The Wager Disaster

by C. H. Layman

  Have you anything to lay to the charge of the Captain or any of the officers, for neglecting the preservation of the ship?

  No.

  Mr. Baynes, how came you not to have your cable clear?

  They were bent[16] about a fortnight before we came in sight of land, and I know not how the cable came over the cathead.

  After the ship had beat over the first reef of rocks why did you not let go an anchor?

  I was for it, but Mr. Jones the Mate said we should all perish if we did, nor do I think there was trust to be put in the cables. Captain Cheap says the best bower had been bent not above nine or ten days before.

  After you first struck, how long might it be before you came upon the second reef of rocks?

  An hour I believe, but upon the first rock we struck twice very soon one after the other, and the rudder after that could not be traversed, so that we were obliged to steer with our sails.

  Mr. Baynes, when you were obliged to steer with your sails, how came you not to haul the mainsail up?

  We did at last, but we were a long while about it.

  Lieutenant Fielding of Frazier’s Marines, sworn.

  Do you know anything of the Wager at the time of her going ashore, or before it?

  I know nothing of it, more than that the ship was in a terrible condition, there could not be above three soldiers in each watch I think, they were all down with the scurvy. I heard some of the people say they saw the land, and I looked where they did, but could not see it, nor can I say anything to the matter.

  The President tells Lieutenant Baynes he has heard what his Captain’s charge was, and what was said by the several evidences.

  What have you to say in your defence?

  I never could set the topsails, it blew so very hard. I did not believe it was land that the Carpenter saw, otherwise I would have certainly told the Captain. As to heaving the lead, the Captain and Master were then upon deck and they did not order it, and neither from the signs of the land, nor from my own reckoning could I suppose it to be land, therefore it did not come into my thoughts to heave the lead.

  Withdraw everybody and the Court debated the sentence.

  The Finding[17]

  At a Court-Martial held on board His Majesty’s ship Prince George at Spithead the 15th April 1746, pursuant to an Order from the Rt. Hon. the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty dated 24th March 1745;

  Present:

  Jas. Steuart Esq., Vice-Admiral of the Red Squadron of His Majesty’s Fleet and Commander-in-Chief of all His Majesty’s Ships and Vessels at Spithead and in Portsmouth Harbour, President

  Commodore Chas. Windham Esq.

  Captains Solo. Gideon

  Thos. Harrison

  Edwd. Rich

  Clark Gayton

  Jno. Hume

  Chas. Watson

  Thos. Philpott

  Wm. Parry

  Timthy. Nucella

  Thos. Stanhope

  Robt. Harland

  All duly sworn according to Act of Parliament.

  The Court proceeded to enquire into the cause of the loss of His Majesty’s late ship the Wager on the 14th May 1741 upon a sunken rock on the coast of Patagonia, & having heard Captain Cheap’s narrative read, as well as what Lieutenant Robert Baynes had to say in his own defence, the depositions of such of the officers & crew of the said ship as could be met with, & what they had all to say on the occasion, & maturely considered the same, were unanimously of opinion, that Captain David Cheap had done his duty, & used all means in his power to have preserved His Majesty’s ship Wager under his command, & as he says he has no charge to lay against any of the officers of the said ship, save only against Lieutenant Baynes, therefore the Court do acquit him the said Captain Cheap & all the officers & ship’s company, except the said Lieutenant Baynes, & they are hereby acquitted accordingly for the loss of the said ship Wager. And the Court, having maturely considered the case of Lieutenant Baynes, are unanimously of opinion that he was to blame in not acquainting the Captain when the Carpenter told him he thought he saw the land, in never heaving the lead, nor letting go the anchor, but in regard to the weakly condition of the ship, the cable being foul, and but thirteen sickly hands to clear it, as well as the little reason he appeared to have to believe it could have been the land which the Carpenter fancied he saw, either from its appearance, or from the distance his own & the general reckonings of the ship made them from the land, therefore the Court do adjudge him the said Robert Baynes to be acquitted for the loss of the said ship Wager, but to be reprimanded by the President for such omission, & he is hereby acquitted accordingly, & ordered to be reprimanded.

  Chapter 26

  Aftermath

  After the court-martial Cheap’s promotion to captain was speedily confirmed, and a month later he was appointed to command the 5th Rate HMS Lark, 44 guns, and ordered to cruise off Madeira to intercept Spanish shipping. HMS Gloucester, a new 5th Rate commanded by his old shipmate from the Centurion, Captain Charles Saunders,[18] was in company. We find him having difficulty with provisions and masts, problems he was extremely familiar with:

  To the Secretary to the Admiralty

  Lark in Madeira Road

  24th July 1746

  Sir,

  I have the honour to acquaint you for Their Lordships’ information that I arrived here on the 22nd current with His Majesty’s ship the Lark and Gloucester, and pursuant to my instructions I applied to the Consul for a supply of provisions to complete me for four months, of all species, which he could not do as you will see by a copy of his letter which I send you enclosed.

  I shall put the ships’ companies to short allowance and proceed to sea as soon as we can get our wine and water aboard and repair the Lark’s mainmast which I found to be sprung in two places, and then to continue cruising for two months..

  The next letter in the Admiralty files is of an altogether different nature. David Cheap, like Anson, was not a great letter-writer, but he would have enjoyed penning this one:

  To the Secretary to the Admiralty

  Lark, Plymouth Sound

  13th January 1747

  Sir,

  My last letter to you was from the island of Madeira which I believe is not yet come to your hands. I have now the honour to acquaint you (for Their Lordships’ information) that I sailed from thence the 21st December last, in company with His Majesty’s ship the Gloucester. We met with nothing until the 25th, when at break of day we saw a sail standing to the eastward and gave chase. About two o’clock in the afternoon the Gloucester came up with her and began to engage. She resisted about half-an-hour and then struck. She is called Le Port de Nantez, John le Depencier Master, bound to Cadiz from Vera Cruz and the Havana, from the last of which places she sailed on the 18th November. We found on board of her 105 chests of silver, several of which are marked Rey[19] and (as they say) each chest contains three thousand pieces-of-eight, which I thought advisable to take out of her and put on board the Lark and Gloucester, her cargo besides is very valuable consisting of cochineal, indigo, vanillas, Havana snuff, and sugar.

  She is a new ship built at Nantes about four years ago, 650 tons burden, mounted with 32 guns, and has on board 200 men, two of which were killed. Amongst the prisoners is a Spanish Second Lieutenant and two Lieutenants of Infantry belonging to the garrison of the Havana.

  Finding her so valuable a prize I determined to proceed to Spithead with her without loss of time, which I hope Their Lordships will be pleased to approve, and likewise of my giving Captain Rogers orders whom I spoke with last Sunday to the westward of Scilly, to keep in company as he was bound to the same port. We were this morning at daybreak off the Start but the winds coming SE by E obliged me to bear up for Plymouth because of the badness of the prize’s sails and rigging.

  I intend the first fair wind to proceed to Spithead with the prize, there to wait Their Lordships’ further orders.

  I have the honour to be,

  Sir,

  Your m
ost obedient humble servant,

  David Cheap

  P.S. All the information I can get from the prisoners is that they sailed on 15th October in company with eight sail of Spanish ships of war who had on board eight million pieces-of-eight and were bound for Europe, but happening five days after they set out to meet with an advise boat from Cadiz who informed them of the King of Spain’s death, they determined to return to Havana and wait there for fresh orders from Spain.

  This is what some of the common seaman say for the officers pretend to know nothing of the matter.

  The Secretary to the Admiralty has written in the margin of this letter “16th January answered, glad of his success.”

  In a follow-up letter Cheap, a Scot but not of course a Jacobite, writes:

  I forgot to tell you in my last that I had the satisfaction to find that our prize and some part of her cargo belonged to Mr Walsh of Nantes, a man well-known in France for his services done to the Young Pretender in the late expedition to Scotland.[20]

  David Cheap then represented to the Admiralty that his health was so much weakened as to make him “quite incapable of doing my duty.” It seems likely that his health had never been properly restored after the exceptional rigours of the previous five years. He asked to be relieved of his command on grounds of asthma and gout. This request was soon granted, and with his share of the prize money amounting to more than £56,000[21] he retired a rich man. He was never employed at sea again, and perhaps neither his health nor his inclinations would have allowed it.

  The following year he bought the estate of Sauchie, near Stirling, and married Anne Clark or Clerk,[22] daughter of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik.[23] Cheap was one of the founder members of the illustrious golf course at St Andrew’s, and subscribed to the silver club which is generally taken as the beginning of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. There were no children of the marriage, and he died in 1752 aged 59.

  David Cheap’s strongest characteristic was steadfastness of purpose, resulting in an inflexible – but surely in some respects admirable – refusal to be diverted from his orders even after his ship was a broken wreck. His plan to go northward with a hundred well-armed men to capture a Spanish ship by stealth[24] might just have worked, if he could have weathered Cabo Tres Montes – a big proviso, but certainly possible in the lengthened long-boat. If he had been successful this would have put his initiative and determination and daring on a level with Cochrane or the young Nelson.

  But Cheap was no Cochrane or Nelson, because he lacked the most important of all the subtle ingredients of naval command: the ability to inspire and motivate his men, and thus rally them to a common cause in the face of adversity. This failure of leadership allowed a worsening situation on Wager Island to degenerate into resentment and then open mutiny. His aloof and uncompromising personality told against him too, and he made no attempt at consultation or explanation, let alone attempting to persuade anyone of the feasibility of his plan; and even his officers were kept in the dark. His action in shooting a drunk man can at best be described as supremely rash. Dealing sensibly with belligerent drunkenness is something that comes within the experience of naval officers in all ages, and Cheap was not an inexperienced youngster. Far from re-establishing his command over a deteriorating situation, this impetuous action gave disaffected and desperate men an excuse for a mutiny which subsequently no one on the Board of Admiralty wanted to investigate too closely.

  Captain David Cheap.

  This fine portrait by Allan Ramsay was probably painted in 1748 when Ramsay was at the height of his powers and rapidly establishing himself as one of the country’s foremost portrait painters. In the background HMS Lark is visible in the act of capturing the Spanish ship Le Port de Nantez off Madeira in 1746, thereby making David Cheap’s fortune and enabling him to retire, buy an estate, acquire an heiress wife, and have his portrait painted.

  John Byron, now aged 22, found he had been promoted to Lieutenant during his five years’ absence, and with Anson on the Board of Admiralty could expect, under the eighteenth-century system of patronage and preferment, some advancement to his career. He was in fact promoted Captain on 30th December 1746, and given command of the Syren frigate. From Midshipman-prisoner to Post Captain[25] within a year – he may have mused on the dramatic swings of fortune that go with a naval life, but his personality seems to have been one that takes everything as it comes in a phlegmatic and level-headed way. In 1748 he married Sophia Trevanion of Carhays in Cornwall, a famous beauty for whom “men would have willingly run through fire.” Their second son was christened George Anson after Byron’s old Commodore, and indeed the names George Anson continued in the Byron family until 1941. Sophia wrote of her husband:

  Tho train’d in boisterous elements, his mind

  Was yet by soft humanity refin’d.[26]

  During the next twenty years he commanded many ships of different sizes, and as he moved up the seniority list he was often in command of small squadrons as the wars with France and Spain continued. We find him in 1757 destroying shipping and privateers off the coast of France; and in 1760 in the Baie de Chaleurs, New Brunswick, he sank an entire French convoy of 20 ships which had been sent for the relief of the garrison in Montreal.

  In 1764 he was appointed Commodore and Commander-in-Chief of all His Majesty’s Ships and vessels in the East Indies, a title whose sole purpose, no doubt with the experiences of 1740 in mind, was to put foreign intelligence systems off the scent. He was given a small squadron consisting of the frigate Dolphin,[27] the sloop Tamar, and a stores-ship Florida, and they set off apparently for the Cape of Good Hope in July. Only after leaving Rio de Janeiro did he reveal his secret orders, which were a direct result of Anson’s expedition 24 years previously. Anson had been acutely aware that operations in the Pacific would have been very much facilitated with a base from which to repair and replenish, and it must have been obvious to all that any further expeditions without such a base would be perilous. Anson’s book, A Voyage Round the World, makes the point strongly:

  It is scarcely to be conceived of what prodigious import a convenient station might prove, situated so far to the southward, and so near Cape Horn.. I doubt not but a voyage might be made from Falklands Isles to Juan Fernandez and back again, in little more than two months. This even in time of peace might be of great consequence to this nation, and in time of war would make us masters of those seas.

  Byron’s secret orders, therefore, were to establish the existence of Pepys’s Island, claim the Falkland Islands for Britain, and then proceed through the Straits of Magellan. Once in the Pacific he was to head north and search for the elusive North-west Passage through the Arctic ice north of Canada. If this could not be found he was to make his way home going west across the Pacific. His orders also invited him to inquire after any survivors from the Wager,[28] but only if he could do so without antagonising the Spanish, with whom we were now at peace. His ship’s company were to “receive double pay for their better encouragement” – a generous provision which caused the Admiralty some difficulty when it was cited as a precedent for subsequent expeditions.

  Foulweather Jack.

  The Wager story has few heroes, but Midshipman John Byron, grandfather of the poet, is certainly one of them. He subsequently had a distinguished (but perhaps unlucky) career, founded the first settlement in the Falkland Islands in 1765, and was promoted to Vice Admiral. Bad weather seemed to follow him around and his nickname, Foulweather Jack, has gone down in history.

  This portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds of Byron as a Commodore is reproduced by courtesy of the 13th Lord Byron.

  Byron and his small squadron headed south, and encountered atrocious weather, with a particularly vicious squall which caused some damage. Ferocious weather seemed to follow Byron around, and his nickname on the lower deck, Foulweather Jack, seems to have been current from this date. He certainly experienced a very large number of tempests and mishaps during a long career at sea, and his nickname was to
stay with him for the rest of his life. It is still the name by which history remembers him.

  Pepys’s Island, marked on the charts about 300 miles north of the Falklands,[29] turned out not to exist at all. It had been all along a strange navigational aberration, having been confidently reported by Captain Cowley in his voyage round the world in 1686, and confirmed by no less than the famous astronomer Dr Halley in 1701. For these reasons its existence was regarded as certain until various eighteenth-century navigators had zig-zagged across its supposed position and found nothing. It is hard to credit, but both Cowley and Halley must have been reporting the Falkland Islands and must have made their latitude some four-and-a-half degrees in error.

  Byron arrived off the Falkland Islands on 12th January 1765 and anchored in the fine harbour between Saunders and Keppel Islands, which he named Port Egmont in honour of the First Lord of the Admiralty. With a suitable little ceremony, the flag was raised and possession of the Falklands claimed for King George III. During his stay Byron established a settlement on Saunders Island by planting gardens and making a start at building, and examined the north and north-west coasts of the Falklands. In the next few years Port Egmont was visited and improved by many British ships, and it developed into a small dockyard where a ship was built and commissioned as HMS Penguin. The site was excavated in 1992. The ruins that can now be seen include a Governor’s house, a barracks, store houses, harbour walls, a mole, gun emplacements, a wedge-shaped dock, a furnace, and vestiges of vegetable plots started by the Surgeon of the Tamar.

  One of many lasting effects of Anson’s vision and Byron’s survival was that the Falkland Islands became a crucial British base during the long Pax Britannia and in both twentieth-century World Wars. It continues be a delightful outpost of British civilisation to this day.

  Part of the considerable remains of the 1768 British settlement and dockyard at Saunders Island, Falkland Islands.