Lost ships and lonely seas

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

To the modern generation, one of the great adventures of seafaring history is familiar only in an eloquent reference of Robert Louis Stevenson, and few readers, I venture to say, have taken the trouble to delve for the facts which inspired the following tribute in the essay called “The English Admirals”:

It was by a hazard that we learned the conduct of the four marines of the Wager. There was no room for these brave fellows in the boat, and they were left behind upon the island to a certain death. They were soldiers, they said, and knew well enough it was their business to die; and as their comrades pulled away, they stood upon the beach, gave three cheers, and cried, “God bless the king!” Now one or two of those who were in the boat escaped, against all likelihood, to tell the story. That was a great thing for us; but surely it cannot, by any possible twisting of human speech, be construed into anything great for the marines.

You may suppose, if you like, that they died hoping their behavior would not be forgotten; or you may suppose they thought nothing of the subject, which is much more likely. What can be the signification of the word “fame” to a private of marines, who cannot read and knows nothing of past history beyond the reminiscences of his grandmother? But whatever supposition you make, the fact is unchanged; and I suppose their bones were already white, before the winds and the waves and the humor of Indian chiefs and governers had decided whether they were to be unknown and useless martyrs or honored heroes. Indeed, I believe this is the lesson: if it is for fame that men do brave actions, they are only silly fellows after all.... If the marines of the Wager gave three cheers and cried “God bless the king,” it was because they liked to do things nobly for their own satisfaction. They were giving their lives, there was no help for that, and they made it a point of self-respect to give them handsomely.

In 1739 the bitter rivalry between England and Spain for the trade and treasure of the New World flamed afresh in war. A squadron of six British men-of-war under Commodore George Anson was sent out to double Cape Horn and vex the dons in their South American ports and on the routes of the Pacific where the lumbering galleons steered for Panama or Manila. With these fighting-vessels went a supply-ship called the Wager, an old East Indiaman which had been armed and filled with stores of every description. Clumsy, rotten, and overladen, the Wager was no better off for a crew, which consisted of sailors long exiled on other voyages and pining for home. The military guard was made up of worn-out old pensioners from Chelsea Hospital, who were very low in their minds at the prospect of so long and hazardous a cruise. They could not be called a dashing lot aboard the Wager, and as for the captain of her his name was Cheap, and he was not much better than that. You shall have the pleasure of damning him as heartily for yourselves as did his forlorn ship’s company.

The crazy old hooker of a store-ship began to go to pieces as soon as she encountered the wild gales and swollen seas off the Horn. Decks were swept, boats smashed, and the mizzenmast carried clean out of her. Disabled and leaking, the Wager was somehow worked into the Pacific; but the captain had no charts of the coast, and he blundered along in the hope of finding the rest of the squadron at the rendezvous, which was the island of Juan Fernandez. He was warned by the first lieutenant, the gunner, and other officers that the floating weed, the flocks of land birds, and the longitude, as they had figured it out, indicated a lee shore not many miles distant. The gunner was a man of sorts and he was bold enough to protest:

“Sir, the ship is a perfect wreck; our mizzenmast gone, and all our people ill or exhausted; there are only twelve fit for duty,—therefore it may be dangerous to fall in with the land.”

Captain Cheap stubbornly held on until he was disabled by a fall on deck which dislocated his shoulder, and confined him to his cabin. The officers were better off without him. On the morning of May 13, 1740, the carpenter’s keen eyesight discerned the lift of land through a rift in the cloudy weather, but the others disagreed with him until they saw a gloomy peak of the Cordilleras. The ship was driving bodily toward the land, and the utmost exertions were made to crowd her offshore; but the sails split in the heavy gale, and so few men were fit for duty that there were no more than three or four active seamen to a watch.

In darkness next morning the Wager struck a sunken rock, and her ancient timbers collapsed. She split open like a pumpkin, rolled on her beam-ends, and lodged against other projections of the reef, with the seas boiling clean over her. Then a mountainous billow or two lifted her clear, and she went reeling inshore, sinking as she ran. Several of the sick men were drowned in their hammocks, and others scrambled on deck to display miraculous recoveries. Because the commander of the ship was worthless and disabled besides, the discipline of the ship in this crisis was abominable. The brave men rallied together as by instinct, and tried to hammer courage and obedience into the frenzied mob. The mate, Mr. Jones, was a man with his two feet under him, and he shouted to the cowards:

“Here, lads, let us not be discouraged. Did you never see a ship amongst breakers before? Come, lend a hand; here is a sheet and there is a brace; lay hold. I doubt not that we can bring her near enough to land to save our lives.”

Mr. Jones thought they were all dead men without a ghost of a show of salvation, as he later confessed, but his exhortations put heart into them, and he was not one to die without a gallant struggle. Soon the wreck of the Wager piled up in the breakers between two huge rocks, where she stayed fast. Dry land was no more than a musket-shot away, and as soon as daylight came the three boats that were left—the barge, the cutter, and the yawl—were launched and instantly filled with men, who tumbled in helter-skelter. The rest of the sailors proceeded to break open casks of wine and brandy and to get so drunk that several were drowned in the ship. The suffering Captain Cheap permitted himself to be lifted out of bed and borne into a boat with most of the commissioned officers, while the master, gunner, and carpenter, who were not gentlemen at all, but very ordinary persons, in fact, remained in the wreck to save what they could of her and to round up the riotous bluejackets and bear a hand with the surviving invalids.