Three quarters of the Gloucester’s roughly four hundred men had already perished, and after the remainder were transferred to the Centurion—most of them so sick that they had to be hoisted onboard on wooden grates—Anson had the Gloucester’s hull set on fire to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. He watched as its wooden world ignited, producing what one of his lieutenants, Philip Saumarez, called “as melancholy a scene as I ever observed since I have been in the Navy.” The Trial’s former purser, Lawrence Millechamp, who was now onboard the Centurion, wrote of the Gloucester, “She burnt all night, making a most grand, horrid appearance. Her guns, which were all loaded, fired so regularly…that they sounded like mourning guns.” The next day, as the flames reached the powder room, the hull exploded: “Thus ended the Gloucester, a ship justly esteemed the beauty of the English Navy.”

  Despite these calamities, Anson was determined to keep at least part of the expedition afloat, and to fulfill his orders to circumnavigate the globe in his sole remaining ship. Before crossing the Pacific, he’d attempted to weaken the Spanish by capturing a few of their trading vessels and by raiding a tiny colonial town in Peru. But these victories were of meager military significance, and while making its way to Asia, the party had suffered yet another scurvy outbreak—an outbreak that caused even more suffering than before, because the men knew what was coming (the aching, the swelling, the falling teeth, the madness), and because they died in such large numbers. One officer wrote that the bodies smelled “like rotten sheep,” and recalled “tossing overboard six, eight, ten or twelve in a day.” Anson was anguished by the death and the failure of his mission, confessing, “I should have great pain in returning to my country, after all the fatigue and hazard I have undergone in endeavouring to serve it, if I thought I had forfeited…the esteem of the public.” His forces had withered from some 2,000 to a mere 227, and many of them were just boys. He had only a third of the complement required to properly operate a man-of-war of the Centurion’s size.

  Despite the crew’s many agonies, they had remained remarkably loyal to their commander. When they periodically grumbled, he might read aloud to them the rules and regulations, making sure that they were aware of the punishment for disobedience, but he had avoided the lash. “We had the example of a brave, humane, equal-minded, prudent commander,” an officer on the Centurion said of Anson, adding, “His temper was so steady and unruffled that the men and officers all looked on him with wonder and delight, and could not for shame betray any great dejection under the most imminent danger.”

  On one occasion, after Anson had anchored the Centurion by an uninhabited island in the Pacific, he went ashore with many of the men. A storm whipped up and the Centurion vanished. Anson and his party, like their brethren on the Wager, found themselves castaways on a desolate island. “It is almost impossible to describe the sorrow and anguish that possessed us,” Millechamp wrote. “Grief, discontent, terror and despair seemed visible in the countenances of every one of us.”

  Days passed, and Anson, fearing the Centurion had been lost forever, planned to expand a tiny transport boat that they had on the island into a vessel large enough to carry them to the nearest safe port—on the coast of China, fifteen hundred miles away. “Unless we wish to end our days here in this wild place,” Anson told the men, “we must put our backs into the work before us, and each labour as much for himself as for his shipmates.”

  The commodore joined in the toil, putting himself, as one of the men recalled it, on the same level as “the meanest sailor in his crew.” Millechamp noted that the sight of Anson, along with all the other senior officers, sharing in the hardest tasks made everyone “endeavour to excel, and indeed we soon found that our work went on with great spirit and vigour.”

  Three weeks after the Centurion went missing, it reappeared. The ship had been damaged while being swept out to sea; all this time its crew had struggled to return. After a joyous reunion, Anson pressed on with their voyage around the world.

  Now, while sailing through the South China Sea, Anson summoned his men on deck and climbed onto the roof of his cabin to address them. The party had recently stopped in Canton, where they had repaired and resupplied the Centurion and where Anson had let it be known that he intended to return to England at last, bringing an end to their doomed endeavor. The governor of Manila, in the Philippines, had passed on to the King of Spain a report that “the English are tired of their venture, having accomplished nothing.”

  Peering down from the cabin roof, Anson shouted, “Gentlemen, and all of you, my gallant lads, forward, I have sent for you, now that we are once more clear of the shore…to declare to you where we are bound.” He paused, then cried, “Not to England!”

  Anson, that inscrutable card player, revealed that all his talk about heading home had been a ruse. He had studied the timing and patterns that the Spanish galleon historically followed on its route, and he had gathered further intelligence from sources in China. Based on all this information, he suspected that the galleon would soon be off the coast of the Philippines. And he planned to try to intercept it. After all their squandered blood, this was their chance to strike a blow against their enemy and obtain the valuable treasure said to be onboard. He dismissed the fearsome tales that the Spanish galleons had hulls so thick they were impenetrable to cannon fire. Yet he acknowledged that their adversary would be formidable. Looking at his crew, he declared that the spirit that had carried them this far, and that had helped them weather the gales of Cape Horn and the ravages of the Pacific—that “spirit in you, my lads”—would be enough to prevail. One naval historian later described Anson’s gambit as “an act of desperation by a commander who faced professional ruin, a last throw by a gambler who had lost all.” The crew waved their hats and gave three loud cheers, promising to share with him victory or death.

  * * *

  Anson turned the Centurion toward Samar Island, the third-largest in the Philippines, about a thousand miles to the southeast. He had the men drill constantly—firing their muskets at objects hung, like disembodied heads, from the yardarms; running cannons in and out; and practicing with cutlasses and swords in case they had to board the enemy’s ship. And when all these drills were done, Anson made everyone do them again—faster. His edict was simple: prepare or perish.

  On May 20, a lookout spotted Cape Espiritu Santo, the northernmost point of Samar Island. Anson immediately ordered members of the crew to furl the topgallant sails, so the ship would be harder to spy from a distance. He wanted the edge of surprise.

  For weeks, under the beating sun, he and his party cruised back and forth in hopes of spotting the galleon. One officer wrote in his logbook, “Exercising our men at their quarters, in great expectation.” Later, he added, “Keeping in our stations, and looking out.” But after a month of exhausting drills and searching in the sultry heat, the men were losing hope of seeing their quarry. “All hands began to look very melancholy,” Lieutenant Saumarez wrote in his logbook.

  On June 20, the dawn broke at 5:40 a.m. As the sun crept over the sea, a lookout shouted that he’d seen something far to the southeast. Anson, on the quarterdeck, picked up his telescope and glassed the horizon. There, on the jagged edge of the sea, he spied several white specks: topgallant sails. The vessel, miles away, bore no Spanish flag, but as it came further into focus, he had no doubt that it was the galleon. And she was alone.

  Ordering all hands to clear the decks for action, Anson gave chase. “Our ship immediately grew into a ferment,” Millechamp noted. “Every man was ready to assist, and everyone thought the thing could not be well done without his having a hand in it. For my part I thought they would all have run mad with joy.”

  They knocked down cabin partitions, to make more room for the gun crews; dumped overboard any livestock that was in the way; and tossed any unnecessary timber that might shatter under fire and rain down lethal splinters. Sand was sprinkled on the decks to make them less slippery. Men working the cannons were given rammers and sponges and priming irons and horns and wads and—in case of fire—tubs of water. Down in the magazine room, the gunner and his mates distributed gunpowder to the powder monkeys, who then ran them up the ladders and through the ship, making sure not to trip and cause an explosion before the battle had begun. Lanterns were extinguished, and so was the galley stove. In the bowels of the orlop deck, George Allen, who had begun the voyage as a twenty-five-year-old surgeon’s mate and through attrition became the chief surgeon, prepared with his loblolly boys for the expected casualties—building an operating table from sea chests, organizing bone saws and bandages, and laying on the floor a sail canvas that would prevent his men from slipping on blood.

  * * *

  The Spanish called the galleon Our Lady of Covadonga. The men inside it must have recognized that they were being chased. But they did not attempt to flee, perhaps because of courage, or perhaps because they did not expect the Centurion to be in any condition to fight. They were under the command of an experienced officer, Gerónimo Montero, who had served on the Covadonga for fourteen years. He had orders to defend the treasure-filled ship to the death, and if necessary to blow it up before it fell into enemy hands.

  Montero turned the Covadonga and headed boldly toward the Centurion. The two vessels approached each other on a collision course. Anson peered through his telescope, trying to assess the enemy’s strength. The galleon’s gun deck extended 124 feet—20 feet shorter than the Centurion’s. And compared to the Centurion’s sixty cannons, many of which fired twenty-four-pound balls, the galleon had only thirty-two guns, the largest mere twelve-pounders. In terms of firepower, the Centurion was clearly superior.

  But Montero had one crucial advantage. His ship was carrying 530 people—300 more than the Centurion—and the men on the Covadonga were generally healthy. For all of Anson’s potent gunnery, he lacked sufficient hands to operate his full arsenal while maintaining enough crew to manage the ship. He decided to deploy only half the Centurion’s guns—those on the starboard side—which was safe to do now that he knew there was no second Spanish ship to attack his other flank.

  Still, he did not have even enough crewmen to handle all the starboard guns, so rather than assign at least eight people to operate each cannon, as was customary, he designated just two. Each pair would be strictly responsible for loading and sponging the muzzle. Meanwhile, several squads, each consisting of about a dozen people, would be tasked with sprinting from gun to gun—running them forward and lighting them. Anson hoped that this approach would allow him to maintain a continuous blaze of fire. The commodore made one other tactical decision. Having noticed that the galleon’s plank sidings above the gunwales were surprisingly low, which left its officers and crew exposed on deck, Anson stationed a dozen of his finest marksmen on the mast tops. Perched high above the sea, they would have a clear vantage point for picking off their enemies.

  As the ships continued to converge, the dueling commanders mirrored each other’s actions. After Anson’s men cleared their decks, Montero’s crew did the same, throwing overboard bellowing cattle and other screaming livestock; like Anson, Montero placed some of his men with small arms on the mast tops. Montero raised his crimson Spanish royal flag, emblazoned with castles and lions; then Anson hoisted his British colors.

  Both commanders opened their gunports and ran out the black muzzles. Montero fired a shot, and Anson replied with his own. The blasts were meant merely to rattle the other side: given the inaccuracy of cannons, they were still too far away to truly engage.

  Shortly past noon, when the two ships were about three miles apart, a storm arose. Rain rifled down and winds boomed and the sea smoked with mist—God’s own battlefield. At times, Anson and his men lost sight of the galleon, though they knew it was out there, moving with all its metal. Afraid of a stealthy broadside, they scoured the sea. Then a cry went out—it was over there!—and the men glimpsed it before it vanished again. Each time the galleon emerged it was closer. Two miles away, then one, then half a mile. Anson, not wanting to engage the enemy until it was within pistol shot, ordered the men to hold their fire: every blast must count.

  After the excitement of the chase, there was now an unnerving stillness. The crew knew some of them might soon be missing an arm or a leg, or worse. Saumarez, the lieutenant, noted that he hoped to “face death cheerfully” whenever duty called on him. Some of Anson’s men were so anxious their stomachs cramped.

  The rain stopped, and Anson and his crew could clearly see the black mouths of the galleon’s cannons. The ship was less than a hundred yards away. The wind dropped, and Anson tried to maintain enough sail to maneuver but not so much as to make the ship unruly, or to give the enemy lots of large targets that, if hit, could cripple the Centurion.

  Anson guided his ship across the galleon’s wake, and then swiftly came abreast of the Covadonga from the leeward side, so it would be harder for Montero to escape downwind.

  Fifty yards away…twenty-five…

  Anson’s men were silent fore and aft, awaiting the commodore’s command. At one p.m., the two ships were so close their yardarms nearly touched, and Anson finally gave the signal: Fire!

  The men on the mast tops began to shoot. Their muskets crackled and flashed; smoke stung their eyes. As the barrels recoiled and the Centurion’s masts swayed with the rolling ship, they braced themselves with ropes, to keep from plunging to an inglorious death. After discharging a musket, a shooter would grab another cartridge, bite off a wad of paper at the top, and pour a small amount of black powder into the gun’s flash pan. Then he would jam the new cartridge—which contained more powder and a lead ball about the size of a marble—into the barrel, using a ramrod, and fire again. Initially, these sharpshooters targeted their counterparts in the galleon’s rigging, who were trying to pick off the Centurion’s officers and crew. Both sides were fighting a battle from the sky; balls whizzed through the air, ripping through sails and ropes and occasionally a chunk of flesh.

  Anson and Montero had also unleashed their cannons. Whereas Montero’s men were able to fire broadsides—simultaneously blasting all the cannons in a row—Anson’s crew relied on his unconventional system to set off the guns in rapid succession. The moment after a squad on the Centurion discharged a cannon, the men ran the gun back in and closed the porthole to shield themselves from incoming fire. Then the two loaders began to swab the sizzling barrel and prepare the next round while the squad raced on to another loaded cannon—priming it and pointing it and lighting the match, then jumping out of the way before they became casualties of their own recoiling two-ton weapon. The guns rattled and roared, the breeches strained, and the decks shook. The men’s ears ached from the murderous ringing, and their faces were powder blackened. “Nothing was to be seen but fire and smoke, nor heard but the thunder of the cannon, which was fired so quick that it made one continued sound,” Millechamp noted.

  Anson watched the unfolding battle from the quarterdeck, his sword in hand. Through the choking smoke, he detected a flickering on the galleon’s stern: a stretch of netting had caught fire. The flames were spreading, creeping halfway up the mizzenmast. It threw Montero’s men into a state of confusion. Yet the two vessels were close enough that the fire threatened to engulf the Centurion, too. Using axes, Montero’s men cut away the burning mass of netting and wood until it fell into the sea.

  The fighting continued, the noise so deafening that Anson conveyed his orders with hand signals. The galleon’s cannons were spraying the Centurion with a malignant mix of nails and stones and lead balls, as well as chunks of iron linked by bits of chain—an assortment “very well contrived for death and murder,” as the schoolmaster, Pascoe Thomas, put it.

  The Centurion’s sails and shrouds had begun to shred, and several cannonballs had smashed into the hull. Whenever one hit below the waterline, the carpenter and his crew hurried to fill the hole with wooden plugs, so the sea would not swamp them. A nine-pound cast-iron ball struck one of Anson’s men, Thomas Richmond, directly in the head, decapitating him. Another seaman was hit in the leg, and as his artery spouted blood, his mates carried him down to the orlop deck, where he was laid on the operating table. As the ship convulsed from the explosions, the doctor, Allen, grabbed his blades and, without anesthesia, began to cut off the man’s leg. A naval surgeon described how challenging it was to operate in these conditions: “At the very instant when I was amputating the limb of one of our wounded seamen, I met with an almost continual interruption from the rest of his companions, who were in the like distressful circumstances; some pouring forth the most piercing cries to be taken care of, while others seized my arms in their earnestness of being relieved, even at the time I was passing the needle for securing the divided blood vessels by a ligature.” While Allen worked, the ship shook continuously from the recoil of the large cannons. The doctor managed to saw off the leg just above the knee and to cauterize the wound with boiling tar, but the man soon died.

  * * *

  The battle raged on. Anson realized that the enemy’s gunports were very narrow, limiting the movement of its muzzles. And so he maneuvered his ship to lie nearly perpendicular to the galleon, thereby depriving many of the enemy’s guns of a clear shot. The Covadonga’s cannonballs began to soar wide of the Centurion and into the sea, where they sent up harmless waterspouts. The Centurion’s gunports were larger, and Anson’s squads used handspikes and crowbars to point their cannons squarely at the galleon. The commodore gave the signal to fire the heaviest balls—the twenty-four-pounders—at the enemy’s hull. At the same time, some of Anson’s men raked the Covadonga’s sails and rigging with chain shot, paralyzing her on the sea. The galleon shuddered amid a pitiless storm of metallic hail. Anson’s sharpshooters in the tops had taken out their counterparts in the galleon’s rigging, and they were sniping one Spaniard after another on the decks.