Anson's Voyage Round the World (1740-1744): Scurvy and Silver

Anson’s voyage round the world (1740–1744) was a British naval expedition led by Commodore George Anson that sailed into the Pacific to attack Spain during the War of Jenkins’ Ear. Of six warships and roughly 1,900 men, only the flagship HMS Centurion came home, after scurvy and other diseases killed most of the crews. Yet in June 1743 Anson captured the Manila galleon Nuestra Señora de Covadonga and its cargo of silver, turning a disaster into a national sensation and making him one of the most influential admirals of the century.

Background: war with Spain

In 1739 Britain went to war with Spain over trade with Spanish America, a conflict nicknamed the War of Jenkins’ Ear after a British captain who claimed Spanish coastguards had cut off his ear. It soon merged into the wider War of the Austrian Succession. British ministers hoped to strike at the sources of Spanish wealth in the Americas.

Anson, then aged 43, was given a squadron with orders to round Cape Horn, raid the Pacific coast of Spanish South America and, if possible, capture the annual galleon that carried Mexican and Peruvian silver from Acapulco to Manila, part of the long-running Manila galleon trade.

The expedition was badly prepared. Departure was delayed for months, and the squadron was short of seamen. To fill the gaps the Admiralty sent around 500 elderly and sick out-pensioners from the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, many of whom deserted before sailing, plus newly raised marines with little training.

The squadron comprised the Centurion (60 guns), Gloucester and Severn (50 each), Pearl (40), Wager (28) and the small sloop Tryal, with two supply ships, the Anna and the Industry. It sailed from St Helens, off the Isle of Wight, on 18 September 1740, late in the season.

Total numbers are usually given as about 1,850 to 1,950 men. Among the officers and young gentlemen were men who later rose high in the navy, including Philip Saumarez, Charles Saunders, Augustus Keppel and the midshipman John Byron, grandfather of the poet Lord Byron.

Cape Horn and the scurvy

The late start meant the squadron reached the waters around Cape Horn in March 1741, at the onset of the southern autumn. For weeks the ships fought gales, enormous seas and contrary winds. The Severn and Pearl lost touch and turned back to Brazil, and from there returned to Britain.

Scurvy, a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C, broke out on a massive scale. Sailors’ gums swelled, old wounds reopened and men died in their hammocks. The official account later described the symptoms in harrowing detail. On the Centurion alone, more than 200 men died before the ship reached the island of Juan Fernández off Chile in June 1741.

The Wager, separated from the others, was wrecked on an island off the Chilean coast in May 1741. Its crew broke into rival factions; most of the survivors sailed an open boat through the Strait of Magellan to Brazil, while a small group including John Byron eventually reached home by way of Chile and Spain. The episode, known as the Wager mutiny, led to a court martial in 1746.

Raiding the Pacific coast

At Juan Fernández the survivors recovered on fresh food and water. With depleted crews, Anson took several Spanish merchant ships and in November 1741 attacked and burned the town of Paita in Peru, taking coin and goods.

He then sailed north to wait for the Manila galleon off Acapulco in early 1742, but the Spanish, warned of his presence, kept the ship in port. Anson decided to cross the Pacific instead, hoping to meet the galleon’s next sailing from the Philippines.

Crossing the Pacific, the Covadonga and the return

The Pacific crossing in 1742 was another ordeal. Scurvy returned, and the Gloucester became so leaky and undermanned that Anson had her burned in August 1742 after transferring her crew. The Tryal had already been scuttled. The Centurion, now the last ship, reached the island of Tinian in the Marianas, where the men recovered.

While most of the crew were ashore, a storm blew the Centurion out to sea with a skeleton crew aboard; she returned after about three weeks. Anson then sailed to Macau, where he refitted with difficulty because Chinese officials were wary of a foreign warship.

In 1743 Anson cruised off Cape Espíritu Santo on the island of Samar, in the Philippines, where homeward galleons first made landfall. On 20 June 1743 he sighted the Nuestra Señora de Covadonga. In a fight lasting about an hour and a half, the Centurion’s heavier guns overwhelmed the galleon. Spanish losses are usually given as about 67 killed and 84 wounded, against two British dead.

The Centurion took her prize to Canton (Guangzhou), sold the galleon and sailed home by the Cape of Good Hope. She reached Spithead on 15 June 1744, having slipped past a French fleet in fog in the Channel.

The captured treasure was paraded through London in a long procession of wagons. Its value is usually estimated at around £400,000 at the time, although figures vary. Anson’s share made him a rich man, and prize money disputes among the officers lasted for years.

By the numbers

Key people

George Anson (1697–1762) commanded the expedition. He was later made a peer, became First Lord of the Admiralty and pushed through reforms in ship design, officer promotion and the creation of a permanent corps of marines.

Richard Walter, chaplain of the Centurion, is named as the author of the official account, A Voyage Round the World (1748), though much of it was written or edited by the mathematician Benjamin Robins. The book was a bestseller and was translated into several languages.

Philip Saumarez served as Anson’s first lieutenant and commanded the Centurion when she was blown away from Tinian. John Byron later wrote his own narrative of the Wager wreck and commanded his own circumnavigation in the 1760s.

Legacy

Anson’s voyage became famous as both a triumph and a tragedy. The capture of the Covadonga brought prestige at a time of mixed fortunes in the war, while the appalling death toll exposed the dangers of long ocean voyages.

The account of the voyage helped focus attention on scurvy. The naval surgeon James Lind discussed it in his Treatise of the Scurvy (1753), which described his 1747 scurvy trial. Effective prevention through citrus juice did not become standard in the Royal Navy until the 1790s.

The officers trained on the voyage formed a network that shaped the navy during the Seven Years’ War, and the voyage encouraged later British interest in the Pacific, leading to the expeditions of Byron, Wallis and Cook.

Timeline

• 1739, October: Britain declares war on Spain (the War of Jenkins’ Ear).
• 1740, 18 September: Anson’s squadron sails from St Helens.
• 1741, March–April: The squadron rounds Cape Horn; the Severn and Pearl turn back.
• 1741, May: HMS Wager is wrecked off the coast of Chile.
• 1741, June: The Centurion reaches Juan Fernández with a crew devastated by scurvy.
• 1741, November: Anson raids and burns Paita in Peru.
• 1742, August: The Gloucester is burned; the Centurion continues alone across the Pacific.
• 1743, 20 June: The Centurion captures the Manila galleon Nuestra Señora de Covadonga.
• 1744, 15 June: The Centurion returns to Spithead.

Why it matters

Anson’s voyage showed both the reach of British sea power and the deadly cost of long voyages without a remedy for scurvy. Its treasure made headlines, but its lasting influence lay in naval reform, in the careers of the officers it produced and in the growing medical understanding of disease at sea.