The Wager Disaster

by C. H. Layman

  Byron then took two months to pass through the Straits of Magellan into the Pacific, battling against his customary bad weather. But once through the Straits he ignored the next part of his orders – the search for a North-West Passage – and headed off across the Pacific to make what discoveries he could. This action seems bizarre and almost unaccountable, but he was never officially censured for it, and it seems probable that he had had verbal instructions to modify his orders if he saw fit. He was renowned for humanity and solicitude for his men, no doubt with many memories of the suffering of the Wager’s ship’s company, and this may have been the reason for his change of plan. In fact he discovered very little of importance during his voyage across the Pacific, but he reached home after a passage of 22 months – the fastest yet – having suffered very few deaths from scurvy.

  In 1768, with the Wager story still of great interest to the public, he published his excellent Narrative. As we have seen, he criticises his old Captain at many points, which he would not have wished to do while Cheap was alive.

  In 1775 he was promoted Rear Admiral and offered the appointment as Second-in-Command on the North American station, but he asked the First Lord for leave to call on him to explain why he wished to decline on grounds on health. This was communicated to King George III who wrote to the First Lord:

  He is too gallant an officer to pretend illness without sufficient reason; therefore I expect, when you see him, that he will not change his opinion; in which case I am clear that Sir Peter Parker[30] is the properest person you can pitch upon.

  In 1778, with his health improved, he was promoted Vice Admiral. That same year it became known that the French Admiral Comte d’Estaing was taking a squadron from Toulon to support the American rebels in the War of Independence, and Byron in his flagship Princess Royal was given thirteen ships and ordered to intercept. Foulweather Jack lived up to his name, and his squadron was severely damaged by gales. Nevertheless, he repaired and augmented his ships and chased the French south along the eastern American seaboard. He caught up with them in the West Indies, where d’Estaing was forced to abandon St Lucia. Byron was too late to prevent the French capturing the island of Grenada, and an inconclusive battle against a superior French fleet resulted in Byron withdrawing and the island lost. He then left his fleet to Admiral Parker and took passage home, suffering from “disorder and disease,” to face some criticism for the loss of Grenada. He was not employed again, although it is said that he was offered command in the Mediterranean after the peace in 1783, and declined it for health reasons. He died in 1786 aged 62.

  The title-page of Byron’s Narrative, a best-seller in its day.

  John Byron’s wife, Sophia, has written in her own copy of his Narrative a moving tribute to her husband and the hardships he suffered:

  Had some good angel op’d to me the book

  Of Providence, and let me read my life,

  My heart had broke, when I beheld the sum

  Of ills which one by one I have endur’d

  The general assessment by naval historians is that Byron was a fine officer who had more than his fair share of bad luck. The naval biographer John Charnock, writing in 1797, seems to sum him up fairly: “(he had) the universal and justly acquired reputation of a brave and excellent officer, but of a man extremely unfortunate.”

  The poet Byron, who never knew his grandfather, wrote to his sister:

  Reversed for me our grandsire’s fate of yore, –

  He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.[31]

  Don Juan, shipwrecked and starving, had his dog suffer a fate similar to John Byron’s:

  So Juan’s spaniel, spite of his entreating,

  Was kill’d, and portion’d out for present eating.[32]

  And when Juan is on the point of expiring with hunger and thirst, the poet writes with typical detachment and bathos:

  …his hardships were comparative

  To those related in my grand-dad’s ‘Narrative.’ [33]

  There are echoes of Foulweather Jack’s experiences elsewhere in Byron’s works. The splendour and havoc and uncaring viciousness of the sea are clearly close to the poet’s heart, as in the famous apostrophe to the ocean at the end of Childe Harold:

  Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean – roll!

  Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;

  Man marks the earth with ruin – his control

  Stops with the shore; – upon the watery plain

  The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain

  A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,

  When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

  He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,

  Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.[34]

  Gunner John Bulkeley became a successful merchant navy captain, and emigrated to America where he probably had relations, still no doubt in a seafaring capacity of some sort. We find him producing the first American edition of his book in Pennsylvania in 1757, with a dedication to the Honourable William Denny esquire, Lieutenant Governor of the province of Pennsylvania. Compared to the 1743 edition it contains a good deal of additional material, including what he calls Captain Cheap’s account of his proceedings, although this turns out to be only a close paraphrasing of the version in Anson’s Voyage, which itself was mostly based on Campbell’s account. He also includes long extracts from Isaac Morris’s book, and a comparison of these extracts with the original is revealing. Bulkeley has excised the crucial passage where Morris describes the falseness of Bulkeley’s claim that the long-boat was prevented by weather from recovering the castaways. Morris had stated – almost unchallengeably – that the weather was fair, and went on to declare that the real reason for being abandoned was to ensure that the remaining survivors would thereby have more room aboard and a greater share of extremely limited provisions.

  Bulkeley was an exceptional seaman, and his voyage of 2500 miles from Wager Island to Rio de Janeiro in the Wager’s long-boat deserves more credit than it has received in the long annals of the sea.[35] As a feat of seamanship it surely exceeds Captain Bligh’s celebrated warm-water voyage from Tofua to Timor 48 years later. Bulkeley possessed leadership qualities of a high order, and this enabled 29 men[36] to survive in circumstances so extreme that one almost rubs one’s eyes with disbelief. But his strong and obstinate personality was a major contributor to the breakdown of the Captain’s authority, which formed so large a part in the whole disaster that was the Wager’s fate. Bulkeley’s graphic journal, mostly written on the voyage, reveals his character probably more than he intended: a difficult, self-opinionated man, mentally and physically tough, dispassionate to the point of callousness about the fate of his shipmates,[37] and with the classic sea-lawyer’s determination to prove himself right and justify his actions in accordance with the rules and regulations of the Navy.

  Bulkeley settled permanently in America. Descendants of his carried on a tradition of naval service: one fought with John Paul Jones and one with Nelson. A distinguished descendant was Vice-Admiral John D. Bulkeley USN, one of the most decorated officers of World War II.

  An Arleigh Burke class destroyer was named after him in 2001.

  Midshipman Campbell’s behaviour in Santiago and his favoured treatment by the Spaniards on the way home had already aroused suspicion, as we have seen. He protested in his book published in 1747 that he was not in the Spanish service, which may have been legally true at that exact moment, but Spanish sources make it clear that at some time while he was in Santiago during the period 1744 to 1746 he had actually applied to the Governor of Chile to join the Spanish navy, and was then “employed as a volunteer in the service of squadron-chief Pizarro.” In any case, on his return to England he failed to convince Their Lordships, as he had failed to convince his Captain, that his conduct had not been much too friendly towards the enemy. His book was quickly withdrawn from publication, presumably under threat of criminal or libel proceedings, and today only a few
copies are known to exist. That same year he left for Portugal, where he started to recruit English and Irish soldiers to fight for the King of Spain; in this disgraceful act of treason he claimed to have suborned 47 men. He was then given a commission in the Spanish army with the rank of Infantry Lieutenant. In 1751 he married Cathalina Rico in Lima, and in 1757 we find him as Director of Works for the rebuilding of Lima Cathedral after an earthquake. He was naturalised a Spanish citizen in 1759 and became Corregidor (an important official, similar to magistrate or mayor) of Chillán, Chile, in 1766. He is last heard of in 1770, by which time he had become a Lieutenant Colonel and was engaged in action against the Araucanos, a native tribe in the north of Chile.

  Lieutenant Baynes went on to half-pay and is not heard of again. After being reprimanded at the court-martial, and after the weakness of character and failure of leadership so often revealed in this story, it is to be hoped that he found some more suitable form of employment before he died in 1755. Carpenter Cummins and Cooper Young drop out of sight. Midshipman Morris joined the merchant service, and one wishes him well.

  This is where the Wager story might be expected to end, but its influence continued, and in fact still continues. Anson remained on the Board of Admiralty almost continuously until he died in 1762, and his naval reforms were so prolific and far-reaching that he has justly been called the Father of the Navy. His improvements included two that were directly the result of the Wager disaster. One was a Bill to include in the Articles of War measures “for extending the discipline of the Navy to the crews of His Majesty’s ships wrecked, lost or taken, and continuing to them their wages under certain conditions.” This ensured that never again would there be any grey area of doubt about the legality of naval discipline continuing when ships were lost.

  The other Wager-inspired reform addressed the difficulty whereby embarked marines came under their own authority and discipline independent of the naval line of command. Legislation was introduced to bring the Marine Regiments under Admiralty command, and to ensure that the captain had authority over them while they were embarked. This led directly to the formation in 1755 of the Marine Corps, which in 1802 became the Royal Marines, an elite part of the Naval Service to this day.

  The appallingly high incidence of scurvy in the Wager and the rest of Anson’s squadron led to a successful investigation into its causes and cure. When the Seven Years’ War broke out in 1756 a regular supply of fresh victuals had been accepted as an essential part of keeping a fleet at sea, and scurvy had been almost eliminated as an operational factor.

  Even there the Wager story does not end, and in December 2006 that old wreck suddenly came to life again. But it would first be interesting to see what the colonial Spanish made of it.

  1 A surprising error or misprint. The true total was 140.

  2 The word mutiny was not then used exclusively in its modern sense of “a collective refusal of duty”, but sometimes to describe lesser crimes that would today come under the heading of insubordination, striking a superior officer, etc. However the Wager’s mutiny would have been judged an extremely serious one in any age.

  3 Professor Glyn Williams assesses four were lost from enemy action, a few from accidents, and the rest from disease and starvation.

  4 It appeared in other papers on later dates too.

  5 This part of Bulkeley’s journal was not published until after Cheap had died.

  6 This Warrant and the Admiralty Order are not in the Court-Martial Record, but they are presumably the documents that defer investigation into the loss of the Wager until Captain Cheap should return home.

  7 Stewart often became Steuart or Stuart, the French being reluctant to use a w. Admiral Stewart used all three spellings indiscriminately.

  8 Captain Cheap’s narrative has been removed from the Court-Martial Record.

  9 This observation may have been made by the Captain.

  10 Jones speaking.

  11 Apparently this question is not answered by Jones.

  12 The jeer blocks were tackles (small pulleys) which, being made fast to the masthead by straps, enabled the hands on deck to lift the heavy yards into position. Without them it would have been extremely difficult to have swayed up (lifted into position) the yard.

  13 The chain plates take the athwartship stress of the sail and mast.

  14 The cathead is a strong projection on either bow, used to ensure the anchor is raised clear of the bow. An anchor cable that, through weather damage or poor securing, had come across the cathead would make the anchor incapable of being used until it was cleared.

  15 3.30 a.m.

  16 That is, the end of the cable was tied to the anchor ready for letting go.

  17 The finding of the Court is recorded in the handwriting of the Deputy Judge Advocate, George Atkins.

  18 Later First Lord of the Admiralty.

  19 Therefore money belonging to the Spanish King or government.

  20 That is, in the famous rising, or infamous rebellion, in 1745-1746 by Prince Charles Edward Stuart, who came quite close to restoring the House of Stuart to the thrones of England and Scotland.

  21 This equates to £11,000,000 or more in modern money. See Appendix C.

  22 Both spellings were used.

  23 One of her brothers wrote a somewhat controversial book on naval tactics in 1782, which interested Nelson.

  24 Further north there were plenty of ships of all sizes, as Anson found.

  25 A Post Captain is an officer of captain’s rank appointed in command of a ship.

  26 Written by her in the flyleaf of Byron’s own copy of his Narrative.

  27 Probably the first Royal Naval ship to be sheathed in copper.

  28 Captain Fitzroy, in the Beagle in 1832 with Darwin aboard, was also invited by the Admiralty to make enquiries about the fate of any Wager survivors. No one found any traces, but see p288 below.

  29 See chart p47.

  30 Sir Peter Parker came from a well-known naval family, and his son Christopher (later Vice Admiral Christopher Parker) married Byron’s daughter Augusta.

  31 Epistle to Augusta,1830.

  32 Don Juan, 1819, Canto II, lxx. See p77.

  33 Don Juan, Canto II, cxxxvii.

  34 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 1818, Canto IV, clxxix.

  35 See Appendix D.

  36 Thirty reached Rio Grande, and one died in hospital soon afterwards.

  37 There are many examples of this, e.g. his description of the death of Mr Harvey the Purser on p106.

  Part 6

  The Wreck Returns

  Chapter 27

  The Spanish Attempt Salvage

  Revisiting the Place of Disaster: Salvage Operations, Missionary Voyages and Exploration Expeditions to Wager Island.

  By Chilean maritime archaeologist Diego Carabias Amor, Director of the Wager Research Project.

  The loss of the Wager had important consequences in the life of Colonial Southern Chile, and contributed significantly to knowledge of the geography of Western Patagonia and its indigenous inhabitants.

  Survivors from the wreck reached the island of Chiloé during the winter of 1742. Their arrival increased a long-standing concern among the Spanish authorities: could the British be establishing settlements in Western Patagonia, somewhere between the Gulf of Peñas and the Straits of Magellan? During the second half of the previous century two expeditions had already been sent to search for foreign settlements in the southernmost part of the Spanish Empire, led respectively by Bartolomé Gallardo (1674-5) and Antonio de Vea (1675-6). Anson’s narrative, published in 1748, described the discovery of a secure harbour in the Chonos Islands, named Inchin, where the Anna pink had sheltered for two months, and suggested the advantages of seizing this port for Britain to assist expanding British interests in the Pacific Ocean.

  This alarming situation was the motivation behind three new expeditions sent from Chiloé by the Spanish Crown to the Gulf of Peñas: the first, commanded by Mateo Abraham Evrard, was despatche
d in 1743 to recover the remains of the wreck, and will be addressed in detail later; a second one was led by Manuel Brizuela in early 1750; and finally, another was led by Evrard at the end of that same year, which would establish a short-lived Spanish fort at Inchin, named San Fernando de Tenquehuen.

  The Gulf of Peñas represents, to a seaman, the main geographical obstacle of Western Patagonia, and was a convergence zone for several linguistically-different indigenous groups. The Guayaneco Islands were of major importance due to their location at the edge of the archipelago and near the crucial Messier and Fallos channels. In time, the Wager wreck-site came to be known as the “Pérdida de Guayaneco” (the Loss at Guayaneco Island), and it became the centre of operations for the exploration and evangelisation of the unknown territories of extreme Southern Chile. These expeditions enhanced social interaction, and the landscape of Western Patagonia began to be seen in a multi-ethnic context, both by the Spanish population and by the indigenous groups of the area.

  The first European to visit the wreck of the Wager seems to have been the Jesuit priest Father Pedro Flores, probably in 1742. On his return he was arrested and accused of bringing off nearly 100 kilos of iron from the wreck which was to be used in the construction of a new church for the Society of Jesus on the island of Achao, Chiloé. After a controversial trial in Castro, Father Flores was eventually released.

  Clearer documentary evidence, probably dating from 1743, reveals the Governor of Chiloé, Juan Victorino Martínez de Tineo, organising an important salvage operation to recover the guns, anchors and nautical gear of the Wager, all of which were very scarce in the region and highly sought after. Chiloé was a relatively poor settlement, and the supplies for the expedition had to be collected from the population of the city of Castro. The expedition amounted to no less than 160 men, and this total included Spanish regular troops, allied Indians from Chiloé, and Chono people serving as pilots. They were transported in eleven dalcas, the traditional sewn-plank canoes that are described by Byron. Command of the expedition was given to Evrard, who was a Second Lieutenant of the Calbuco Fort, and Royal Purser José Uribe was appointed Commissary Judge. The force set off from Huenao, in Quinchao Island, Chiloé, with supplies for six months.