GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “At those ends”: Melville, White-Jacket, 151–53.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “blind Horn’s hate”: Rudyard Kipling, The Writings in Prose and Verse of Rudyard Kipling, 168.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  To determine his: For more information on navigating and longitude, see Dava Sobel’s comprehensive account, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. Also see two other excellent sources: Lloyd A. Brown’s The Story of Maps, and William J. H. Andrewes’s The Quest for Longitude.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  first to circumnavigate: Magellan himself did not complete the voyage around the world. In 1521, he was killed during a fight with inhabitants of what is today the Philippines, who had resisted his attempts to convert them to Christianity.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “will not speak”: Quoted in Sobel, Longitude, foreword, xiii.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “By reason of”: Ibid., 52.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “yelps of”: Ibid., 7.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “very ingenious”: Quoted in Lloyd A. Brown, The Story of Maps, 232.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “the technique of”: Sobel, Longitude, 14.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “We had here”: Thomas, A True and Impartial Journal of a Voyage to the South-Seas, 18.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “The only things”: Millechamp, A Narrative of Commodore Anson’s Voyage into the Great South Sea and Round the World, NMM-JOD/36.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “crafty lawyers”: Quoted in Samuel Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, 1577–1580, 104.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “Lo! This”: Ibid., 106.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “seat of infernal”: Journal of Saumarez, printed in Williams, ed., Documents Relating to Anson’s Voyage Round the World, 165.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “half fish”: Millechamp, A Narrative of Commodore Anson’s Voyage into the Great South Sea and Round the World, NMM-JOD/36.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “It is incredible”: Gallagher, ed., Byron´s Journal of His Circumnavigation, 1764–1766, 62.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “rather a dangerous”: Ibid., 59.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “a pleasing dreadful”: Millechamp, A Narrative of Commodore Anson’s Voyage into the Great South Sea and Round the World, NMM-JOD/36.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “The land sometimes”: Ibid.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “one cheerful”: Thomas, A True and Impartial Journal of a Voyage to the South-Seas, 19.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “so tall that”: Antonio Pigafetta and R. A. Skelton, Magellan’s Voyage: A Narrative of the First Circumnavigation, 46.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “you will answer”: Orders from Anson to Captain Edward Legge on Jan. 18, 1741, TNA-ADM 1/2040.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “for islands of”: Journal of Saumarez, printed in Williams, ed., Documents Relating to Anson’s Voyage Round the World, 165.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “Though Tierra”: Walter, A Voyage Round the World, 79.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “loomed up”: Melville, White-Jacket, 183.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “a proper nursery”: Millechamp, A Narrative of Commodore Anson’s Voyage into the Great South Sea and Round the World, NMM-JOD/36.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Instead of the: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 18.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “I remember one”: Millechamp, A Narrative of Commodore Anson’s Voyage into the Great South Sea and Round the World, NMM-JOD/36.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “The morning of”: Walter, A Voyage Round the World, 80–81.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “a prodigious fine”: Logbook of Captain Matthew Mitchell of the Gloucester, March 8, 1741, TNA-ADM 51/402.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “We could not”: Walter, A Voyage Round the World, 80.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “The force of”: William F. Stark and Peter Stark, The Last Time Around Cape Horn: The Historic 1949 Voyage of the Windjammer Pamir, 176–77.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “crushing the lives”: John Kenlon, Fourteen Years a Sailor, 216.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “very near being”: Byron, The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron, 4.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “excellent seaman”: Bulkeley and Cummins, A Voyage to the South Seas, 73.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  CHAPTER 5

  “Below forty degrees”: Los Angeles Times, Jan. 5, 2007.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “such violence”: Gallagher, ed., Byron´s Journal of His Circumnavigation, 1764–1766, 32.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “a luxuriance”: Walter, A Voyage Round the World, 109.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “with such excessive”: Thomas, A True and Impartial Journal of a Voyage to the South-Seas, 142.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “the most violent”: Gallagher, ed., Byron´s Journal of His Circumnavigation, 1764–1766, 116.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “Still more astonishing”: Walter, A Voyage Round the World, 109.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “strange dejection”: Ibid., 108.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “the falling down”: Quoted in Lamb, Scurvy, 56.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  descend into lunacy: During the outbreak, Lieutenant Saumarez observed that some of the ailing men displayed “idiotism, lunacy, convulsions.”

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “got into their”: Anon., A Voyage to the South-Seas, and to Many Other Parts of the World, Performed from the Month of September in the Year 1740, to June 1744, by Commodore Anson…by an Officer of the Squadron, 233.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  They were suffering: For more information on scurvy, see several excellent sources. They include Kenneth J. Carpenter’s The History of Scurvy and Vitamin C; David Harvie’s Limeys: The Conquest of Scurvy; Stephen R. Bown’s Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail; Jonathan Lamb’s Scurvy: The Disease of Discovery, which is especially insightful on the psychic effects of the disorder on seamen; James Watt’s “The Medical Bequest of Disaster at Sea: Commodore Anson’s Circumnavigation, 1740–44”; and Eleanora C. Gordon’s “Scurvy and Anson’s Voyage Round the World, 1740–1744: An Analysis of the Royal Navy’s Worst Outbreak.” To understand how the disease was perceived and misperceived during the Age of Sail, I also drew on medical texts from that period, such as James Lind’s An Essay on the Most Effectual Means of Preserving the Health of Seamen in the Royal Navy; Richard Mead’s The Medical Works of Richard Mead; and Thomas Trotter’s Medical and Chemical Essays. For how the disease specifically ravaged Anson’s squadron, see the crew members’ diaries, correspondence, and logbooks.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “the plague”: Quoted in Kenneth J. Carpenter, The History of Scurvy and Vitamin C, 17.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “I cannot”: Letter from Anson to James Naish, December, 1742, printed in Williams, ed., Documents Relating to Anson’s Voyage Round the World, 152.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “The greatest part”: Byron, The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron, 8–9.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “bones, after the”: Anon., A Voyage to the South-Seas, and to Many Other Parts of the World, Performed from the Month of September in the Year 1740, to June 1744, by Commodore Anson…by an Officer of the Squadron, 233.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “black and yellow”: Richard Mead, The Medical Works of Richard Mead, 441.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  the cause: Others speculated that scurvy was the result of food supplies that had begun to spoil. Another, crueler theory held by some officers was that the sick seamen themselves were to blame—that their lethargy, rather than being a symptom of the disease, had caused it. On the verge of death, these poor men were kicked and beaten while being cussed as idle, lazy, skulking dogs.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “entire secret”: Thomas, A True and Impartial Journal of a Voyage to the South-Seas, 143.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “It was a”: Bulkeley and Cummins, A Voyage to the South Seas, 6.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  the bizarre sight: Another unfounded cure for scurvy was perhaps even more disconcerting to behold. Patients were submerged, as a text for sea surgeons recommended, “in a good bath of the blood of beasts, either cows, horse, asses, goats or sheeps.”

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “twenty men’s heads”: A. Beckford Bevan and H. B. Wolryche-Whitmore, eds., The Journals of Captain Frederick Hoffman, R.N., 1793–1814, 80.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “many marvelous”: Marjorie H. Nicolson, “Ward’s ‘Pill and Drop’ and Men of Letters,” Journal of the History of Ideas 29, no. 2 (1968), 178.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “very violently”: Thomas, A True and Impartial Journal of a Voyage to the South-Seas, 143.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “I could plainly”: Journal of Saumarez, printed in Williams, ed., Documents Relating to Anson’s Voyage Round the World, 166.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “died before they”: Walter, A Voyage Round the World, 110.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “Nothing was”: Millechamp, A Narrative of Commodore Anson’s Voyage into the Great South Sea and Round the World, NMM-JOD/36.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “So miserable”: Logbook of Captain Matthew Mitchell of the Gloucester, TNA-ADM 51/402.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “so weak”: Captain Edward Legge to Secretary of the Admiralty, July 4, 1741, TNA-ADM 1/2040.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “So great”: John Philips, An Authentic Journal of the Late Expedition Under the Command of Commodore Anson, 46.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “great diligence”: Captain Legge to Secretary of the Admiralty, July 4, 1741, TNA-ADM 1/2040.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “I have omitted”: Keppel, The Life of Augustus, Viscount Keppel, Admiral of the White, and First Lord of the Admiralty in 1782–3, vol. 1, 31.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “Henry Cheap”: Centurion’s muster book, TNA-ADM 36/0556.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “my grand-dad’s”: George Gordon Byron, The Complete Works of Lord Byron, 720.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “Without a grave”: Ibid., 162.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “total destruction”: Walter, A Voyage Round the World, 107.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “Getting thither”: Ibid., 113.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “When his clothes”: Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, 128.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “so that he”: Ibid., 126.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “the absolute monarch”: Ibid., 131.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  As a tale: The reverberations of the stories of Selkirk and Crusoe continue into the modern age. See, for instance, the 2015 survival film The Martian.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “long wished”: Millechamp, A Narrative of Commodore Anson’s Voyage into the Great South Sea and Round the World, NMM-JOD/36.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “like two black”: Logbook of Captain Mitchell of the Gloucester, TNA-ADM 51/402.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “Our seamen”: Millechamp, A Narrative of Commodore Anson’s Voyage into the Great South Sea and Round the World, NMM-JOD/36.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  CHAPTER 6

  “perfect hurricane”: Byron, The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron, 9. The Reverend Walter account also refers to the storms as the “perfect hurricane.”

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “We had”: Bulkeley and Cummins, A Voyage to the South Seas, 5.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “greater sea”: Captain Legge to secretary of the Admiralty, July 4, 1741, TNA-ADM 1/2040.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  to describe it: One officer in the squadron said simply of the conditions, “A more violent storm never blew from the heavens.”

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “A raging sea”: Thomas, A True and Impartial Journal of a Voyage to the South-Seas, 24.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “Down I came”: Ibid., 25.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  where he lay: Even after Schoolmaster Thomas recovered from the fall, he continued to suffer. “I have ever since had a violent pain in that shoulder, very often accompanied with an inability to pull on my own garments, to turn my hand behind my back, or even to lift a pound of weight with it,” he wrote in his journal.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “carried me”: Bulkeley and Cummins, A Voyage to the South Seas, 6.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “Do nothing”: Ibid.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  lost his grip: He was not the only member of the expedition to fall overboard and drown. Many others did as well. In one instance, the Centurion’s midshipman Keppel wrote in his logbook, “Martin Enough, a brisk seaman, in going up the main-shrouds, fell overboard, and was lost—much wanted, and regretted.”

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “He might continue”: Walter, A Voyage Round the World, 85.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Wash’d headlong: Eva Hope, ed., The Poetical Works of William Cowper, 254.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “so much worm-eaten”: Thomas, A True and Impartial Journal of a Voyage to the South-Seas, 145.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “if it had”: Captain Murray’s report to Admiralty, July 10, 1741, TNA-ADM 1/2099.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “A quick, subtle”: Keppel, The Life of Augustus, Viscount Keppel, Admiral of the White, and First Lord of the Admiralty in 1782–3, vol. 1, 32.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “crazy ship”: Walter, A Voyage Round the World, 114.