2023-10-08 05:43:45
Don’t be fooled, dear reader: George Anson’s trip around the world between 1740 and 1744 was not a bed of roses. The data is devastating. To begin with, the British left port with six vessels armed up to the poop to return with only one: the flagship ‘HMS Centurion’, with 60 guns. And that, without forgetting that his men suffered a thousand hardships – hunger, diseases, storms… – and that, although he had been sent to poke the finger in the eye of the Spanish colonies in the Pacific, he spent the months fleeing from a squad of the Hispanic Monarchy that was on the hunt.
In the more than three years that that nightmare lasted, Anson only obtained one joy: the capture of the ‘Our Lady of Covadonga’, the ship that traveled the route of the Manila Galleon under the command of Jerónimo Montero. And it cannot be denied that it was something to jump for joy, since it was well loaded with coins. At the end of June 1743, and with only the ‘Centurion’ – little remained of the rest of his squadron – Anson set a trap for the Spanish, he waited for his enemy at the height of the Cape Espiritu Santo –between Argentina and Chile– and took over its riches.
About twenty alleged logbooks from the British ship are preserved; and in the most famous, illuminated in 1748 and republished by ‘Espuela de plata’ in 2014, that contest of gunpowder and blood comes to life. Anson, eager for prey, arrived to meet the ‘Covadonga’ after having given combat training to his sailors at the beginning of the summer. “Finally, on June 30, a candle was discovered in the southeast and universal joy took hold of everyone,” the document explains. They were expecting two ships, but they ran into one; quite an advantage, as declared by the ‘Royal Navy’: “he fired a cannon shot at the galley and took in her sails. The ‘Centurion’ also threw another one to make the Spaniards believe that we were his companions.
unequal battle
And from there, to the struggle sheltered from deception. Anson was short of troops, so he arranged them carefully. Four musket shooters in the tops and a team of gunners for every two cannons. The idea was to fire one mouth of fire after another, running between them. When the cake was revealed, the British maneuvered to cut off the ‘Covandonga’ towards land. Thus, both ended up within gun range. ‘Boom’, ‘boom’. The first cannon shots whistled in an unequal combat. That was too much for a merchant ship, lacking training, poorly armed and without escort. The icing on the cake was provided by the ‘Centurion’ when she was located aft of the Spanish, the weakest part of the ship.
Despite everything, spirit did not falter on the ‘Covadonga’, as the English well recognized: “When a bullet took away their flag, they placed a banner in its place, at great risk to those who dared to practice such an honorable mission.” . The battle lasted for an hour and a half, but the merchant ship could achieve nothing. “We fired such a volley of shrapnel at him that many of his best and most skilled soldiers perished,” the newspaper explains. The result was as expected: British victory, with 2 dead and 17 wounded, and surrender of the Manila Galleon, with 67 and 84 respectively. To make matters worse, and according to the historian Cesáreo Fernández Duro, those of Pérfida Albión obtained a loot of “more than one and a half million pesos of silver.”
Fernández Duro, an obligatory source, maintains that Anson took his prize to Macao, where he sold the hull to the Portuguese for 6,000 pesos and freed the officers and part of the captured sailors. Already with a certain taste of victory that hid the past defeats, which were many, Anson headed to England in December. They arrived in their homeland on June 15, 1744. “Thus, after three years and nine months, this expedition concluded,” states the ship’s log. They received him as a hero for the journey undertaken – it is true that he circumnavigated the world – and the treasure captured. And, as is often the case on the other side of the channel, they forgot all the previous setbacks. Things from our neighbors.
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