In 1740, a modest squadron of ships from Britain’s Royal Navy departed Portsmouth in pursuit of an immoderate treasure. Commodore George Anson, who led the flotilla, was tasked with sailing south and west across the Atlantic Ocean, rounding Cape Horn, and interfering in imperial Spain’s lucrative trans-Pacific trade. But even before the mission got underway, its prospects of success appeared dubious.
A sizeable proportion of the roughly 2,000 sailors and non-seamen under Anson’s command lacked suitable experience. Worse still was the fact that so many of them took up their posts already in a parlous state of health. It is little surprise, therefore, that Anson’s “famous” voyage around the world proved to be, for most of the men who undertook it, a journey of no return.
