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

by Baron George Anson Anson

But the most prudent dispositions carry with them only a probability of success, and can never ensure its certainty, since those chances which it was reasonable to overlook in deliberation are sometimes of most powerful influence in execution. Thus in the present case, the distress of the Tryal, and our quitting our station to assist her (events which no degree of prudence could either foresee or obviate), gave an opportunity to all the ships bound to Valparaiso to reach that port without molestation during this unlucky interval. So that though, after leaving Captain Saunders, we were very expeditious in regaining our station, where we got the 29th at noon, yet in plying on and off till the 6th of October we had not the good fortune to discover a sail of any sort: and then having lost all hopes of meeting with better fortune by a longer stay, we made sail to the leeward of the port, in order to join our prizes; but when we arrived off the highland where they were directed to cruise, we did not find them, though we continued there four or five days. We supposed that some chace had occasioned their leaving their station, and therefore we proceeded down the coast to the highland of Nasca, which was the second rendezvous, where Captain Saunders was directed to join us. Here we got on the 21st, and were in great expectation of falling in with some of the enemy's vessels, as both the accounts of former voyages and the information of our prisoners assured us that all ships bound to Callao constantly make this land, to prevent the danger of running to the leeward of the port. But notwithstanding the advantages of this station, we saw no sail till the 2d of November, when two ships appeared in sight together; we immediately gave them chace, and soon perceived that they were the Tryal's and Centurion's prizes. As they had the wind of us, we brought to and waited their coming up, when Captain Saunders came on board us, and acquainted the commodore that he had cleared the Tryal pursuant to his orders, and having scuttled her, he remained by her till she sunk, but that it was the 4th of October before this was effected; for there ran so large and hollow a sea, that the sloop, having neither masts nor sails to steady her, rolled and pitched so violently, that it was impossible for a boat to lay alongside of her for the greatest part of the time: and during this attendance on the sloop, they were all driven so far to the north-west that they were afterwards obliged to stretch a long way to the westward to regain the ground they had lost; which was the reason that we had not met with them on their station, as we expected. We found they had not been more fortunate in their cruise than we were, for they had seen no vessel since they separated from us. The little success we all had, and our certainty that had any ships been stirring in these seas for some time past we must have met with them, made us believe that the enemy at Valparaiso, on the missing of the two ships we had taken, had suspected us to be in the neighbourhood, and had consequently laid an embargo on all the trade in the southern parts. We likewise apprehended that they might by this time be fitting out the men-of-war at Callao, as we knew that it was no uncommon thing for an express from Valparaiso to reach Lima in twenty-nine or thirty days, and it was now more than fifty since we had taken our first prize. These apprehensions of an embargo along the coast, and of the equipment of the Spanish squadron at Callao, determined the commodore to hasten down to the leeward of Callao, and to join Captain Michel (who was stationed off Paita) as soon as possible, that our strength being united we might be prepared to give the ships from Callao a warm reception, if they dared to put to sea. With this view we bore away the same afternoon, taking particular care to keep at such a distance from the shore that there might be no danger of our being discovered from thence; for we knew that all the country ships were commanded, under the severest penalty, not to sail by the port of Callao without stopping; and as this order was constantly complied with, we should undoubtedly be known for enemies if we were seen to act contrary to it. In this new navigation, not being certain whether we might not meet the Spanish squadron in our route, the commodore took on board the Centurion part of his crew with which he had formerly manned the Carmelo. And now standing to the northward, we, before night came on, had a view of the small island called St. Gallen, which bore from us N.N.E.½E., about seven leagues distant. This island lies in the latitude of about fourteen degrees south, and about five miles to the northward of a highland called Morro Veijo, or the old man's head. I mention this island and the highland near it more particularly because between them is the most eligible station on that coast for cruising upon the enemy, as hereabouts all ships bound to Callao, whether from the northward or the southward, run well in with the land. By the 5th of November, at three in the afternoon, we were advanced within view of the highland of Barranca, lying in the latitude of 10° 36' south, bearing from us N.E. by E., distant eight or nine leagues; and an hour and an half afterwards we had the satisfaction so long wished for, of seeing a sail. She first appeared to leeward, and we all immediately gave her chace; but the Centurion so much outsailed the two prizes, that we soon ran them out of sight, and gained considerably on the chace. However, night coming on before we came up with her, we, about seven o'clock, lost sight of her, and were in some perplexity what course to steer; but at last Mr. Anson resolved, as we were then before the wind, to keep all his sails set, and not to change his course: for though we had no doubt but the chace would alter her course in the night, yet, as it was uncertain what tack she would go upon, it was thought prudent to keep on our course, as we must by this means unavoidably come near her, rather than to change it on conjecture, when, if we should mistake, we must infallibly lose her. Thus then we continued the chace about an hour and an half in the dark, some one or other on board us constantly imagining they discerned her sails right ahead of us; but at length Mr. Brett, our second lieutenant, did really discover her about four points on the larboard-bow, steering off to the seaward. We immediately clapped the helm a-weather, and stood for her, and in less than an hour came up with her, and having fired fourteen shot at her, she struck. Our third lieutenant, Mr. Dennis, was sent in the boat with sixteen men to take possession of the prize, and to return the prisoners to our ship. This vessel was named the Santa Teresa de Jesus, built at Guaiaquil, of about three hundred tuns burthen, and was commanded by Bartolome Urrunaga, a Biscayer. She was bound from Guaiaquil to Callao; her loading consisted of timber, cocao, coconuts, tobacco, hides, Pito thread (which is very strong, and is made of a species of grass), Quito cloth, wax, etc. The specie on board her was inconsiderable, being principally small silver money, and not amounting to more than £170 sterling. It is true her cargoe was of great value, could we have disposed of it: but the Spaniards having strict orders never to ransom their ships, all the goods that we took in these seas, except what little we had occasion for ourselves, were of no advantage to us. Indeed, though we could make no profit thereby ourselves, it was some satisfaction to us to consider that it was so much really lost to the enemy, and that the despoiling them was no contemptible branch of that service in which we were now employed by our country.

Besides our prize's crew, which amounted to forty-five hands, there were on board her ten passengers, consisting of four men and three women, who were natives of the country, born of Spanish parents, together with three black slaves that attended them. The women were a mother and her two daughters, the eldest about twenty-one, and the youngest about fourteen. It is not to be wondered at that women of these years should be excessively alarmed at the falling into the hands of an enemy, whom, from the former outrages of the buccaneers, and by the artful insinuations of their priests, they had been taught to consider as the most terrible and brutal of all mankind. These apprehensions too were in the present instance exaggerated by the singular beauty of the youngest of the women, and the riotous disposition which they might well expect to find in a set of sailors who had not seen a woman for near a twelvemonth. Full of these terrors, the women all hid themselves upon our officer's coming on board, and when they were found out, it was with great difficulty that he could persuade them to approach the light. However, he soon satisfied them, by the humanity of his conduct, and by his assurances of their future security and honourable treatment, that they had nothing to fear. Nor were these assurances of the officer invalidated in the sequel: for the commodore being informed of the matter, sent directions that they should be continued on board their own ship, with the use of the same apartments, and with all the other conveniencies they had enjoyed before, giving strict orders that they should receive no kind of inquietude or molestation whatever: and that they might be the more certain of having these orders complied with, or have the means of complaining, if they were not, the commodore permitted the pilot, who in Spanish ships is generally the second person on board, to stay with them, as their guardian and protector. The pilot was particularly chosen for this purpose by Mr. Anson, as he seemed to be extremely interested in all that concerned the women, and had at first declared that he was married to the youngest of them, though it afterwards appeared, both from the information of the rest of the prisoners, and other circumstances, that he asserted this with a view the better to secure them from the insults they expected on their first falling into our hands. By this compassionate and indulgent behaviour of the commodore, the consternation of our female prisoners entirely subsided, and they continued easy and cheerful during the whole time they were with us, as I shall have occasion to mention more particularly hereafter.

I have before observed, that at the beginning of this chace the Centurion ran her two consorts out of sight, on which account we lay by all the night, after we had taken the prize, for Captain Saunders and Lieutenant Saumarez to join us, firing guns and making false fires every half-hour, to prevent their passing by us unobserved; but they were so far astern that they neither heard nor saw any of our signals, and were not able to come up with us till broad daylight. When they had joined us, we proceeded together to the northward, being now four sail in company. We here found the sea, for many miles round us, of a beautiful red colour. This, upon examination, we imputed to an immense quantity of spawn spread upon its surface; for, taking up some of the water in a wine glass, it soon changed from a dirty aspect to a clear crystal, with only some red globules of a slimy nature floating on the top. At present having a supply of timber on board our new prize, the commodore ordered our boats to be repaired, and a swivel gun-stock to be fixed in the bow both of the barge and pinnace, in order to encrease their force, in case we should be obliged to have recourse to them for boarding ships, or for any attempts on shore.

As we stood from hence to the northward, nothing remarkable occurred for two or three days, though we spread our ships in such a manner that it was not probable any vessel of the enemy could escape us. In our run along this coast we generally observed that there was a current which set us to the northward at the rate of ten or twelve miles each day. And now, being in about eight degrees of south latitude, we began to be attended with vast numbers of flying fish and bonitos, which were the first we saw after our departure from the coast of Brazil. But it is remarkable that on the east side of South America they extended to a much higher latitude than they do on the west side, for we did not lose them on the coast of Brazil till we approached the southern tropic. The reason for this diversity is doubtless the different degrees of heat obtaining in the same latitude on different sides of that continent. And on this occasion, I must beg leave to make a short digression on the heat and cold of different climates, and on the varieties which occur in the same place in different parts of the year, and in different places in the same degree of latitude.

The ancients conceived that of the five zones into which they divided the surface of the globe, two only were habitable, supposing that the heat between the tropics, and the cold within the polar circles, were too intense to be supported by mankind. The falsehood of this reasoning has been long evinced; but the particular comparisons of the heat and cold of these various climates has as yet been very imperfectly considered. However, enough is known safely to determine this position, that all places between the tropics are far from being the hottest on the globe, as many of those within the polar circles are far from enduring that extreme degree of cold to which their situation should seem to subject them: that is to say, that the temperature of a place depends much more upon other circumstances than upon its distance from the pole, or its proximity to the equinoctial.

This proposition relates to the general temperature of places, taking the whole year round; and in this sense it cannot be denied that the city of London, for instance, enjoys much warmer seasons than the bottom of Hudson's Bay, which is nearly in the same latitude with it, but where the severity of the winter is so great that it will scarcely permit the hardiest of our garden plants to live. And if the comparison be made between the coast of Brazil and the western shore of South America, as, for example, betwixt Bahia and Lima, the difference will be still more considerable; for though the coast of Brazil is extremely sultry, yet the coast of the South Seas in the same latitude is perhaps as temperate and tolerable as any part of the globe, since in ranging along it we did not once meet with so warm weather as is frequent in a summer's day in England: which was still the more remarkable as there never fell any rains to refresh and cool the air.

The causes of this temperature in the South Seas are not difficult to be assigned, and shall be hereafter mentioned. I am now only solicitous to establish the truth of this assertion, that the latitude of a place alone is no rule whereby to judge of the degree of heat and cold which obtains there. Perhaps this position might be more briefly confirmed by observing, that on the tops of the Andes, though under the equinoctial, the snow never melts the whole year round: a criterion of cold stronger than what is known to take place in many parts far removed within the polar circle.

I have hitherto considered the temperature of the air all the year through, and the gross estimations of heat and cold which every one makes from his own sensation. If this matter be examined by means of thermometers, which in respect to the absolute degree of heat and cold are doubtless the most unerring evidences—if this be done, the result will be indeed most wonderful, since it will hence appear that the heat in very high latitudes, as at Petersburgh, for instance, is at particular times much greater than any that has been hitherto observed between the tropics; and that even at London, in the year 1746, there was the part of one day considerably hotter than what was at any time felt by a ship of Mr. Anson's squadron in running from hence to Cape Horn and back again, and passing twice under the sun; for in the summer of that year, the thermometer in London (being one of those graduated according to the method of Farenheit) stood once at 78°; and the greatest height at which a thermometer of the same kind stood in the foregoing ship I find to be 76°: this was at St. Catherine's, in the latter end of December, when the sun was within about three degrees of the vertex. And as to Petersburgh, I find, by the acts of the academy established there, that in the year 1734, on the 20th and 25th of July, the thermometer rose to 98° in the shade, that is, it was twenty-two divisions higher than it was found to be at St. Catherine's; which is a degree of heat that, were it not authorised by the regularity and circumspection with which the observations seem to have been made, would appear altogether incredible.

If it should be asked how it comes to pass, then, that the heat in many places between the tropics is esteemed so violent and insufferable, when it appears, by these instances, that it is sometimes rivalled or exceeded in very high latitudes not far from the polar circle? I should answer that the estimation of heat in any particular place ought not to be founded upon that degree of heat which may now and then obtain there, but is rather to be deduced from the medium observed in a whole season, or perhaps in a whole year; and in this light it will easily appear how much more intense the same degree of heat may prove by being long continued without remarkable variation. For instance, in comparing together St. Catherine's and Petersburgh, we will suppose the summer heat at St. Catherine's to be 76°, and the winter heat to be twenty divisions short of it. I do not make use of this last conjecture upon sufficient observation, but I am apt to suspect that the allowance is full large. Upon this supposition, then, the medium heat all the year round will be 66°, and this perhaps by night as well as day, with no great variation. Now those who have attended to thermometers will readily own that a continuation of this degree of heat for a length of time would, by the generality of mankind, be stiled violent and suffocating; but at Petersburgh, though a few times in the year the heat by the thermometer may be considerably greater than at St. Catherine's, yet, as at other times the cold is immensely sharper, the medium for a year, or even for one season only, would be far short of 66°. For I find that the thermometer at Petersburgh is at least five times greater, from its highest to its lowest point, than what I have supposed to take place at St. Catherine's.

Besides this estimation of the heat of a place, by taking the medium for a considerable time together, there is another circumstance which will still augment the apparent heat of the warmer climates, and diminish that of the colder, though I do not remember to have seen it remarked in any author. To explain myself more distinctly upon this head, I must observe that the measure of absolute heat marked by the thermometer is not the certain criterion of the sensation of heat with which human bodies are affected: for as the presence and perpetual succession of fresh air is necessary to our respiration, so there is a species of tainted or stagnated air often produced by the continuance of great heats, which, being less proper for respiration, never fails to excite in us an idea of sultriness and suffocating warmth much beyond what the heat of the air alone, supposing it pure and agitated, would occasion. Hence it follows, that the mere inspection of the thermometer will never determine the heat which the human body feels from this cause; and hence it follows, too, that the heat in most places between the tropics must be much more troublesome and uneasy than the same degree of absolute heat in a high latitude: for the equability and duration of the tropical heat contribute to impregnate the air with a multitude of steams and vapours from the soil and water, and these being, many of them, of an impure and noxious kind, and being not easily removed, by reason of the regularity of the winds in those parts, which only shift the exhalations from place to place without dispersing them, the atmosphere is by this means rendered less capable of supporting the animal functions, and mankind are consequently affected with what they stile a most intense and stifling heat: whereas in the higher latitudes these vapours are probably raised in smaller quantities, and the irregularity and violence of the winds frequently disperse them, so that, the air being in general pure and less stagnant, the same degree of absolute heat is not attended with that uneasy and suffocating sensation. This may suffice in general with respect to the present speculation; but I cannot help wishing, as it is a subject in which mankind, especially travellers of all sorts, are very much interested, that it were more thoroughly and accurately examined, and that all ships bound to the warmer climates would furnish themselves with thermometers of a known fabric, and would observe them daily, and register their observations; for considering the turn to philosophical inquiries which has obtained in Europe for the last fourscore years, it is incredible how very rarely anything of this kind hath been attended to. As to my own part, I do not recollect that I have ever seen any observations of the heat and cold, either in the East or West Indies, which were made by mariners or officers of vessels, except those made by Mr. Anson's order on board the Centurion, and by Captain Legg on board the Severn, which was another ship of our squadron.