A Voyage Round the World. Anson George
Society ashore was made up of a little, brilliant, artificial class, a great, dull, honest, and hardworking mass, and a brutal, dirty, and debased rabble. Society at sea was like society ashore, except that, being composed of men, and confronted with the elements, and based on a grand ceremonial tradition, it was never brilliant, and never artificial. It was, in the main, an honest and hardworking society. Much in it was brutal, dirty, and debased; but it had always behind it an order and a ceremony grand, impressive, and unfaltering. That life in that society was often barbarous and disgusting cannot be doubted. The best men in the ships were taken by force from the merchant service. The others were gathered by press-gangs and gaol-deliveries. They were knocked into shape by brutal methods and kept in hand by brutal punishments. The officers were not always gentlemen; and when they were, they were frequently incompetent. The administration was scandalously corrupt. The ships were unhealthy, the food foul, the pay small, and the treatment cruel. The attractions of the service seem to have been these: the chance of making a large sum of prize-money, and the possibility of getting drunk once a day on the enormous daily ration of intoxicating liquor. The men were crammed together into a dark, stinking, confined space, in which privacy was impossible, peace a dream, and cleanliness a memory. Here they were fed on rotten food, till they died by the score, as this book testifies.
"We sent," says Mr. Walter, chaplain in the Centurion, "about eighty sick from the Centurion; and the other ships, I believe, sent nearly as many, in proportion… As soon as we had performed this necessary duty, we scraped our decks, and gave our ship a thorough cleaning; then smoked it between decks, and after all washed every part well with vinegar. These operations were extremely necessary for correcting the noisome stench on board, and destroying the vermin; for … both these nuisances had increased upon us to a very loathsome degree."
"The Biscuit," says Mr. Thomas, the teacher of mathematics in the Centurion, "(was) so worm-eaten it was scarce anything but dust, and a little blow would reduce it to that immediately; our Beef and Pork was likewise very rusty and rotten, and the surgeon endeavoured to hinder us from eating any of it, alledging it was, tho' a slow, yet a sure Poison."
That tradition and force of will could keep life efficient, and direct it to great ends, in such circumstances, deserves our admiration and our reverence.
The traditions and unpleasantness of the sea service are suggested vividly in many pages of this book. A few glimpses of both may be obtained from the following extracts from some of the logs and papers which deal with this voyage and with Anson's entry into the Navy. The marine chapters in Smollett's Roderick Random give a fair picture of the way of life below decks during the years of which this book treats.
George Anson was born at Shugborough, in Staffordshire, on April 23, 1697. His first ship was the Ruby, Captain Peter Chamberlen, a 54-gun ship, with a scratch crew of 185 men. George Anson's name appears in her pay book between the names of John Baker, ordinary seaman, and George Hirgate, captain's servant. He joined her on February 2, 1712. The ship had lain cleaning and fitting "at Chatham and in the River Medway" since the 4th of the preceding month. Two days after the boy came aboard she weighed her anchor "at 1 afternoon," fresh gales and cloudy, and ran out to the Nore where she anchored in seven fathoms and moored.
It is not known what duties the boy performed during his first days of service. The ship fired twenty-one guns in honour of the queen's birthday on February 7. The weather was hazy, foggy, and cold, with snow and rain; lighters came off with dry provisions, and the ship's boats brought off water. On February 9, the Centurion, an earlier, smaller Centurion than the ship afterwards made famous by him, anchored close to them. On the 16th, two Dutch men-of-war, with a convoy, anchored close to them. Yards and topmasts were struck and again got up on the 17th. On the 24th, three shot were fired at a brigantine to bring her to.
On the 27th, Sir John Norris and Sir Charles Wager hoisted their flags aboard the Cambridge and the Ruby respectively, and signal was made for a court-martial. Six men of the Dover were tried for mutiny, theft, disorderly conduct, and desertion of their ship after she had gone ashore "near Alborough Haven." Being all found guilty they were whipped from ship to ship next morning. Each received six lashes on the bare back at the side of each ship then riding at the Nore. A week later, the Ruby and the Centurion sailed leisurely to Spithead, chasing a Danish ship on the way. On March 11, the Ruby anchored at Spithead and struck her topmasts. On March 18, Captain Chamberlen removed "into ye Monmouth" with all his "followers," Anson among them. The Monmouth sailed on April 13, with three other men-of-war, as a guard to the West Indian fleet, bound for Port Royal. Her master says that on June 7, in lat. 21° 36' N., long. 18° 9' W., "we duckt those men that want willing to pay for crossing the tropick." In August, off the Jamaican coast, a man fell overboard and was drowned. Later in the month, a hurricane very nearly put an end to Anson and Monmouth together. Both pumps were kept going, there was four feet of water on the ballast and the same between decks, the foretopmast went, the main and mizen masts were cut away, and men with buckets worked for their lives "bealing at each hatchway." Port Royal was reached on September 1. The Monmouth made a cruise after pirates in Blewfields Bay, and returned to Spithead in June 1713.
Anson is next heard of as a second lieutenant aboard the Hampshire. He was in the Montague, 60-gun ship, in Sir George Byng's action off Cape Passaro, in March 1718. In 1722, he commanded the Weasel sloop in some obscure services in the North Sea against the Dutch smugglers and French Jacobites. During this command he made several captures of brandy. From 1724 till 1735 he was employed in various commands, mostly in the American colonies, against the pirates. From 1735 till 1737 he was not employed at sea.
In 1737, he took command of the Centurion, and sailed in her to the Guinea Coast, to protect our gum merchants from the French. His gunner was disordered in his head during the cruise; and Sierra Leone was so unhealthy that "the merchant ships had scarce a well man on board." A man going mad and others dying were the only adventures of the voyage. He was back in the Downs to prepare for this more eventful voyage by July 21, 1739.
In November he wrote to the Admiralty that in hot climates "the Pease and Oatemeal put on board his Maj'y Ships have generally decayed and become not fitt to issue, before they have all been expended." He proposed taking instead of peas and oatmeal a proportion of "Stockfish, Grotts, Grout, and Rice." The Admiralty sanctioned the change; but the purser seems to have failed to procure the substitutes. Whether, as was the way of the pursers of that time, he pocketed money on the occasion, cannot be known. He died at sea long before the lack was discovered.
A more tragical matter took place in this November. A Mr. McKie, a naval mate, was attacked on Gosport Beach by twenty or thirty of the Centurion's crew, under one William Cheney, a boatswain's mate; and the said William Cheney "with a stick did cutt and bruse" the said McKie, and tore his shirt and conveyed away his "Murning ring," which was flat burglary in the said Cheney. "Mr. Cheney aledges no other reason for beating and Abusing Mr. McKie but the said McKie having got drunk at Sea, did then beat and abuse him." As Hamlet says, this was hire and salary, not revenge.
Months went by, doubtfully enlivened thus, till June 1740, when the pressing of men began. The Centurion's men went pressing, and got seventy-three men, a fair catch, but not enough. She despatched a tender to the Downs to press men from homeward bound merchant ships. This method of getting a crew was the best then in use, because the men obtained by it were trained seamen, which those obtained from the gaols, the gin-shops, and the slums seldom were. It was an extremely cruel method. A man within sight of his home, after a voyage of perhaps two years, might be dragged from his ship (before his wages were paid) to serve willy-nilly in the Navy, at a third of the pay, for the next half-dozen years. An impartial conscription seems noble beside such a method. Knowing how the ships were manned, it cannot seem strange that the Navy was not then a loved nor an honoured service. Nineteen of the Centurion's catch loved and honoured it so little that they contrived to desert (risking death at the yard-arm by doing so) during the weeks of waiting at Portsmouth.
Before the tender sailed for the Downs, Anson discovered that the dockyard men had scamped their work in the Centurion. They had supplied her with a defective foremast "Not fitt for Sarves." High up on the mast was "a rotten Nott eleven inches deep," a danger to spar and ship together. The dockyard officials, who had probably