HMS Wager was a square-rigged sixth-rate Royal Navy ship of 28 guns. She was built as an East Indiaman in about 1734 and made two voyages to India for the East India Company before the Royal Navy purchased her in 1739. She formed part of a squadron under Commodore George Anson and was wrecked on the south coast of Chile on 14 May 1741. The wreck of Wager became famous for the subsequent adventures of the survivors who found themselves marooned on the desolate Wager Island in the middle of a Patagonian winter, and in particular because of the Wager Mutiny that followed.
Wager was an East Indiaman, an armed trading vessel built mainly to accommodate large cargoes of goods from the Far East.[2] As an Indiaman she carried 30 guns and had a crew of 98.[3]
Under Captain Charles Raymond she sailed from the Downs on 13 February 1735, arriving in Madras on 18 July and returning to England via St Helena in July 1736. She made her second and final run for the Company to India in 1738, sailing via the Cape of Good Hope to Madras and Bengal, and returning to the Downs on 27 August 1739.[3][4]
Purchase by the Royal Navy
The Admiralty purchased Wager from Mr J. Raymond on 21 November 1739, and rated her as a 28-gun sixth rate.[2] The Admiralty bought her to fill in a squadron under Commodore George Anson that would attack Spanish interests on the Pacific west coast of South America. Her role was to carry additional stores of small arms, ball and powder to arm shore raiding parties. It was apt that she carried the name of the principal sponsor of the voyage, Admiral Sir Charles Wager, First Lord of the Admiralty.
She was fitted for naval service at Deptford Dockyard between 23 November 1739 and 23 May 1740 at a cost of £7,096.2.4d,[2] and was registered as a sixth rate on 22 April 1740, being established with 120 men and 28 guns.[2]
Anson's expedition to the Pacific in August 1740 comprised six warships and two transports, manned by a total of 1,854 men. The Navy commissioned Wager under Captain Dandy Kidd, who died before the ship reached Cape Horn; Lieutenant David Cheap was promoted to captain (acting). The squadron rounded Cape Horn in terrible weather, which scattered the ships of the squadron. Wager became separated and then needed to make her rendezvous. Unfortunately, she turned north before she had sailed sufficiently far to the west, and in foul weather closed the coast of modern-day Chile.
Wreck of Wager
"The Wreck of the Wager", the frontispiece from John Byron's account
On 13 May 1741 at 9:00am, the carpenter went forward to inspect the chain plates. Whilst there he thought he caught a fleeting glimpse of land to the west. Lieutenant Baynes was also there but he saw nothing, and the sighting was not reported. Consequently, no one realised that Wager had entered a large, uncharted bay, the Gulf of Penas.
At 2:00pm land was positively sighted to the west and northwest and all hands were mustered to make sail and turn the ship to the southwest. During the operations that followed, Captain Cheap fell down the quarterdeck ladder, dislocated his shoulder, and was confined below. The ship's disabled and worn-out condition severely hampered efforts to get clear of the bay.
At 4:30am the next day the ship struck rocks repeatedly, broke her tiller, and although still afloat, was partially flooded. Invalids below who were too sick to get out of their hammocks drowned. The ship was steered with sail alone towards land, but later in the morning the ship struck again, and this time became hard aground.
Some of the crew broke into the spirit room and got drunk, armed themselves and began looting, dressing up in officers' clothes and fighting. The other 140 men and officers took to the boats and made it safely on shore. On the following day, Friday 15 May, the ship bilged amidships, water flooded in below, and many of the drunken crew still on board drowned.
In the Royal Navy of 1741, officers' commissions were valid only for the ship to which they had been appointed; thus the loss of the ship implied the loss of any official authority. Seamen ceased to be paid on the loss of their ship. After the wreck of Wager, these factors, combined with terrible conditions and murderous in-fighting between officers and men, caused discipline to break down. The party divided into two: 81 men under the gunner, John Bulkley, took to small boats with the aim of returning to England via the East coast of South America, and 20 men, including Captain Cheap and Midshipman John Byron (later Vice Admiral "Foulweather Jack") remained on Wager Island. After a series of disasters, over five years later, six of Bulkley's group and four of Captain Cheap's group returned to England. Wager had left England with the best part of 300 men on board.
The British arrival caused great alarm among the Spanish who searched extensively the Patagonian archipelagoes to cleanse them of any possible British presence.[5][6] In the 1740s the viceroy of Peru and the governor of Chile converged in a project to advance the frontiers of the Spanish Empire in the Southeast Pacific and prevent the establishment of a British base. As a result of this plan the Juan Fernández Islands were settled and the fort of Tenquehuen established in Chonos Archipelago near Taitao Peninsula.[5] This last fort was manned for a year and a half before being abandoned.[6] After the Tenquehuen fort was dismantled the Marquis of the Ensenada, being briefed on local affairs, recommended the establishment of a fort in the Guaitecas Archipelago, but this never happened. For Governor Antonio Narciso de Santa María, Chiloé Island was the most important part of the Patagonian Archipelago recommending to concentrate on the defense of Chiloé.[5] It was following Narciso de Santa María's recommendations that the Spanish founded the "city-fort" of Ancud in 1767–1768.[5]
Spanish charts of the mid-eighteenth century show the approximate location of the wreck, indicating that it was well known to the local elite at the time.[7] In late 2006, a Scientific Exploration Society (SES) expedition searched for the wreck of the Wager and found at the north west corner of Wager Island, in shallow water, a 5 x 5 m piece of a wooden hull with some of the frames and external planking. It lay on the bottom of a small river, which had temporarily become a torrent after a 3 day storm, which had the effect of removing a covering layer of sand. Carbon-14 dating indicated a date contemporary with the Wager. The expedition also identified "Mount Misery", named by the survivors in the contemporary accounts and used as a viewpoint, as being the 180 m high hill about 3 km south and inland from the remains. Thus Mount Misery was not either of the two more distant higher points on modern maps named Mount Wager and Mount Anson.
There is a 28 page summary of the SES 2006 expedition by the leader Major Chris Holt in C H Layman's 2015 book.[7] This includes extensive maps and colour photographs of the locations and objects. It explains and illustrates that Wager Island has been pushed upwards out of the sea by about 7 m due to a total of 94 earthquakes since 1741. One of these actually happened during the disaster itself as is recorded in John Bulkeley's journal. The island is close to the boundary of active tectonic plates on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The largest earthquake ever recorded occurred in the region in 1960. This major seismic activity has significantly changed the shape of Wager Island since the disaster in 1741. It is now bigger and higher. What is now an inland lake at the north west corner of the island was once an inlet connected to the sea, as shown on Admiralty charts of the early 1800s. Somewhere in this inlet, now an inland lake, was the likely location of the survivors camp in 1741, rather than on the current coastline.
"The spot which we occupied was a bay formed by hilly promontories; that to the south so exceeding steep, that in order to ascend it (for there was no going round, the bottom being washed by the sea) we were at labour of cutting steps. This, which we called Mount Misery, was of use to us in taking some observations afterwards, when the weather would permit."[7][8]
The piece of discovered wooden hull had evidence of burn marks. This would be consistent with descriptions of the Spanish sponsored salvors in the late 1700s hacking pieces off the wreck, dragging them to the nearest beach, and then burning them to release the valuable metal from the structure. If so then the site of a larger section of the wreck, where HMS Wager actually came to grief, may still remain to be discovered nearby offshore. The SES 2006 expedition made a 68 minute film (by Lynwen Griffiths) which is available on YouTube called "The Quest for HMS Wager V1A".
In 2007 the Transpatagonia Expedition visited the wreck site and saw more remains.[9]
HMS Wager in fiction
The novel The Unknown Shore (pub. 1959) by Patrick O'Brian is based on the accounts of the survivors. One of the crew on Wager was Midshipman John Byron, later Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy and grandfather of the famous poet Lord Byron. O'Brian's novel closely follows John Byron's account.[10]
Vice-Admiral John Byron was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer. He earned the nickname "Foul-Weather Jack" in the press because of his frequent encounters with bad weather at sea. As a midshipman, he sailed in the squadron under George Anson on his voyage around the world, though Byron's ship, HMS Wager, made it only to southern Chile, where it was wrecked. He returned to England with the captain of the ship. He was governor of Newfoundland following Hugh Palliser, who left in 1768. He circumnavigated the world as a commodore with his own squadron in 1764–1766. He fought in battles in the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution. He rose to Vice Admiral of the White before his death in 1786.
The War of Jenkins' Ear was a conflict lasting from 1739 to 1748 between Britain and Spain. The majority of the fighting took place in New Granada and the Caribbean Sea, with major operations largely ended by 1742. It was related to the 1740 to 1748 War of the Austrian Succession. The name was coined in 1858 by British historian Thomas Carlyle, and refers to Robert Jenkins, captain of the British brig Rebecca, whose ear was allegedly severed by Spanish coast guards while searching his ship for contraband in April 1731.
Admiral of the Fleet George Anson, 1st Baron Anson, was a Royal Navy officer, politician and peer. Anson served as a junior officer during the War of the Spanish Succession and then saw active service against Spain at the Battle of Cape Passaro, off the south tip of Sicily, during the War of the Quadruple Alliance. He then undertook a circumnavigation of the globe during the War of Jenkins' Ear. Anson commanded the fleet that defeated the French Admiral de la Jonquière at the First Battle of Cape Finisterre in 1747, during the War of the Austrian Succession.
Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni, chevalier d'Entrecasteaux was a French naval officer, explorer and colonial governor. He is perhaps best known for his exploration of the Australian coast in 1792, while searching for the La Pérouse expedition. Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux is commonly referred to simply as Bruni d'Entrecasteaux or Bruny d'Entrecasteaux, each of which is a compound surname.
HMS Pandora was a 24-gun Porcupine-class sixth-rate post ship of the Royal Navy launched in May 1779. The vessel is best known for its role in hunting down the Bounty mutineers in 1790, which remains one of the best-known stories in the history of seafaring. Pandora was partially successful by capturing 14 of the mutineers, but wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef on the return voyage in 1791. HMS Pandora is considered to be one of the most significant shipwrecks in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Golden Ocean is a historical novel written by Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1956. It tells the story of a novice midshipman, Peter Palafox, who joins George Anson's voyage around the world beginning in 1740. The story is written much in the language and spelling of the mid-18th century. Palafox is a Protestant Irish boy from the west coast of Ireland, schooled by his father, a churchman, and eager to join the Royal Navy. He learns naval discipline and how to determine his ship's position at sea as part of a large berth of midshipmen on HMS Centurion. His friend Sean O'Mara joins with him, considered his servant initially by officers and put among the seamen, rising in rank as he shows his abilities, to bosun's mate.
The Unknown Shore is a novel published in 1959 by Patrick O'Brian. It is the story of two friends, Jack Byron and Tobias Barrow, who sail aboard HMS Wager as part of the voyage around the world led by Anson in 1740. Their ship did not make it all the way around the world, unlike the flagship. The novel is a fictionalised version of actual events which occurred during the Wager Mutiny.
Peter Puget was an officer in the Royal Navy, best known for his exploration of Puget Sound, which is named for him.
HMS Centurion was a 60-gun fourth rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy, built at Portsmouth Dockyard by Joseph Allin the younger and launched on 6 January 1732. At the time of Centurion's construction, the 1719 Establishment dictated the dimensions of almost every ship being built. Owing to concerns over the relative sizes of British ships compared to their continental rivals, Centurion was ordered to be built 1 ft (0.3 m) wider across the beam than the Establishment prescribed. HMS Rippon was similarly built to non-Establishment dimensions at the same time.
Admiral Sir Charles Wager was a Royal Navy officer and politician who served as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1733 to 1742. Despite heroic active service and steadfast administration and diplomatic service, Wager can be criticized for his failure to deal with an acute manning problem.
While Great Britain was fighting the War of Jenkins' Ear with Spain in 1740, Commodore George Anson led a squadron of eight ships on a mission to disrupt or capture the Pacific Ocean possessions of the Spanish Empire. Returning to Britain in 1744 by way of China and thus completing a circumnavigation of the globe, the voyage was notable for the capture of the Manila galleon, but also for horrific losses from disease with only 188 men of the original 1,854 surviving. An account of the voyage was published in 1748 which being widely read by the general public was a great commercial success and "is still esteemed as the story of a remarkable voyage extremely well told."
Admiral Sir Peircy Brett was a Royal Navy officer. As a junior officer he served on George Anson's voyage around the world and commanded the landing party which sacked and burned the town of Paita in November 1741. During the Jacobite rising Brett saw action on 9 July 1745, when as captain of the fourth-rate HMS Lion he exchanged fire with the French ships Elizabeth and the Du Teillay: the Du Teillay at the time was carrying Charles Edward Stuart to Scotland with supplies and funds to support his cause. Brett also commanded the third-rate HMS Yarmouth at the First Battle of Cape Finisterre in May 1747 during the War of the Austrian Succession. He commanded HMS Cambridge on the North America and West Indies Station during the Seven Years' War and later became Senior Naval Lord. He was also a Member of Parliament, representing the constituency of Queenborough from 1754 until 1774.
The Wager Mutiny took place in 1741, after the British warship HMS Wager was wrecked on a desolate island off the south coast of present-day Chile.
Anna was a merchant vessel originally employed as a collier taking coal from Yorkshire to London. The Admiralty chartered her in 1739 and subsequently purchased her to carry additional stores for the squadron of Commodore George Anson on his voyage around the world in 1740–44. She was often referred to as 'Anna Pink', as a 'Pink' is a type of ship with a narrow stern. She lost company with the squadron on 24 April 1741, but rejoined it at the Juan Fernández Islands on 16 August 1741 after sheltering for two months in a natural harbour on the South Chilean coast. A subsequent survey found her timbers were too badly damaged for a re-fit, therefore her stores and crew were distributed about the squadron and she was scuttled on 18 August 1741 in Cumberland Bay, Juan Fernández.
HMS Pearl was a 40-gun fifth rate of the Royal Navy. It was used during the War of Jenkins' Ear, and was one of the ships dispatched under Commodore George Anson for his raids on Spanish possessions in the Pacific.
David Cheap was a Scottish Royal Navy officer.
John Bulkeley was a British seaman, best known for leading survivors of the wreck of HMS Wager to safety. Bulkeley was the ship's gunner, not one of her commissioned officers. David Cheap, the ship's acting captain, had lost the confidence of his former crew, many of whom were convinced that when the ship was sunk, and their pay ended, they were no longer bound by the Royal Navy's discipline or chain of command.
Several vessels have been named Anna:
Rear-Admiral George Murray, 6th Lord Elibank was a British naval officer. He joined the Royal Navy in the early 1720s and fought in the Battle of Porto Bello in 1739 as a lieutenant on board the ship of the line HMS Hampton Court. Murray was promoted to commander in 1740 and given command of the sloop HMS Tryall to take part in George Anson's voyage around the world. A series of illnesses and deaths in Anson's squadron meant that by early 1741 Murray had been promoted to post captain and given command of the frigate HMS Pearl. Pearl and another ship lost contact with Anson in April of that year and after taking heavy damage and casualties through storms and sickness, sought safety in Rio de Janeiro before sailing for England.
Wager Island is an uninhabited island in Guayaneco Archipelago, a remote part of western Patagonia. Located 1,600 kilometres south of Santiago, the island is part of Capitán Prat Province of the Aysén Region, Chile. The island was the location of the Wager Mutiny, which took place in October 1741 after the wreck of the British warship HMS Wager.
References
Anon. (1751) An Affecting Narrative of the Unfortunate Voyage and Catastrophe of His Majesty's Ship Wager. (London: J. Norwood).
Bulkeley, John, & John Cummins. A Voyage to the South-Seas in the Years 1740-1. London: Jacob Robinson, 1743. Second edition, with additions, London, 1757.
Byron, John (1785) Narrative of the Hon. John Byron; Being an Account of the Shipwreck of The Wager; and the Subsequent Adventures of Her Crew, 1768. Second edition.
Edwards, Phillip (2004) The Story of the Voyage: Sea-Narratives in Eighteenth-Century England. (Cambridge). pp.53–78.
W. J. Fletcher. The Wreck of the Wager, Cornhill Magazine, New Series, volume 16 (January–June 1904), 394–411.
Hackman, Rowan (2001). Ships of the East India Company. Gravesend, Kent: World Ship Society. ISBN0-905617-96-7.
Kerr, Robert (1824) A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Arranged in Systematic Order, XVII. Edinburgh and London. Includes Byron's account, pp.313–414 (327–428 of the pdf), and Bulkeley's, pp.415–529 (429–543 of the pdf).
Layman, Rear Admiral C. H. (2015), "The Wager Disaster: Mayhem, Mutiny and Murder in the South Seas", University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA; also Uniform Press, London, UK; both ISBN 978-1-910065-50-1
Pack, S. W. C. (1964). The Wager Mutiny. A. Redman. OCLC5152716.
Shankland, Peter (1975) Byron of the Wager, London: Collins.
Somerville, Henry Boyle Townshend (1934). Commodore Anson's Voyage into the South Seas and Around the World. W. Heinemann. OCLC5914627.
Winfield, Rif (2007). British Warships in the Age of Sail 1714–1792: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth Publishing. ISBN978-1-84415-700-6.
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