Notable Voyagers, From Columbus to Nordenskiold

by William Henry Giles Kingston; Henry Frith

The prize was called Nuestra Señora de Cabadonga, and was commanded by Don Jeronimo de Montero, a Portuguese by birth, and a skilful and brave officer. The galleon was much larger than the Centurion, had a crew of five hundred and fifty men, and thirty-six guns, besides twenty-eight pidreroes or petards, each of which carried a four-pound ball. She was besides well furnished with small arms, and was provided with boarding nettings.

The treasure she contained amounted to nearly a million and a half of dollars. Scarcely, however, had the galleon struck, and the long-expected wealth she contained become the prize of the English, than a terrible announcement was made to the commodore by one of the lieutenants, who whispered to him that the Centurion was on fire near the powder-room. He received the intelligence with his usual calmness, and, taking care not to alarm the crew, he gave the necessary orders for extinguishing it. Some cartridges had been blown up between deck, in consequence of which a quantity of oakum, near the after-hatchway, close to the powder-room, was on fire. The volumes of smoke which issued from this caused the apprehension that a dangerous fire had broken out.

The crew, led by their officers, set to work to extinguish it. While they were thus engaged, the galleon fell on board the Centurion on the starboard quarter, but she was cleared without doing or receiving any considerable damage. By the exertions of the men, the fire was in a short time got under. The commodore now made the first lieutenant, Mr Saumarez, captain of the prize, appointing her a post ship in his Majesty’s navy.

Most of the prisoners were at once removed on board the Centurion, and judicious arrangements were made for keeping them from rising, which, as they far outnumbered the crew of the Centurion, they might easily have done; indeed, when they saw the men by whom they had been captured, they expressed themselves with great indignation, to be thus beaten by a handful of boys.

All the seamen, with the exception of the wounded, were placed in the hold, and that they might have air, the two hatchways were left open, these hatchways being fitted with a square partition of thick planks, made in the shape of a funnel, which enclosed each hatchway on the lower deck, and reached to that directly over it on the upper deck, rising seven or eight feet above it. It would thus have been extremely difficult for the Spaniards to clamber up. To increase that difficulty four swivels were planted at the mouth of each funnel, and a sentry with a lighted match stood ready to fire into the hold, should they attempt to escape. The officers, amounting to seventeen or eighteen, were lodged in the first lieutenant’s cabin, under a guard of six men, while their general, who was wounded, lay in the commodore’s cabin, with a sentinel placed over him.

As there was a scarcity of water, only a pint a day could be supplied to each prisoner. Of this they could not complain, as the ship’s company had but a pint and a half. Still, they suffered greatly.

All arrangements being made, the Centurion and her prize sailed for Canton. Captain Anson now heard that the Manilla ship, for which he had watched at Acapulco the preceding year, had set sail sooner than the others, and had probably got into the port of Manilla before the Centurion arrived off Cape Espirito Santo. He had thus to regret his long delay at Macao. On her arrival in the river of Canton, a boat, with a mandarin, immediately came off to the Centurion from the forts of Boca Tigris, to inquire what she was and where she came from.

Captain Anson, in reply, gave him an exact account of the ship. The officer, on hearing of the number of guns and the amount of ammunition she had on board, declared that he could not venture to make such a statement to his superiors, who would instantly become alarmed.

Captain Anson’s object was to remain here during the monsoon, and to obtain a supply of provisions for his voyage home. During his stay in the river he had to submit to various annoyances. The Chinese authorities treated him in a way for which they were then and have ever since been notorious. The provisions they promised were not forthcoming, and the traders endeavoured to cheat the strangers in all sorts of ways. The fowls which had been brought on board quickly died, and the crew thought that they had been poisoned. On examining them it was found that they had been crammed with stones and gravel, to increase their weight. The hogs also which had been purchased ready killed had had water injected into them, and even the live ones had had salt given them to increase their thirst, so that they had drunk vast quantities of water, and were inflated. Even at the last, hearing that the barbarians, as they called the English, never ate anything which died of itself, the Chinese managed to drug the animals so that they died before the ship was out of harbour, numbers of boats following to pick up the carcases. Anson’s greatest difficulty was to obtain food, and Anson had himself to go up to Canton, the contractors not having prepared the bread they had promised, nor any other articles of food. At last the authorities had the impudence to demand port dues for the ship. This Captain Anson, answering that she was a man-of-war, and that he had not come to trade, refused to pay. He at last dispatched a letter to the Viceroy, insisting that his various demands should at once be complied with.

He, with some of his officers and a boat’s crew, had gone up to Canton, when a fire broke out in the town, which threatened to burn down the whole place. Chiefly by his and his men’s exertions the fire was got under, although not until a large amount of damage had been done. It consumed a hundred shops and eleven streets full of warehouses. When the fire was subdued, many Chinese merchants came to Captain Anson and requested him that he would allow each of them one of his “soldiers,” as they called his boat’s crew, to guard their warehouses and dwelling-houses, which they feared might be pillaged, should any tumult arise. He granted their request, and had the satisfaction of finding that his men had behaved themselves with great diligence and fidelity.