A Brief History of Circumnavigators

by Derek Wilson

  With his ill-gotten gains, Shelvocke returned in a Company ship to England in July 1722. He was immediately arrested on a charge of piracy, but subsequently released for lack of evidence. But he immediately found himself back in prison awaiting trial on charges brought by the owners of the Speedwell. Shelvocke decided not to brazen this matter out in the courts. He escaped – probably by bribery – and fled to the Continent.

  George Shelvocke did return home when the dust had settled. He even wrote his own account of his circumnavigation in an attempt to silence his critics. And when the time came, twenty years later, for him to lay his aged bones in his native earth, loving relatives raised a monument over them which proclaimed the deceased to have been ‘one of the bravest and most accomplished seamen of his time’.

  There is a postscript to the story of this notorious circumnavigation. It concerns an incident which happened while the Speedwell was rounding the Horn – an incident small in itself but destined to win immortality. The ship was driven to 61°30′S by violent winds and seemed quite unable to make any northing. The men were cold, depressed and scared. The likelihood of ever escaping from that desolate region seemed remote. It was a situation in which mariners’ superstition easily gained control of half-crazed minds:

  . . . one would think it impossible that anything living could subsist in so rigid a climate, and indeed we all observed that we had not had the sight of one fish of any kind since we were come to the southwards of the Straits of Le Mair; nor one sea-bird excepting a disconsolate black albatross, who accompanied us for several days, hovering about us as if he had lost himself, till Hatley (my second captain) observing, in one of his melancholy fits, that this bird was always hovering near us, imagined, from his colour, that it might be some ill omen. That which, I suppose, induced him the more to encourage his superstition, was the continued series of contrary tempestuous winds, which had oppressed us ever since we had got into this sea. But be that as it would, he, after some fruitless attempts, at length shot the albatross, not doubting (perhaps) that we should have a fair wind after that . . . 3

  Seventy-six years later this would become the incident around which was constructed the most famous of all poems of the sea:

  At length did cross an Albatross,

  Thorough the fog it came;

  As if it had been a Christian soul,

  We hailed it in God’s name . . .

  In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,

  It perched for vespers nine;

  Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,

  Glimmered the white Moon-shine.

  ‘God save thee, ancient Mariner!

  From the fiends that plague thee thus!

  Why lookst thou so?’ With my cross-bow

  I shot the ALBATROSS!4

  A voyage round the world could be a worse experience than even Coleridge’s imagination could conceive. And this was so, not primarily because of the hazards of tempest or concealed reef (although these continued to claim countless lives) but because two problems remained to be solved – scurvy and longitude. On a diet of biscuit and salt meat sailors could not avoid suffering the effects of vitamin deficiency after about four weeks. And the calculation of westing and easting were so complex and inaccurate that a captain could not know his position in badly-charted seas. But the eighteenth century had dawned – the century that later historians would call the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. The spirit of enquiry would drive men of science and men of the sea to seek and eventually find answers to these problems. Yet, many were the tragic deaths and great the suffering among mariners before ships could find their way round the world with confidence and survive long spells at sea without the inevitability of disease.

  One of the many English lads who must have thrilled to read the broadsheets announcing Woodes Rogers’s return in 1711 was a fourteen-year-old Staffordshire boy called George Anson. Within weeks this ‘sea-struck’ young man with no family naval connections had engaged himself as a volunteer to Captain Chamberlen aboard HMS Ruby. Thus began a long and extremely distinguished naval career. Anson served throughout a quarter of a century of peace and war and, by 1739, had reached the rank of commodore. That was the year he was appointed to command an expedition which lifted him above the level of devoted but unremarkable officers and ensured him a place in history.

  While Anson had been establishing his career relations between Britain and Spain had continued to deteriorate. The year 1711, which saw Dampier’s return from his third voyage round the world, witnessed also the incorporation, in London, of the South Sea Company. It was modelled on the great overseas trading monopolies, the British and Dutch East India companies and, like them, took its stand upon the ‘right’ of all maritime nations to engage in trade with colonial regimes and foreign merchants in distant lands. The floaters of the new company believed that in 1711 the War of the Spanish Succession was entering its last phase and that under the peace terms the defeated nation would be obliged to concede trading privileges to the victors. This was, in fact, what happened and in 1713, in accordance with the Treaty of Utrecht, the South Sea Company achieved what European statesmen, captains and merchants had sought for over a century and a half: commercial concessions in the Spanish Americas and freedom to ply the seaways between Europe and the New World. Obsessed by the vision of sharing the fabulous mineral wealth of Peru and Mexico and the transpacific trade in oriental wares, investors stampeded to buy stock in the new venture. It became vastly oversubscribed and in 1720 the South Sea Bubble burst and many people were ruined.

  One reason for the collapse was over-optimism in the commercial possibilities of the company. The concessions extracted from Spain were very limited. They did not, for example, include access to the Pacific coast colonies. Moreover, they had been obtained under duress and the government in Madrid winked at violations of the agreement. After two centuries of domination in the New World the Spaniards could not bring themselves to admit rivals to their markets. So the state of cold war continued, constantly exacerbated by acts of piracy on the one hand and high-handed officialdom on the other.

  In 1739 open hostilities once more broke out between Britain and Spain. The insecure government of Robert Walpole decided that some spectacular naval victories would enhance its prestige and also bring the war to a speedy conclusion. With these ends in view the Admiralty launched a two-pronged attack on the Spanish colonies. A large fleet under Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon was despatched to the Caribbean and, in 1740, a smaller force was sent round the Horn in what was projected as an audacious raid on Manila, the centre of Spain’s Orient trade. The instructions actually given to the leader of this latter expedition were vague. He was to ‘annoy and distress’ Spanish shipping and Pacific coast settlements. Specifically he was to seek out and capture the galleon which sailed annually from Acapulco, laden with silver to be exchanged for porcelain, silks and spices. If, in addition, he could take Manila and leave it garrisoned with British troops this would crown his endeavours. The man chosen to command the convoy was the forty-three-year-old George Anson.

  Anson was a man made by the service. Subjected himself to hard discipline and rigid rules, he had become firm, strict and detached in the exercise of command. Those who fell foul of him regarded him as unfeeling, a ‘cold fish’, but Anson knew, like every other occupant of the quarter deck, that the only sure way to survive in the Royal Navy was to go by the book. That was certainly true of the voyage which now faced him.

  He was being sent into the Great South Sea, the most daunting prospect for any captain. But the state of his ships and crews made his problems ten times worse. The navy was badly run down after several years of peace and Vice-Admiral Vernon had the pick of the best vessels and men for his Caribbean fleet. Of Anson’s six ships of the line only the flagship Centurion, the fourth-rate Gloucester and the little sloop Tryall were of recent construction. The Severn (683 tons), Pearle (559 tons) and Wager (559) were old or rebuilt vessels. In addition the convoy had
two merchantmen for carrying supplies, the Anna and the Industry. But Anson must have been more concerned about the men who mustered at Portsmouth during the summer of 1740 than he was about his ships. Of the 1,223 sailors under his command, half were pressed men; some unwilling conscripts from prisons and dockside taverns, others dragged from fields and workshops by rough recruiting officers with numbers to make up. If the prospect of his crews worried him, the sight of his marines, the fighting men who would have to board enemy vessels and storm coastal fortifications, might well have given him nightmares. The 529 ‘soldiers’ consisted of a batch of untrained recruits, whose numbers were made up by Chelsea Hospital veterans forced out of retirement. All of the latter were over sixty, some were over seventy and many were infirm. Some had to be helped aboard, others were carried on stretchers. It was a farce, but the regulations stipulated a regiment of marines for the expedition and a regiment would be sent, whatever casuistry had to be employed in cobbling it together. Even when Anson, on the doctors’ recommendation, sent two old men to shore hospitals as unfit for service, his order was countermanded. Within days of putting to sea the two ‘fighting men’ were dead. They were lucky. They were spared the rigours of a voyage which killed every one of their Chelsea colleagues, and many more besides. Of the 1,939 officers and men (excluding the two merchant crews) who embarked, 1,051 died on the voyage. A further 700 or so deserted or came home on the two ships which were forced to turn back. Those statistics have to be borne in mind in any retelling of the remarkable, brave and ‘successful’ voyage of the Centurion.

  The fleet got under way on 20 September but could not immediately set forth on its westerly course because the Admiralty, determined to extract the last ounce of duty from ships and men, had encumbered Anson’s instructions with distractions. He had to escort merchant ships across the Bay of Biscay and force all foreign vessels he came across to identify themselves. Because members of the convoy were frequently being sent to chase after unidentified craft, it took five weeks to reach Madeira, the first revictualling point.

  On 3 November they set out on the Atlantic crossing, having loaded as much provisions as the holds could carry. That meant that as the ships, sitting low in the water, encountered the light airs and humidity of the Doldrums their lower gun ports had to be kept closed. This turned the crews’ living quarters into floating slums. Sailors and marines lived in cramped conditions anyway, their hammocks slung in the confined spaces between the cannon, but the oppressive heat and lack of ventilation, coupled with the rapid spread of disease turned the gun decks into filthy, creaking, airless hovels, where the stench was unimaginably foul. Ship’s fever and dysentery seeped along the vessels from stem to stern. Men too weak to crawl to the ‘heads’ urinated and emptied their bowels where they lay. The only treatment the surgeons and their assistants could offer was the distribution of laxatives among the sick, which only made conditions worse. For the sufferers death must have seemed a welcome alternative to pain, delirium and the inescapable stink of vomit and excrement. Burials at sea became almost daily occurrences:

  November 26th 1740 . . . Richard Pearce an invalid deceased . . .

  November 29th 1740 . . . Amos Gordon and Edward Major, seamen, departed this life . . .

  December 12th 1740 . . . Mr Robert Weldon our purser being quite worn out departed this life . . .

  December 15th 1740 . . . David Redman a marine departed this life . . .5

  It is, of course, true that the homes ashore from which many of the men came were dank and insanitary. But, even when due allowance has been made for that, it remains a fact that, for the lower ranks, life aboard a man-of-war was ghastly even by contemporary standards.

  It was 21 December before they could make landfall at St Catherine’s Island off the Brazilian coast (where the modern city of Florianopolis is situated). Here those well enough enjoyed fresh meat, fruit and vegetables, while the sick were carried ashore and housed under canvas. It was a hazardous place to stay any length of time, for, though the colony was Portuguese, there was a Spanish base only six hundred miles away on the Plate estuary. An enemy convoy, alerted by the treacherous governor of St Catherine’s, did in fact set out in search of Anson’s fleet and only the incompetence of its commander prevented a confrontation. The English were detained a whole month by the need for extensive repairs to their ships. The enforced rest did not help the stricken crews. The humid atmosphere sapped their energy and they were plagued with disease-carrying mosquitoes. Moreover, some men bartered the clothes off their backs for gold and silver ornaments. St Catherine’s was a haven for pirates and brigands and the markets were well-stocked with stolen property at temptingly cheap prices. Parting with a jerkin or a shirt did not seem to matter much in the subtropics but warm clothing would be sorely missed when the ships were sailing within ten degrees of the Antarctic Circle.

  Anson left St Catherine’s on 18 January, made one more rendezvous with the fleet at desolate Port St Julian and, on 27 February, led his ships towards Cape Horn:

  . . . from this time forward we met with nothing but disasters and accidents. Never were the passions of hope and fear so much exercised; the very elements seemed combined against us. I had to endure such fatigues from the severity of the weather, and the duty which the nature and charge of the sloop brought upon me, that really life is not worth preserving at the expense of such hardships.6

  So wrote Philip Saumarez, recently promoted to command of the Tryall, on the death of her captain. Anson had missed the best weather and for over two months his weak and dwindling crews had to work the ships against storms which beat down almost relentlessly out of the west and north. Snow, hail, fog and mountainous seas beset the fleet as it steered well to the south, hoping to give the spiny edge of the continent a wide berth:

  March 11th 1741 . . . at 4 p.m. had set weather foresail, in doing which our men suffered extremely. The vessel frequently rolling them under water as they lay upon the yard, several of them were so benumbed as to be obliged to be helped in . . .

  March 19th 1741. The whole part squally with snow . . . Our people much began to grow sickly and impatient at the long run of tempestuous weather . . .

  March 23rd 1741. Blew very hard with a large, hollow sea breaking continually over us. Our masts and rigging all coated with frozen snow and ice . . .

  April 24th 1741 . . . at 5 a.m., the wind increasing, attempted to hand the main topsail but, being at the time weakly manned and the clew lines and buntlines breaking and the sheets half flown, . . . the sail soon split, and by its violent shakings endangering the head of the mast, we were obliged to cut him from the yard. At 8 brought to hand the foresails, but then at the first shake split and beat about the yard in such a manner as rendered it impracticable to go out and hand him. It soon beat to pieces. Our mainsail at the time blowing loose and the clew grommets, buntlines and leech lines breaking, were obliged to lower the yard down to secure the sail. On lowering the fore-yard down likewise, the ship falling broad off in the hollow of the seas, laboured exceedingly, taking prodigous deep rolls and shipped a great quantity of water. At noon had no sight of the squadron.

  May 13th 1741. Gales, rain and squalls on this day with a large hollow sea . . . Arthur James, Vernon Head, seamen, deceased. The latter died suddenly . . .

  May 17th 1741. A continuation of stormy, surprising weather, the elements seeming all confused. In the height of the squall had several violent claps of thunder, before the explosion of which a quick, subtle fire ran along our decks which, bursting, made a report like a pistol and struck several of our men and officers, who with the violence of the blow were black and blue in several places . . .7

  It says much for the discipline and navigational skills of the officers and senior mariners that the ships held together for much of this appalling passage. The fleet frequently had to heave to, taking advantage of temporary lulls in the weather, to help one or other of their number which had lost a mast, damaged a rudder or become disabled in some other
way. In mid-April the captains of the Severn and the Pearle gave up the struggle. Having insufficient men to work their crippled ships they turned back and eventually reached England with battered vessels and skeleton crews. The rest of the fleet, eventually scattered, broke through into the Pacific still at the mercy of shrieking winds, rearing seas and racing currents. The Wager survived till, six hundred miles up the ragged coast of West Patagonia, she was caught on a lee shore and driven hard upon the rocks. A hundred and forty of her crew escaped the waves only to be confronted by the likelihood of starvation on a friendless beach. What followed was one of the most remarkable stories of survival in maritime history. After mutinying against their incompetent and pig-headed captain, the majority set out by boat on a three-thousand-mile journey through the Straits of Magellan and up the east coast to the mouth of the Rio Grande. Captain Cheap and his small band of supporters, including Midshipman John Byron, of whom we shall hear more, had a scarcely less adventurous escape. A hazardous rescue by Indians, who took them up the coast in flimsy canoes, was followed by their arrest by Spaniards who took them to Valparaiso. But their captors treated them well and eventually sent them back to Europe.

  What makes it even more remarkable that most of Anson’s ships got round the Horn was the fact that their captains had imprecise and inaccurate information. The charts compiled by early mariners – usually under appalling conditions – bore little relation to reality. It was still impossible to calculate longitude accurately and some chart markings were as much as two hundred miles out. Anson, knowing how unreliable his information was, bore well to the south so as to avoid being driven on-shore. But he was still deceived by the lie of the land – with almost fatal results:

  April 13th 1741 . . . Squally. At 1 a.m., providentially clearing up, discerned land right ahead about 2 leagues . . . This was a most unexpected sight, esteeming ourselves at that time near 200 leagues off . . . The Commander immediately made the signal to stand to the south West.8