SURRENDER OF THE “CARMELO.”
A day or two afterwards, they rejoined the Gloucester, and found that its captain had taken a couple of small prizes, one of them with a cargo of wine, brandy, and olives in jars, and about £7,000 in specie. The people on the other, which was hardly more than a large boat or launch, pleaded poverty, and that their cargo was only cotton. The men on the barge had surprised them at dinner upon pigeon pie served on silver dishes, and suspicion was aroused, which subsided when some little examination had been instituted. [pg 57]When the packages, however, were more carefully examined on board the Gloucester, a considerable quantity of doubloons and dollars, to the amount of near £12,000, was discovered concealed among the cotton. Before leaving the South American coast, Anson sent fifty-nine prisoners, in two well-equipped launches taken from his prizes, to Acapulco, where they arrived safely, and spoke highly of the treatment they had received.
Anson was now on his way to the China Seas, to intercept, if possible, the Manilla galleon, of which he had received some tidings. On the voyage it became necessary to abandon the Gloucester. Besides the loss of masts, which were literally rotted out of her, she was tumbling to pieces from sheer rottenness; and when her captain reported on her condition, she had seven feet of water in the hold, although his officers and men had been kept constantly at the pumps for the past twenty-four hours. Her crew had become greatly reduced in numbers, and out of her total complement of ninety-seven, officers included, only sixteen men and eleven boys were capable of keeping the deck. The removal of the Gloucester’s people, and such stores as could most easily be taken, occupied two days. It was with difficulty that the prize-money taken in the South Seas was secured; the prize goods were necessarily abandoned. “Their sick men, amounting to nearly seventy, were conveyed into the boats with as much care as the circumstances of that time would permit; but three or four of them expired as they were hoisting them into the Centurion.” The Gloucester was set on fire in the evening, but did not blow up till six o’clock the following morning.
At Tinian, one of the Ladrone Islands, Anson stopped some time, refreshing his worn-out crew, and strengthening the ship. The island abounded in cattle, hogs, and poultry, running wild; in oranges, limes, lemons, cocoa-nuts, and bread-fruit. “The country did by no means resemble that of an uninhabited and uncultivated place; but had much more the air of a magnificent plantation, where large lawns and stately woods had been laid out together with great skill, and where the whole had been so artfully combined, and so judiciously adapted to the slopes of the hills and the inequalities of the ground, as to produce a most striking effect, and to do honour to the invention of the contriver.” These compliments to Nature may often be paralleled in writers of the last century. When they had dropped anchor, such was the weakness of the crew that it took them five hours to furl their sails. “All the hands we could muster capable of standing at a gun,” says the narrator, “amounted to no more than seventy-one, most of whom, too, were incapable of duty, except on the greatest emergencies. This, inconsiderable as it may appear, was the whole force we could collect in our present enfeebled condition from the united crews of the Centurion, the Gloucester, and the Tryal, which, when we departed from England, consisted of near a thousand hands.” Some Indians ashore fled when they landed, leaving their huts, one of which, used as a large storehouse, was converted into a hospital for the sick, one hundred and twenty-eight in number. Numbers of these were so helpless that they had to be carried from the boats, the commodore assisting, as he had before at Juan Fernandez, and the officers following suit. The poor invalids soon felt the benefit of the abundant fresh fruits and water; and although twenty-one were buried in the first and succeeding day, they did not lose above ten more during the two months of their stay at the island.
One of the drawbacks of a stay at Tinian was the roadstead, which, with its coral bottom, afforded a bad anchorage during the western monsoons. This was convincingly proved to the people of the Centurion. In the third week of September the wind blew with such fury that all communication with the shore was cut off, as no boat could live in the sea raised by it. The small bower cable, and afterwards their best bower, parted. The waves broke over the devoted ship, and the long-boat, at that time moored astern, was on a sudden canted so high that it broke the transom of the commodore’s cabin on the quarter-deck, and was itself stove to pieces, the poor boat-keeper, though extremely bruised, being saved almost by a miracle. The end of all this was that the ship was driven to sea, leaving Anson, several officers, and a great part of the crew on shore, amounting in the whole to one hundred and thirteen persons. The poor wretches on the ship expected each moment to be their last, as they were altogether too few and weak to work a large vessel.
“The storm which drove the Centurion to sea blew with too much turbulence to permit either the commodore or any of the people on shore to hear the guns which she fired as signals of distress; and the frequent glare of the lightning had prevented the explosions from being observed; so that when at daybreak it was perceived from the shore that the ship was missing, there was the utmost consternation amongst them, for much the greatest part of them immediately concluded that she was lost.” Anson, whatever he thought himself, did all in his power to reason them out of the idea, and immediately proposed that if she did not return in a few days they should cut in half a small bark, a Spanish prize they had taken, and lengthen her about twelve feet, which would enable her to carry them all to China. After some days the men began to consider this their only chance, and worked zealously at their allotted employments. These were interrupted one day by “A sail!” being announced. Presently a second was descried, which quite destroyed the conjecture that it was the ship herself. The revulsion of feeling in Anson’s bosom was so strong, that for once he was quite unmanned, and retired to his tent, with the bitter feeling that now he could not hope to signalise the expedition by any great exploit. He was, however, soon relieved by finding that the boats were Indian proas, which, after cruising off the island for a time, suddenly departed, and were lost to sight. The recital of the details connected with the transformation of the bark would be tedious; suffice it to say, that they had to manufacture many of the necessary tools, cut down trees, and saw them into planks, and dig a dry dock, while others were employed in collecting provisions. They were much mortified to find that all the powder ashore did not amount to more than ninety charges. What if the Spaniards should appear at this juncture?
However, in spite of all obstacles, they had proceeded so far with their work as to have fixed upon a date for their departure from the island. “But their project and labours were now drawing to speedier and happier conclusion; for, on the 11th of October, in the afternoon, one of the Gloucester’s men, being upon a hill in the middle of the island, perceived the Centurion at a distance, and, running down with his utmost speed towards the landing-place, he in the way saw some of his comrades, to whom he hallooed out with great ecstasy, ‘The ship! the ship!’ ” It was indeed the ship; and when [pg 59]Anson heard of it, we can well believe that he broke through “the equable and unvaried character” he had hitherto preserved. The men were in a perfect state of frenzy. A boat with eighteen men, and fresh meats and fruits, was sent off to the Centurion, which came to anchor next day. She had been nearly three weeks absent. The chaplain who has left us the narrative of Anson’s voyage was on board at the time. He describes their deplorable condition in a leaky ship, with three cables hanging loose, from one of which dragged their only remaining anchor; not a gun lashed or port closed; shrouds loose, and topmasts unrigged, and no sails which could be set except the mizen. The pumps alone gave employment for the whole of the available crew. “In these exigencies,” says he, “no rank or office exempted any person from the manual application and bodily labour of a common sailor. They eventually raised their sheet anchor, which had been dragging at the bows, got up their mainyard, and generally got the ship in something like sailing trim. They were quite as rejoiced to see the island once more as were their companions to see them.”
After a long stay at Macao, where the Chinese officials put all kinds of obstacles in the way of refitting and provisioning his ship, Anson set sail for the express purpose of intercepting the Manilla galleon or galleons, which, indeed, had been the object of his long cruise off Mexico and South America. The annual ship plying between Acapulco and Manilla, and vice versâ, was always richly laden with the best the Spanish colonies afforded, and all on board the Centurion were now eager for the fray. Anson determined to lay off Cape Spiritu Santo, Samal (one of the Philippine group of islands), as the galleons always made that land first on the voyage to Manilla. It was a month after they had gained the station that the coveted prize hove in sight. “On this a general joy spread through the whole ship.” The Spaniards had determined to risk the fight, and it is needless to say that Anson was ready for them. He picked out about thirty of his choicest marksmen, whom he distributed among the tops, and they eventually did great execution. “As he had not hands enough remaining to quarter a sufficient number to each great gun in the customary manner, he therefore on his lower tier fixed only two men to each gun, who were to be solely employed in loading it, whilst the rest of his people were divided into different gangs of ten or twelve men each, who were continually moving about the decks, to run out and fire such guns as were loaded. By this management he was enabled to make use of all his guns; and instead of whole broadsides, with intervals between them, he kept up a constant fire without intermission; whence he doubted not to procure very signal advantages. For it is common with the Spaniards to fall down upon the decks when they see a broadside preparing, and to continue in that posture till it is given; after which they rise again, and presuming the danger to be for some time over, work their guns and fire with great briskness, till another broadside is ready; but the firing gun by gun, in the manner directed by the commodore, rendered this practice of theirs impossible.” Several squalls of wind and rain about noon often obscured the galleon from their sight; but when the weather cleared up she was observed resolutely lying to, waiting her impending doom. Towards one o’clock the Centurion hoisted her colours, the enemy being within gunshot. Anson noted that the Spaniards had neglected to clear the decks, as they were still engaged in throwing overboard cattle [pg 60]and lumber; and as all is supposed to be fair in war, he determined to worry them at once, and ordered the chase-guns to be fired into them. The galleon returned the fire with two of her stern chase-guns; “and the Centurion getting her sprit-sail-yard fore and aft, that if necessary she might be ready for boarding, the Spaniards, in a bravado, rigged their sprit-sail-yard fore and aft likewise. Soon after, the Centurion came abreast of the enemy, within pistol-shot, keeping to the leeward of them, with a view of preventing their putting before the wind, and gaining the port of Talapay, from which they were about seven leagues distant. And now the engagement began in earnest, and for the first half-hour Mr. Anson over-reached the galleon, and lay on her bow, where, by the great wideness of his ports, he could traverse almost all his guns upon the enemy, whilst the galleon could only bring a part of hers to bear. Immediately on the commencement of the action, the mats with which the galleon had stuffed her netting took fire, and burnt violently, blazing up half as high as the mizen-top. This accident, supposed to be caused by the Centurion’s wads, threw the enemy into the utmost terror, and also alarmed the commodore, for he feared lest the galleon should be burnt, and lest he himself might suffer by her driving on board him. However, the Spaniards at last freed themselves from the fire by cutting away the netting, and tumbling the whole mass which was in flames into the sea. All this interval, the Centurion kept her first advantageous position, firing her cannon with great regularity and briskness; whilst at the same time the galleon’s decks lay open to her top-men, who, having at their first volley driven the Spaniards from their tops, made prodigious havoc with their small-arms, killing or wounding every officer but one that appeared on the quarter-deck, and wounding in particular the general of the galleon himself.”
Then for a little the Centurion lost the superiority of her original position; but still her grape-shot raked the Spaniard’s decks with such cruel precision that they were covered with the dead and dying, encumbering the movements of those still fighting, who kept up as brisk a fire as they could. But the general himself was pretty nearly hors de combat, while the Spanish officers were rushing hither and thither, endeavouring vainly to keep the now disheartened men at their posts. They made one last effort, pointed and fired five or six guns with more precision than usual, and then yielded the contest. The galleon’s colours had been singed off the ensign-staff in the beginning of the engagement, so she had to haul down the royal standard from her main-top-gallant-mast head, “the person who was employed to perform this office having been in imminent peril of being killed, had not the commodore, who perceived what he was about, given express orders to his people to desist from firing.” And so the great Nostra Signora de Cabadonga became Anson’s prize.
