows and handspikes.

As this, and the other exercise of sponging, loading, and running out
the guns in the heat, stench, and fury of a sea-fight was excessively
hard labour, the men went into action stripped to the waist.  The decks
on those occasions were thickly sanded, lest the blood upon them should
make them too slippery for the survivors' feet.  Tubs of water were
placed between the guns for the wetting of the sponges and the
extinguishing of chance fires.  The ship's boys carried the cartridges
to the guns from the magazines below the water-line.  The round-shot
were placed close to hand in rope rings called garlands.  Nets were
spread under the masts to catch wreck from aloft.  The decks were
"cleared for action."  All loose articles about the decks, and all
movable wooden articles such as bulkheads (the partitions between
cabins), mess-tables, chests, casks, etc., were flung into the hold or
overboard, lest shot striking them should splinter them.  Splinters
were far more dangerous than shot.  In this book it may be noticed that
the officers hoped to have no fighting while the gun decks of the ships
in the squadron were cumbered with provision casks.

The ships of war carried enormous crews.  The _Centurion_ carried four
hundred seamen and one hundred soldiers.  At sea, most of this
complement was divided into two watches.  Both watches were subdivided
into several divisions, to each of which was allotted some special
duty, as the working of the main-mast, the keeping of the main deck
clean, etc., etc.  Many members of the crew {x} stood no watch, but
worked at special crafts and occupations about the ship.  A wooden ship
of war employed and kept busy a carpenter and carpenter's mates, a
sailmaker and sailmaker's mates, a cooper and a gunner, each with his
mates, and many other specially skilled craftsmen and their assistants.
She was a little world, carrying within herself all that she needed.
Her daily business required men to sail her and steer her, men to fight
her guns, men to rule her, men to drill, men to play the spy, men to
teach, preach, and decorate, men to clean her, caulk her, paint her and
keep her sweet, men to serve out food, water, and intoxicants, men to
tinker, repair, and cook and forge, to doctor and operate, to bury and
flog, to pump, fumigate and scrape, and to load and unload.  She called
for so many skilled craftsmen, and provided so much special employment
out of the way of seamanship, that the big crew was never big enough.
The special employments took away now one man, now another, till there
were few left to work the ship.  The soldiers and marines acted as a
military guard for the prevention of mutiny.  They worked about the
ship, hauling ropes, etc., when not engaged in military duty.

The hundreds of men in the ship's crew lived below decks.  Most of them
lived on the lower gun deck in the narrow spaces (known as berths)
between the guns.  Here they kept their chests, mess-tables, crockery,
and other gear.  Here they ate and drank, made merry, danced, got
drunk, and, in port, entertained their female acquaintance.  Many more,
including the midshipmen, surgeon, and gunner, lived below the lower
gun deck, in the orlop or cable tier, where sunlight could never come
and fresh air never came willingly.  At night the men slept in
hammocks, which they slung from the beams.  They were packed together
very tightly, man to man, hammock touching hammock.  In the morning,
the hammocks were lashed up and stowed in racks till the evening.

There was no "regulation" naval uniform until some years after the
_Centurion's_ return to England.  The officers and men seem to have
worn what clothes they pleased.  The ships carried stores of clothes
which were issued to the men as they needed them.  The store clothes,
being (perhaps) of similar patterns, may have given a sort of {xi}
uniformity to the appearance of the crews after some months at sea.  In
some of the prints of the time the men are drawn wearing rough, buckled
shoes, coarse stockings, aprons or short skirts of frieze, baize, or
tarred canvas, and short jackets worn open.  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.  Society at sea was like
society ashore, except that, being composed of men, and confronted with
the elements, and based on a grand ceremonial tradition, it was never
brilliant, and never artificial.  It was, in the main, an honest and
hardworking society.  Much in it was brutal, dirty, and debased; but it
had always behind it an order and a ceremony grand, impressive, and
unfaltering.  That life in that society was often barbarous and
disgusting cannot be doubted.  The best men in the ships were taken by
force from the merchant service.  The others were gathered by
press-gangs and gaol-deliveries.  They were knocked into shape by
brutal methods and kept in hand by brutal punishments.  The officers
were not always gentlemen; and when they were, they were frequently
incompetent.  The administration was scandalously corrupt.  The ships
were unhealthy, the food foul, the pay small, and the treatment cruel.
The attractions of the service seem to have been these: the chance of
making a large sum of prize-money, and the possibility of getting drunk
once a day on the enormous daily ration of intoxicating liquor.  The
men were crammed together into a dark, stinking, confined space, in
which privacy was impossible, peace a dream, and cleanliness a memory.
Here they were fed on rotten food, till they died by the score, as this
book testifies.

"We sent," says Mr. Walter, chaplain in the _Centurion_, "about eighty
sick from the _Centurion_; and the other ships, I believe, sent nearly
as many, in proportion....  As soon as we had performed this necessary
duty, we scraped our decks, and gave our ship a thorough cleaning; then
smoked {xii} it between decks, and after all washed every part well
with vinegar.  These operations were extremely necessary for correcting
the noisome stench on board, and destroying the vermin; for... both
these nuisances had increased upon us to a very loathsome degree."

"The Biscuit," says Mr. Thomas, the teacher of mathematics in the
_Centurion_, "(was) so worm-eaten it was scarce anything but dust, and
a little blow would reduce it to that immediately; our Beef and Pork
was likewise very rusty and rotten, and the surgeon endeavoured to
hinder us from eating any of it, alledging it was, tho' a slow, yet a
sure Poison."

That tradition and force of will could keep life efficient, and direct
it to great ends, in such circumstances, deserves our admiration and
our reverence.

The traditions and unpleasantness of the sea service are suggested
vividly in many pages of this book.  A few glimpses of both may be
obtained from the following extracts from some of the logs and papers
which deal with this voyage and with Anson's entry into the Navy.  The
marine chapters in Smollett's _Roderick Random_ give a fair picture of
the way of life below decks during the years of which this book treats.

George Anson was born at Shugborough, in Staffordshire, on April 23,
1697.  His first ship was the _Ruby_, Captain Peter Chamberlen, a
54-gun ship, with a scratch crew of 185 men.  George Anson's name
appears in her pay book between the names of John Baker, ordinary
seaman, and George Hirgate, captain's servant.  He joined her on
February 2, 1712.  The ship had lain cleaning and fitting "at Chatham
and in the River Medway" since the 4th of the preceding month.  Two
days after the boy came aboard she weighed her anchor "at 1 afternoon,"
fresh gales and cloudy, and ran out to the Nore where she anchored in
seven fathoms and moored.

It is not known what duties the boy performed during his first days of
service.  The ship fired twenty-one guns in honour of the queen's
birthday on February 7.  The weather was hazy, foggy, and cold, with
snow and rain; lighters came off with dry provisions, and the ship's
boats brought off water.  On February 9, the _Centurion_, an earlier,
smaller _Centurion_ than the ship afterwards made {xiii} famous by him,
anchored close to them.  On the 16th, two Dutch men-of-war, with a
convoy, anchored close to them.  Yards and topmasts were struck and
again got up on the 17th.  On the 24th, three shot were fired at a
brigantine to bring her to.

On the 27th, Sir John Norris and Sir Charles Wager hoisted their flags
aboard the _Cambridge_ and the _Ruby_ respectively, and signal was made
for a court-martial.  Six men of the _Dover_ were tried for mutiny,
theft, disorderly conduct, and desertion of their ship after she had
gone ashore "near Alborough Haven."  Being all found guilty they were
whipped from ship to ship next morning.  Each received six lashes on
the bare back at the side of each ship then riding at the Nore.  A week
later, the _Ruby_ and the _Centurion_ sailed leisurely to Spithead,
chasing a Danish ship on the way.  On March 11, the _Ruby_ anchored at
Spithead and struck her topmasts.  On March 18, Captain Chamberlen
removed "into ye _Monmouth_" with all his "followers," Anson among
them.  The _Monmouth_ sailed on April 13, with three other men-of-war,
as a guard to the West Indian fleet, bound for Port Royal.  Her master
says that on June 7, in lat. 21 deg. 36' N., long. 18 deg. 9' W., "we duckt
those men that want willing to pay for crossing the tropick."  In
August, off the Jamaican coast, a man fell overboard and was drowned.
Later in the month, a hurricane very nearly put an end to Anson and
_Monmouth_ together.  Both pumps were kept going, there was four feet
of water on the ballast and the same between decks, the foretopmast
went, the main and mizen masts were cut away, and men with buckets
worked for their lives "bealing at each hatchway."  Port Royal was
reached on September 1.  The _Monmouth_ made a cruise after pirates in
Blewfields Bay, and returned to Spithead in June 1713.

Anson is next heard of as a second lieutenant aboard the _Hampshire_.
He was in the _Montague_, 60-gun ship, in Sir George Byng's action off
Cape Passaro, in March 1718.  In 1722, he commanded the _Weasel_ sloop
in some obscure services in the North Sea against the Dutch smugglers
and French Jacobites.  During this command he made several captures of
brandy.  From 1724 till 1735 he was employed in various commands,
mostly in the {xiv} American colonies, against the pirates.  From 1735
till 1737 he was not employed at sea.

In 1737, he took command of the _Centurion_, and sailed in her to the
Guinea Coast, to protect our gum merchants from the French.  His gunner
was disordered in his head during the cruise; and Sierra Leone was so
unhealthy that "the merchant ships had scarce a well man on board."  A
man going mad and others dying were the only adventures of the voyage.
He was back in the Downs to prepare for this more eventful voyage by
July 21, 1739.

In November he wrote to the Admiralty that in hot climates "the Pease
and Oatemeal put on board his Maj'y Ships have generally decayed and
become not fitt to issue, before they have all been expended."  He
proposed taking instead of peas and oatmeal a proportion of "Stockfish,
Grotts, Grout, and Rice."  The Admiralty sanctioned the change; but the
purser seems to have failed to procure the substitutes.  Whether, as
was the way of the pursers of that time, he pocketed money on the
occasion, cannot be known.  He died at sea long before the lack was
discovered.

A more tragical matter took place in this November.  A Mr. McKie, a
naval mate, was attacked on Gosport Beach by twenty or thirty of the
_Centurion's_ crew, under one William Cheney, a boatswain's mate; and
the said William Cheney "with a stick did cutt and bruse" the said
McKie, and tore his shirt and conveyed away his "Murning ring," which
was flat burglary in the said Cheney.  "Mr. Cheney aledges no other
reason for beating and Abusing Mr. McKie but the said McKie having got
drunk at Sea, did then beat and abuse him."  As Hamlet says, this was
hire and salary, not revenge.

Months went by, doubtfully enlivened thus, till June 1740, when the
pressing of men began.  The _Centurion's_ men went pressing, and got
seventy-three men, a fair catch, but not enough.  She despatched a
tender to the Downs to press men from homeward bound merchant ships.
This method of getting a crew was the best then in use, because the men
obtained by it were trained seamen, which those obtained from the
gaols, the gin-shops, and the slums seldom were.  It was an extremely
cruel method.  A man within sight of his home, after a voyage of
perhaps two {xv} years, might be dragged from his ship (before his
wages were paid) to serve willy-nilly in the Navy, at a third of the
pay, for the next half-dozen years.  An impartial conscription seems
noble beside such a method.  Knowing how the ships were manned, it
cannot seem strange that the Navy was not then a loved nor an honoured
service.  Nineteen of the _Centurion's_ catch loved and honoured it so
little that they contrived to desert (risking death at the yard-arm by
doing so) during the weeks of waiting at Portsmouth.

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.  Soon after the wrangle over the spar, there was a wrangle
about the _Gloucester's_ beef.  Forty-two out of her seventy-two
puncheons of beef were found to be stinking.  With some doubts as to
what would happen in the leaf if such things happened in the bud, Anson
got his squadron to sea.  Early in the voyage his master "shoved" his
boatswain while he was knotting a cable, and the boatswain complained.
"The Boatswain," says the letter, "is very often Drunk and incapable of
his Duty."  Later in the voyage, when many hundreds had died, Mr.
Cheney, who hit Mr. McKie, became boatswain in his stead.

The squadron sailed from England on September 18, 1740, with six ships
of war manned by 1872 seamen and marines, twenty-four of whom were
sick.  At Madeira, on November 4, after less than seven weeks at sea,
there were 122 sick, and fourteen had been buried.  Less than eleven
weeks later, at St. Catherine's in Brazil, there were 450 sick, and 160
had been buried.  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:--


"1741.  8 May.--Heavy Flaws and dangerous Gusts, expecting every Moment
to have my masts Carry'd away, having very little succor, from the
standing rigging, every Shroud knotted, and not men able to keep the
deck sufficient to take in a Topsail, all being violently afflicted
with the Scurvy, and every day lessening our Number by six eight and
Ten.

"1741.  1st Sept.--I mustered my Ship's Company, the number of Men I
brought out of England, being Five hundred, are now reduced by
Mortality to Two hundred and Thirteen, and many of them in a weak and
Low condition."


Nothing in any of the records is so eloquent as the remark in Pascoe
Thomas's account of the voyage:--


"I have seen 4 or 5 dead Bodies at a time, some sown up in their
Hammocks and others not, washing about the Decks, for Want of Help to
bury them in the Sea."


On December 7, 1741, the 1872 men had dwindled down to 201.  Of the six
ships of war only one, the _Centurion_, still held her course.  She was
leaking an inch an hour, but she showed bright to the world under a new
coat of paint.  On this day Anson sent home a letter to the Admiralty
(from Canton in China).  The letter was delivered 173 days later.


In spite of the miseries of the service, there were compensations.  The
entry off Payta--


"1741.  12 Nov.--I keept Possession of the Town three days and employed
my Boats in plundering"--


must have been pleasant to write; and the entries for Tuesday, June 21,
1743, and following days, become almost incoherent:--

{xvii}

"reced 112 baggs and 6 Chests of Silver.

"11 Baggs of Virgin silver 72 Chests of Dollers and baggs of Dollers
114 Chests and 100 baggs of Dollers 4 baggs of wrought Plate and Virgin
Silver."


