by C. H. Layman
This last decision seems a severe one and must have caused hardship to all, but it is roughly in line with the way the wages of eighteenth-century seamen were handled, with arrears usually being paid at the end of a commission.
Bulkeley was in financial straits, but interest in the Wager story was still growing, and he had his journal. Reports of Anson’s successes in capturing Spanish ships in the Pacific and taking much bounty were now beginning to reach the press, and this created great public excitement in compensation for a long and tedious war. Bulkeley showed his journal to a publisher who immediately recognised a best-seller. But Bulkeley was extremely aware that his position with respect to the Admiralty was dubious and his future uncertain. Ever punctilious in matters of procedure and form, he wrote to Their Lordships as follows:
My Lords,
We are offered a considerable sum by the booksellers of London for the copy of our journal, to publish it to the world. Notwithstanding money is a great temptation to people in our circumstances, still we are determined to abide by Your Lordships’ resolutions.
He received a verbal reply from one of the Admiralty messengers: “The journal is your own and Their Lordships have nothing to do with it, so you may do as you will with it.”
It was then published by Jacob Robinson at the Golden Lion in Ludgate Street, price three shillings and sixpence. It was a publishing sensation, and serialised month by month in the London Magazine. There was much discussion, and opinion on the conduct of the survivors was divided. The public saw Bulkeley as a heroic seadog whose epic voyage had succeeded against all odds, odds which included the Captain’s unreasonable plan and vicious behaviour. But the body of naval opinion must surely have been suspicious of this view. However much justification Bulkeley might bring forward, the fact was that the Captain’s authority had been collectively defied and his orders disobeyed. He had been surprised, tied up, deprived of his command, and then abandoned to his fate while his men made off with the principal boat. It is extremely hard to see how any court-martial board of eighteenth-century captains and admirals could have judged this as anything other than mutiny,[2] and a mutiny of this seriousness could be expected to result in the ringleaders (in this instance Lieutenant Baynes and the warrant officers Bulkeley, Cummins and King) being hanged from the main-yard. Any defence based on the fact that when a ship was lost the men’s pay ceased, and that therefore they were no longer under naval discipline, would surely not have detained a court-martial board for long; and in any case such an argument could not apply to officers, who went on half pay.
Title-page of Bulkeley’s Voyage to the South Seas, 1743.
Although he puts his shipmate Carpenter John Cummins on the title-page as co-author, the book was almost certainly written entirely by Bulkeley. Its day-by-day account of what is probably the greatest castaway survival voyage of all time is unmatched.
Bulkeley had another line of defence up his sleeve against the charge of mutinously making away with the long-boat, which is so curious and absurd that it is only worth quoting to show how far legalistic minds can go:
There was one great good man that gave his judgement in our favour so far as to say she was not the King’s long-boat, giving these reasons: at the first wrecking of the Wager, they cut the masts away, which rendered them incapable of hoisting her out; but some time after the Captain gave orders to his officers and people to go off to the wreck and bring the long-boat on shore. They obey his orders, go off to the wreck, saw the gunnel down, launch the boat, and bring her on shore; when there, the Captain orders her to be hauled up at a proper place for lengthening; his orders are obeyed; after which he orders the Carpenter to saw her asunder; the Carpenter goes to work, and obeys the Captain’s orders. Now, it is to be observed, that the long-boat is in two parts, and by Captain Cheap’s orders; by which orders he has not only made her useless to the whole body of the people on the island, but as useless to himself as the wreck in the sea, and by his own orders. But the Carpenter, with the assistance of the people, have gone into the woods, cut their own timber, sawed their own plank, and brought her into a position of 23 tons.
So for a time, amid all these uncertainties, the matter rested uneasily.Anson’s long-awaited return came in June 1744. During a remarkable voyage he had captured a Spanish treasure ship, and after many adventures he reached Spithead amid nation-wide excitement. The treaure was loaded on to 32 wagons, the first one displaying the British colours superior to the Spanish flag, and taken by the Centurion’s ship’s company, with a regiment of soldiers as escort, from Portsmouth to London. Three hundred chests packed with pieces-of-eight, eighteen chests of gold bars, barrels of gold dust, fine swords and candelabra, amounting to the most valuable prize ever taken by the Navy up to that date, accompanied by “kettle drums, trumpets and French horns” – it must have been a stirring sight, paraded like a Roman triumph through cheering crowds along Piccadilly and St James’s Street and into Pall Mall. There the procession was greeted by the Prince of Wales with Anson in attendance, and it then moved slowly along the Strand into the safety of the Tower of London.
Anson’s voyage was rightly seen at every level as an important achievement, and seemed to have opened up far-reaching prospects for the Royal Navy. Moreover the nation needed a victory after four years of a war that appeared interminable and unrewarding, and Anson provided a dramatic one. There were a few dissident voices to point out that he had lost seven of his eight ships and 1666 of the 1854 men[3] he had set out with, but in general the mood was one of ecstatic public acclaim and hope for the future.
Anson was received by the King, awarded a knighthood, and promoted to Rear Admiral of the Blue. Within a week or two he would no doubt have been consulted about proceeding against the Wager mutineers, but he would have had little further information to contribute, and still there was no news of Captain Cheap. It was therefore decided by the Admiralty that the evidence had become no clearer, and that matters were best left where they were pending Cheap’s return. This had the welcome advantage of not spoiling the current wave of euphoria and the sense that a great victory had been won against the Spaniards in far seas that they had hitherto regarded as their own.
Baynes and Bulkeley and the other warrant officers must have been extremely relieved by this decision. No word had been received from Captain Cheap for three and a half years, and his survival and return must have seemed improbable.
But then Cheap, Hamilton, and Byron, as we have seen, reached London in early 1746, and the Admiralty Board, of which Anson was now a member, could defer action no longer. On the 24th March 1746 an Admiralty Order was issued for a court-martial. Baynes and Bulkeley would have been dismayed to read in the Penny London Post[4] of 26th March 1746:
Admiralty Office, 25th March 1746
Vice-Admiral Stewart being directed to hold a court-martial at Portsmouth for enquiring into the cause of the loss of His Majesty’s late ship the Wager, the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty do hereby direct the officers, petty-officers, and foremast-men who belonged to the said ship, to repair immediately down to Portsmouth, and apply to Mr George Atkins, Deputy Judge Advocate of His Majesty’s Fleet, for his directions.
Thomas Corbett, Secretary to the Admiralty
Bulkeley’s account of these critical days is as follows:
One of the Proctors of Doctors’-Commons asked me what news now our Captain was come home? I told him I was going to Portsmouth to the court-martial. He then asked me if I knew nothing more than the advertisement for the court-martial. I hold him no; at which he told me, that the Monday before the advertisement was published there were four messengers dispatched from the Marshal of the Admiralty, in order to take up the Lieutenant, the Boatswain, myself and the Carpenter. On this I replied, if that is fact I will go and deliver myself up to the Marshal here in town.
Finding me fixed in my resolution, he desired me to go and dine at the Paul’s-Head Tavern in St Paul’s Church-Yard, where the Deputy Marshal was to dine th
at day. Accordingly I went, and after dinner applied to him, desiring to know his opinion in regard to the officers of the Wager, as their Captain was come home; for I had a near relation which was an officer that came in that long-boat to Brazil, and it would give me concern if he should suffer. His answer was that he believed we should be hanged. To which I replied, for God’s sake for what, for not being drowned? And is a murderer[5] at last come home to be their accuser? I have carefully perused the journal, and can’t conceive that they have been guilty of piracy, mutiny, nor anything else to deserve it. It looks to me, if so, that their adversaries have taken up arms against the power of the Almighty for delivering them. At which he said, Sir, they have been guilty of such things to Captain Cheap whilst a prisoner, that I believe the Gunner and Carpenter will be hanged, if nobody else.
As I was not known to him, on these words I told him, then I was one of the men that must suffer, for I was the unfortunate Gunner of the Wager. After he was convinced he told me I was then become his prisoner; he had me to his house, where I was confined until the rest of the officers were brought up to town, which, as soon as they came up, he wrote to Their Lordships to inform them that he had us all in custody; but that I had delivered myself up to him here in town; desiring their Lordships’ farther directions concerning us. The answer received was, to send us to Portsmouth and there to deliver us up on board Admiral Steward (HMS Prince George), to take a receipt, and to take particular care that the Gunner and Carpenter did not make their escape.
After we went on board of Admiral Steward, we were told we were to be hanged, nay, not a letter came from any of our friends, but there were these words mentioned, you are to be hanged. When the Captain came down to Portsmouth, some of my friends waited on him, desiring to know what he had to allege against us? His answer was, Gentlemen, I have nothing to say for nor against the villains, until the day of trial, and then it is not in my power to be off from hanging them. This expression occasioned the whole place to believe it would be so.
One by one the survivors, some under escort, travelled to Portsmouth and assembled aboard the flagship, HMS Prince George, at anchor off Spithead. Cheap and Byron were there; Bulkeley and Cummins also; Lieutenant Baynes, Lieutenant Hamilton of the Marines, Boatswain John King and the Mate, John Jones, had answered the summons too. Of our main characters only Midshipmen Morris and Campbell were yet to return, and Captain Pemberton, no doubt a prudent man, was nowhere to be found.
On 14th April signed statements or depositions, which would be read out at the court-martial, were made by all Wager survivors who had been traced, and these depositions were attested by the Deputy Judge Advocate, George Atkins. Captain Cheap had signed his narrative on 11th April, and it is not known whether it would have addressed the breakdown of discipline and his reasons for shooting Cozens. It was certainly read out in court in its entirety, but, significantly and most regrettably, it is the only document which has not been retained in the Court-Martial Record.
When Bulkeley came to make his deposition on 14th April he complained that he was being kept prisoner without knowing the details of the charges against him. To his astonishment, in view of what he had heard of the opinions of Cheap and everyone else, the Deputy Judge Advocate told him that the court-martial was only for the loss of the ship. No charges of mutiny were to be brought.
Once again, he and the others must have been mightily relieved.
It seems likely that this surprising decision not to proceed with charges of mutiny was taken by the Admiralty Board on the advice of its highly respected new member, Rear Admiral Sir George Anson. On his famous voyage Anson had experienced storm, shipwreck, fearful scurvy, and finally triumph. He had lost ninety percent of his men. His Voyage Round the World was being written, and would soon become one of the best known travel books of the time, raising public awareness in Britain of the benefits of a properly maintained Navy with a worldwide reach. Maps of South America were being published, some of them even showing the supposed position of the wreck of the Wager.
This map of South America, with some interesting boundaries depicted, was published in the The Gentleman’s Magazine of 1749, in response to the increasing public interest that Anson’s Voyage had engendered. It includes the words “Here about the Wager was lost”. The position is, not surprisingly, only approximate.
Charges of mutiny would inevitably have brought up unwelcome questions about Captain Cheap’s conduct, questions that Anson may have thought were perhaps better left unasked.
Such speculation appears to be on firmer ground in view of the absence of the Cheap narrative from the Court-Martial Record, and the fact that it was dated three days before the others. Perhaps a possible sequence of events might have been:
16th March 1746. Cheap reaches London, exhausted.
17th - 20th March. Cheap recovers somewhat; buys clothes; calls on his old captain, Rear Admiral Sir George Anson, at the Admiralty. He is ordered to write a report, perhaps with a narrative dealing with the loss of the ship separate from the rest of the story.
22nd March. The Admiralty Board, or some of them, meet to make a decision on the long-running Wager business. They decide to call all witnesses for a court-martial into the loss of the ship, which was the normal procedure and which would also have the effect of tracing and assembling the main suspects. Awkward difficulties in proceeding against the mutineers are discussed.
23rd March. Sunday.
24th March. The Admiralty Order for the court-martial is issued.
25th March. The summons for witnesses to report to Spithead is issued.
26th March and on several subsequent dates. The summons is published in newspapers.
11th April. Cheap completes his narrative, probably in London, and proceeds to Portsmouth for the court-martial. If Bulkeley is to be believed, at this moment Cheap and everyone else fully expect that a trial for mutiny will follow the court-martial for the loss of the ship.
12th April. The Admiralty Board scrutinise Cheap’s narrative, and debate the merits and demerits of proceeding with charges of mutiny. In this debate Anson’s personality, in which there was a generous element of humanity and fairness, would surely have played a major part. Of course he would have strongly disapproved of mutiny, and no doubt would have supported the Navy’s extreme punishment for the most serious cases of it, but he may have thought, very privately, that the mutineers could bring forward on their side an uncomfortable whiff of justification. A charge of mutiny, once brought, would almost certainly have been proved, and four men might swing. He may also have reflected that David Cheap, his own appointee and previous First Lieutenant, had suffered enough and should be protected from public criticism, especially as his faults were the result of an inflexible determination to come to grips with the Spanish enemy. Altogether, in this exceptional and unprecedented case, there would have seemed to be good reasons for passing over the mutiny question, and he may have recommended this to his fellow Board members. They therefore decide on balance not to proceed with mutiny charges, and send a message to this effect to the Deputy Judge Advocate in Portsmouth.
13th April. Sunday.
14th April. The Deputy Judge Advocate tells Bulkeley that no charges of mutiny are to be brought.
All this, in the absence of documentation, is speculation. But the loss of a ship required a definite formal enquiry, and this necessitated the court-martial which now went inexorably ahead.
Chapter 25
The Court-Martial
The court-martial took place on 15th April 1746. Sworn statements had been taken previously by the Deputy Judge Advocate, and were read out in court and confirmed by all witnesses. These statements were subsequently attached to the minutes in the Court-Martial Record, and have been inserted here at the point where they were read out in order to show the evidence exactly as the court heard it.
It is occasionally not immediately obvious from the Record as to who is asking and answering the questions, and the minutes, which were ta
ken down in shorthand at the time and copied out later, have other confusions and obscurities which have been rectified as far as possible.
Minutes of a court-martial held on board His Majesty’s ship Prince George at Spithead the 15th April 1746, for enquiring into the cause of the loss of His Majesty’s ship Wager, cast away on a sunken rock on the coast of Patagonia in the South Seas on the 14th May 1741, pursuant to an order from the Right Hon. the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty dated 24th March 1745.
The minutes of the court-martial show that Captain Cheap’s narrative was read out to the court; but it is not there now, whereas all the others are. The binding of the book has been broken at this point. Has the narrative been intentionally removed?
Admiralty Warrant[6] dated 11th October 1744, empowering Vice Admiral Steuart[7] to hold a court-martial, read. Court sworn. Prisoners brought in. Admiralty Order dated 24th March 1745 read.
Captain Cheap’s narrative dated 11th April 1746 read.[8]
Captain Cheap, do you charge any officer besides the Lieutenant with being in any degree accessory to the loss of the Wager?
No, Sir. I acquit them all of that.
John Jones, late Mate of the Wager, sworn, his deposition read as follows:
On the 14th May 1741 between the hours of 4 and 5 in the morning, the ship struck on a rock or shoal, I then being in my hammock, and had not been out of it to do any duty for several days before. When I came on the deck I found the fore and main courses set, it then blowing very hard, and had our men been all well, whereas we had not above six men in a watch to the best of my remembrance, in my humble opinion we were not able to carry any more sail, our mizzen-mast being gone. We always with our foresail set carried our helm a-lee. I looked at the compass and found after she got off the shoal that she lay up to the west, and I told them she lay with her head off shore. The Carpenter’s Mate came and said that there was six foot of water in the hold. We had our starboard tacks aboard, and the wind variable from the N to the NW. The Lieutenant proposed letting go the anchor, but I told him there was not room to bring the ship up and if we should swing clear of the rocks she must sink as the water increased so much on us. I went to Captain Cheap, who was then in the Surgeon’s cabin, and had the evening before by a fall very much hurt his shoulder, I think I have heard the Doctor say it was dislocated which rendered him incapable to give his necessary orders. He told me that if the people’s lives were saved, he had no regard to his own. The second or third time she struck she broke the rudder, after which accident we were forced to back and fill her to keep clear of the shoals and I believe the current set true through them or else it were impossible for the ship to come where she sunk.