



Produced by Al Haines








[Illustration: Frontispiece]

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



[Illustration: Title page]

  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
d