A Voyage Round the World

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. 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 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 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 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 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 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° 36' N., long. 18° 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 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 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 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: —

"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."

The arrival at Portsmouth is thus described: —

"1744. Friday, 15 June. – Came to with the S Bower in 10 fath water and at 9 began to Moor."

Later interesting entries are: —

"Monday, 2nd July. – Fresh gales and Cloudy sent away the Treasure in 32 Waggons to London with 139 Officers and Seamen to guard it.

"Thursday, 19 July. – Mod and fair, found in the Fish Room three Chests of Treasure" (which had been overlooked).

The last entry of all is for: —

"Friday, 20 July. – Hard Gales with rain at 4 p.m. all the men on the spot were paid and the Pendant was Struck."

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's subsequent career may be told in a few words. He was created Lord Anson on June 13, 1747. From 1751 to 1756 and from 1757 till his death he was a very competent and energetic First Lord of the Admiralty. He became Admiral of the Fleet in 1761. He died on June 6, 1762. The figurehead of the Centurion, the lion which "was very loose" in the Cape Horn storms of 1741, was preserved at the family seat at Shugborough till it fell to pieces. A portrait of Anson, which has been frequently copied and engraved, still exists there. The face is that of a man placidly and agreeably contented. It is the face of the polite and even spirit who "always kept up his usual composure and steadiness," and only once allowed joy to "break through" "the equable and unvaried character which he had hitherto preserved." Something of that character is in this placid and agreeable story told by Mr. Walter, chaplain, from Anson's private records.

The book is one of the most popular of the English books of voyages. It is a pleasantly written work. The story is told with a grace and quietness "very grateful and refreshing." The story itself is remarkable. It bears witness to the often illustrated contrast between the excellence of Englishmen and the stupidity of their governors. The management of the squadron before it sailed gave continuous evidence of imbecility. Something fine in a couple of hundred "emaciated ship-mates" drove them on to triumph through every possible disadvantage. In the general joy over their triumph, the imbecility was forgotten. There is something pathetic in the mismanagement of the squadron. The ships were sent to sea on the longest and most dangerous of voyages with no anti-scorbutics. When scurvy broke out the only medicines available were "the pill and drop of Dr. Ward" (very violent emetic purgatives), which came not from the government, but from Anson's own stores. In the absence of proper medicines, Anson produced these things, "and first try'd them on himself." This spirit in our captains and in our common men has borne us (so far) fairly triumphantly out of the bogs into which our stupidity so often drives us.