The 1805 Club presents

                   Anson's voyage round the world

                    of 1740 to 1744 and its aftermath

 

A one-day conference at

The Medical Society of London, 11 Chandos Street, London W1H  0EB

Saturday 7 JUNE 2008

In 1739, after a long period of tension between the United Kingdom and Spain, particularly over freedom to trade with Spanish colonies in the Americas, an alleged provocation by Spain triggered the British government into declaring war - the War of Jenkin's Ear.  

 

A year later Commodore George Anson was sent with a naval squadron of seven ships, his flagship being HMS Centurion, via Cape Horn into the Pacific.  His orders were twofold:  to harry Spanish shipping and settlements on the western seaboard of South America, hopefully seeking to cause the indigenous people to rise against the Spanish and:  to capture the Spanish galleon which plied annually with gold and silver between Manila in the Philippines and Acapulco in Mexico.

 

Anson's squadron sailed in early September 1740.    During the transatlantic crossing, men in Anson's ships started to fall ill, initially due to typhus and dysentery.  Scurvy then followed and there were many fatalities.   These losses continued during passage around Cape Horn, and there was massive and tragic loss of life. Only Anson's flagship and one other ship, reached a pre agreed rendezvous off the coast of Chile.    These two ships were wholly insufficient for him to attempt the first objective set in his orders.  Indeed, due to the lack of fit seamen then available to man two ships, he was forced to scuttle the second ship after absorbing its remaining ships company into that of the Centurion.    

 

Anson therefore focused on the second objective, crossing the Pacific in the Centurion and capturing the Acapulco galleon Nuestra Senora de Covadonga off the Philippines in June 1743.    In July 1744, he returned to England in the Centurion with a substantial amount of coin, specie, and other treasures taken out of the galleon, but with only 188 men out of the 1854 who had sailed with the squadron in 1740.   The Government welcomed the treasure as a substantial addition to national resources, but there was great public outrage at the loss of life, especially as this had been due mostly to disease.   

 

In response to the public and Naval concern over the high death rate Naval surgeons set up an association aimed at improving health at sea.  The defeat of scurvy was one of their primary objectives and the accurately descriptions of the symptoms of disease contained in the ship's logs from the voyage was vital to their work.  Anson went on to achieve repute as a naval administrator and, in 1757, was as appointed as First Lord of the Admiralty.   The changes of medical practice at sea which flowed from the initiatives of the Naval surgeons, especially James Lind, together with the organisational reforms Anson introduced, were critical to the successes of the Royal Navy in the wars against France some sixty years later.   Thus Professor Zulueta, one of the speakers at the conference, has written that the introduction of lemon juice into the diet of British seamen was a key factor in ensuring the British victory at Trafalgar

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