A voyage round the world in the years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV

by Baron George Anson Anson

This vessel, the Anna pink, was, as I have observed, the last that joined the commodore at Juan Fernandes. The remaining ships of the squadron were the Severn, the Pearl, and the Wager store-ship. The Severn and Pearl parted company with the squadron off Cape Noir, and, as we afterwards learnt, put back to the Brazils, so that of all the ships which came into the South Seas, the Wager, Captain Cheap, was the only one that was missing. This ship had on board a few field-pieces mounted for land-service, together with some cohorn mortars, and several kinds of artillery stores and pioneers' tools intended for the operations on shore. Therefore, as the enterprise on Baldivia had been resolved on for the first undertaking of the squadron, Captain Cheap was extremely solicitous that these materials, which were in his custody, might be ready before Baldivia; that if the squadron should possibly rendezvous there (as he knew not the condition they were then reduced to), no delay nor disappointment might be imputed to him.

But whilst the Wager, with these views, was making the best of her way to her first rendezvous off the island of Socoro, whence (as there was little probability of meeting any of the squadron there) she proposed to steer directly for Baldivia, she made the land on the 14th of May, about the latitude of 47° south; and the captain exerting himself on this occasion, in order to get clear of it, he had the misfortune to fall down the after-ladder, and dislocated his shoulder, which rendered him incapable of acting. This accident, together with the crazy condition of the ship, which was little better than a wreck, prevented her from getting off to sea, and entangled her more and more with the land, insomuch that the next morning, at daybreak, she struck on a sunken rock, and soon after bilged and grounded between two small islands at about a musket-shot from the shore.

In this situation the ship continued entire a long time, so that all the crew had it in their power to get safe on shore; but a general confusion taking place, numbers of them, instead of consulting their safety, or reflecting on their calamitous condition, fell to pillaging the ship, arming themselves with the first weapons that came to hand, and threatening to murder all who should oppose them. This frenzy was greatly heightened by the liquors they found on board, with which they got so extremely drunk that some of them, falling down between decks, were drowned, as the water flowed into the wreck, being incapable of raising themselves up and retreating from it. The captain, therefore, having done his utmost to get the whole crew on shore, was at last obliged to leave the mutineers behind him, and to follow his officers, and such as he had been able to prevail on, but he did not fail to send back the boats to persuade those who remained to have some regard to their preservation, though all his efforts were for some time without success. However, the weather next day proving stormy, and there being great danger of the ship's parting, they began to be alarmed with the fears of perishing, and were desirous of getting to land; but it seems their madness had not yet left them, for the boat not appearing to fetch them off so soon as they expected, they at last pointed a four-pounder, which was on the quarter-deck, against the hut, where they knew the captain resided on shore, and fired two shot, which passed but just over it.

From this specimen of the behaviour of part of the crew, it will not be difficult to frame some conjecture of the disorder and anarchy which took place when they at last got all on shore. For the men conceived that, by the loss of the ship, the authority of the officers was at an end, and they being now on a desolate coast, where scarcely any other provisions could be got except what should be saved out of the wreck, this was another unsurmountable source of discord, since the working upon the wreck, and the securing the provisions, so that they might be preserved for future exigences as much as possible, and the taking care that what was necessary for their present subsistance might be sparingly and equally distributed, were matters not to be brought about but by discipline and subordination; and the mutinous disposition of the people, stimulated by the impulses of immediate hunger, rendered every regulation made for this purpose ineffectual, so that there were continual concealments, frauds, and thefts, which animated each man against his fellow, and produced infinite feuds and contests. And hence there was a perverse and malevolent disposition constantly kept up amongst them, which rendered them utterly ungovernable.

Besides these heart-burnings occasioned by petulence and hunger, there was another important point which set the greatest part of the people at variance with the captain. This was their differing with him in opinion on the measures to be pursued in the present exigency: for the captain was determined, if possible, to fit up the boats in the best manner he could, and to proceed with them to the northward, since having with him above an hundred men in health, and having gotten some fire-arms and ammunition from the wreck, he did not doubt but they could master any Spanish vessel they should encounter with in those seas, and he thought he could not fail of meeting with one in the neighbourhood of Chiloe or Baldivia, in which, when he had taken her, he intended to proceed to the rendezvous at Juan Fernandes; and he farther insisted that should they light on no prize by the way, yet the boats alone would easily carry them thither. But this was a scheme that, however prudent, was no ways relished by the generality of his people; for, being quite jaded with the distresses and dangers they had already run through, they could not think of prosecuting an enterprise farther which had hitherto proved so disastrous. The common resolution therefore was to lengthen the long-boat, and with that and the rest of the boats to steer to the southward, to pass through the Streights of Magellan, and to range along the east side of South America till they should arrive at Brazil, where they doubted not to be well received, and to procure a passage to Great Britain. This project was at first sight infinitely more hazardous and tedious than what was proposed by the captain; but as it had the air of returning home, and flattered them with the hopes of bringing them once more to their native country, that circumstance alone rendered them inattentive to all its inconveniences, and made them adhere to it with insurmountable obstinacy; so that the captain himself, though he never changed his opinion, was yet obliged to give way to the torrent, and in appearance to acquiesce in this resolution, whilst he endeavoured underhand to give it all the obstruction he could, particularly in the lengthening the long-boat, which he contrived should be of such a size, that though it might serve to carry them to Juan Fernandes, would yet, he hoped, appear incapable of so long a navigation as that to the coast of Brazil.

But the captain, by his steady opposition at first to this favourite project, had much embittered the people against him, to which likewise the following unhappy accident greatly contributed. There was a midshipman whose name was Cozens, who had appeared the foremost in all the refractory proceedings of the crew. He had involved himself in brawls with most of the officers who had adhered to the captain's authority, and had even treated the captain himself with great abuse and insolence. As his turbulence and brutality grew every day more and more intolerable, it was not in the least doubted but there were some violent measures in agitation, in which Cozens was engaged as the ringleader: for which reason the captain, and those about him, constantly kept themselves on their guard. One day the purser, having, by the captain's order, stopped the allowance of a fellow who would not work, Cozens, though the man did not complain to him, intermeddled in the affair with great bitterness, and grossly insulted the purser, who was then delivering out provisions just by the captain's tent, and was himself sufficiently violent. The purser, enraged by his scurrility, and perhaps piqued by former quarrels, cried out, "A mutiny," adding, "The dog has pistols," and then himself fired a pistol at Cozens, which however mist him: but the captain, on this outcry and the report of the pistol, rushed out of his tent, and, not doubting but it had been fired by Cozens as the commencement of a mutiny, he immediately shot him in the head without farther deliberation, and though he did not kill him on the spot, yet the wound proved mortal, and he died about fourteen days after.

However, this incident, though sufficiently displeasing to the people, did yet, for a considerable time, awe them to their duty, and rendered them more submissive to the captain's authority; but at last, when towards the middle of October the long-boat was nearly compleated, and they were preparing to put to sea, the additional provocation he gave them by covertly traversing their project of proceeding through the Streights of Magellan, and their fears that he might at length engage a party sufficient to overturn this favourite measure, made them resolve to make use of the death of Cozens as a reason for depriving him of his command, under pretence of carrying him a prisoner to England, to be tried for murder; and he was accordingly confined under a guard. But they never intended to carry him with them, as they too well knew what they had to apprehend on their return to England, if their commander should be present to confront them: and therefore, when they were just ready to put to sea, they set him at liberty, leaving him and the few who chose to take their fortunes with him no other embarkation but the yawl, to which the barge was afterwards added, by the people on board her being prevailed on to return back.

When the ship was wreckt, there were alive on board the Wager near an hundred and thirty persons; of these above thirty died during their stay upon the place, and near eighty went off in the long-boat and the cutter to the southward: so that there remained with the captain, after their departure, no more than nineteen persons, which, however, were as many as the barge and the yawl, the only embarkations left them, could well carry off. It was the 13th of October, five months after the shipwreck, that the long-boat, converted into a schooner, weighed, and stood to the southward, giving the captain, who, with Lieutenant Hamilton of the land forces, and the surgeon, were then on the beach, three cheers at their departure: and on the 29th of January following they arrived at Rio Grande, on the coast of Brazil; but having, by various accidents, left about twenty of their people on shore at the different places they touched at, and a greater number having perished by hunger during the course of their navigation, there were no more than thirty of them remaining when they arrived in that port. Indeed, the undertaking of itself was a most extraordinary one; for (not to mention the length of the run) the vessel was scarcely able to contain the number that first put to sea in her, and their stock of provisions (being only what they had saved out of the ship) was extremely slender. They had this additional misfortune besides, that the cutter, the only boat they had with them, soon broke away from the stern, and was staved to pieces; so that when their provision and their water failed them, they had frequently no means of getting on shore to search for a fresh supply.

After the long-boat and cutter were gone, the captain, and those who were left with him, proposed to pass to the northward in the barge and yawl: but the weather was so bad, and the difficulty of subsisting so great, that it was two months from the departure of the long-boat before he was able to put to sea. It seems the place where the Wager was cast away was not a part of the continent, as was first imagined, but an island at some distance from the main, which afforded no other sorts of provision but shell-fish and a few herbs; and as the greatest part of what they had gotten from the ship was carried off in the long-boat, the captain and his people were often in extreme want of food, especially as they chose to preserve what little sea provisions remained, for their store when they should go to the northward. During their residence at this island, which was by the seamen denominated Wager's Island, they had now and then a straggling canoe or two of Indians, which came and bartered their fish and other provisions with our people. This was some little relief to their necessities, and at another season might perhaps have been greater: for as there were several Indian huts on the shore, it was supposed that in some years, during the height of summer, many of these savages might resort thither to fish: indeed, from what has been related in the account of the Anna pink, it should seem to be the general practice of those Indians to frequent this coast in the summer time for the benefit of fishing, and to retire in the winter into a better climate, more to the northward.

On this mention of the Anna pink, I cannot but observe how much it is to be lamented that the Wager's people had no knowledge of her being so near them on the coast; for as she was not above thirty leagues distant from them, and came into their neighbourhood about the same time the Wager was lost, and was a fine roomy ship, she could easily have taken them all on board, and have carried them to Juan Fernandes. Indeed, I suspect she was still nearer to them than what is here estimated; for several of the Wager's people, at different times, heard the report of a cannon, which I conceive could be no other than the evening gun fired from the Anna pink, especially as what was heard at Wager's Island was about the same time of the day. But to return to Captain Cheap.