Anson was said to have been so struck by Campbell’s gallantry that he’d made him a midshipman. Most sailors, though, went to extraordinary lengths to evade the “body snatchers”—hiding in cramped holds, listing themselves as dead in muster books, and abandoning merchant ships before reaching a major port. When a press gang surrounded a church in London, in 1755, in pursuit of a seaman inside, he managed, according to a newspaper report, to slip away disguised in “an old gentlewoman’s long cloak, hood and bonnet.”

  Sailors who got snatched up were transported in the holds of small ships known as tenders, which resembled floating jails, with gratings bolted over the hatchways and marines standing guard with muskets and bayonets. “In this place we spent the day and following night huddled together, for there was not room to sit or stand separate,” one seaman recalled. “Indeed, we were in a pitiable plight, for numbers of them were sea-sick, some retching, others were smoking, whilst many were so overcome by the stench, that they fainted for want of air.”

  Family members, upon learning that a relative—a son, or a brother, or a husband, or a father—had been apprehended, would often rush to where the tenders were departing, hoping to glimpse their loved ones. Samuel Pepys describes, in his diary, a scene of pressed sailors’ wives gathered on a wharf near the Tower of London: “In my life, I never did see such a natural expression of passion as I did here in some women’s bewailing themselves, and running to every parcel of men that were brought, one after another, to look for their husbands, and wept over every vessel that went off, thinking they might be there, and looking after the ship as far as ever they could by moon-light, that it grieved me to the heart to hear them.”

  * * *

  Anson’s squadron received scores of pressed men. Cheap processed at least sixty-five for the Centurion; however distasteful he might have found the press, he needed every sailor he could get. Yet the unwilling recruits deserted at the first opportunity, as did volunteers who were having misgivings. In a single day, thirty men vanished from the Severn. Of the sick men sent to Gosport, countless took advantage of the lax security to flee—or, as one admiral put it, “go off as soon as they can crawl.” Altogether, more than 240 men absconded from the squadron, including the Gloucester’s chaplain. When Captain Kidd dispatched a press gang to find new recruits for the Wager, six members of the gang itself deserted.

  Anson ordered the squadron to moor far enough outside Portsmouth harbor that swimming to freedom was impossible—a frequent tactic that led one trapped seaman to write his wife: “I would give all I had if it was a hundred guineas if I could get on shore. I only lays on the deck every night…There is no hopes of my getting to you…do the best you can for the children and God prosper you and them till I come back.”

  * * *

  Cheap, who believed that a good sailor must possess “honour, courage…steadiness,” was undoubtedly appalled by the quality of the recruits who lingered. It was common for local authorities, knowing the unpopularity of the press, to dump their undesirables. But these conscripts were wretched, and the volunteers were little better. An admiral described one bunch of recruits as being “full of the pox, itch, lame, King’s evil, and all other distempers, from the hospitals at London, and will serve only to breed an infection in the ships; for the rest, most of them are thieves, house breakers, Newgate [Prison] birds, and the very filth of London.” He concluded, “In all the former wars I never saw a parcel of turned over men half so bad, in short they are so very bad, that I don’t know how to describe it.”

  To at least partly address the shortage of men, the government sent to Anson’s squadron 143 marines, who in those days were a branch of the Army, with their own officers. The marines were supposed to help with land invasions and also lend a hand at sea. Yet they were such raw recruits that they had never set foot on a ship and didn’t even know how to fire a weapon. The Admiralty admitted that they were “useless.” In desperation, the Navy took the extreme step of rounding up for Anson’s squadron five hundred invalid soldiers from the Royal Hospital, in Chelsea, a pensioner’s home established in the seventeenth century for veterans who were “old, lame, or infirm in ye service of the Crowne.” Many were in their sixties and seventies, and they were rheumatic, hard of hearing, partially blind, suffering from convulsions, or missing an assortment of limbs. Given their ages and debilities, these soldiers had been deemed unfit for active service. Reverend Walter described them as the “most decrepit and miserable objects that could be collected.”

  As these invalids made their way to Portsmouth, nearly half slipped away, including one who hobbled off on a wooden leg. “All those who had limbs and strength to walk out of Portsmouth deserted,” Reverend Walter noted. Anson pleaded with the Admiralty to replace what his chaplain called “this aged and diseased detachment.” No recruits were available, though, and after Anson dismissed some of the most infirm men, his superiors ordered them back onboard.

  Cheap watched the incoming invalids, many of them so weak they had to be lifted onto the ships on stretchers. Their panicked faces betrayed what everyone secretly knew: they were sailing to their deaths. As Reverend Walter acknowledged, “They would in all probability uselessly perish by lingering and painful diseases; and this, too, after they had spent the activity and strength of their youth in their country’s service.”

  * * *

  On August 23, 1740, after nearly a year of delays, the battle before the battle was over with “everything being in readiness to proceed on the voyage,” as an officer of the Centurion wrote in his journal. Anson ordered Cheap to fire one of the guns. It was the signal for the squadron to unmoor, and at the sound of the blast the entire force—the five men-of-war and an eighty-four-foot scouting sloop, the Trial, as well as two small cargo ships, the Anna and the Industry, which would accompany them partway—stirred to life. Officers emerged from quarters; boatswains piped their whistles and cried “All hands! All hands!”; crewmen raced about extinguishing candles, lashing hammocks, and loosening sails. Everything around Cheap—Anson’s eyes and ears—seemed to be in motion, and then the ships began to move, too. Farewell to the debt collectors, the invidious bureaucrats, the endless frustrations. Farewell to all of it.

  As the convoy made its way down the English Channel toward the Atlantic, it was surrounded by other departing ships, jockeying for wind and space. Several vessels collided, terrifying the uninitiated landsmen onboard. And then the wind, as fickle as the gods, abruptly shifted in front of them. Anson’s squadron, unable to bear that close to the wind, was forced to return to its starting point. Twice more it embarked, only to retreat. On September 5, the London Daily Post reported that the fleet was still “waiting for a favourable wind.” After all the trials and tribulations—Cheap’s trials and tribulations—they seemed condemned to remain in this place.

  Yet on September 18, as the sun was going down, the seamen caught a propitious breeze. Even some of the recalcitrant recruits were relieved to be finally underway. At least they would have tasks to distract them, and now they could pursue that serpentine temptation: the galleon. “The men were elevated with hopes of growing immensely rich,” a seaman on the Wager wrote in his journal, “and in a few years of returning to Old England loaded with the wealth of their enemies.”

  Cheap assumed his commanding perch on the quarterdeck—an elevated platform by the stern that served as the officers’ bridge and that housed the steering wheel and a compass. He inhaled the salted air and listened to the splendid symphony around him: the rocking of the hull, the snapping of the halyards, the splashing of waves against the prow. The ships glided in elegant formation, with the Centurion leading the way, her sails spread like wings.

  After a while, Anson ordered a red pendant, signifying his rank as commodore of the fleet, to be hoisted on the Centurion’s mainmast. The other captains fired their guns thirteen times each in salute—a thunderous clapping, a trail of smoke fading in the sky. The ships emerged from the Channel, born into the world anew, and Cheap, ever vigilant, saw the shore receding until, at last, he was surrounded by the deep blue sea.

  CHAPTER 2

  A Gentleman Volunteer

  John Byron was awakened by the maniacal cries of the Wager’s boatswain and his mates summoning the morning watch: “Rouse out, you sleepers! Rouse out!” It was not quite four a.m., and still dark out, though from his berth in the bowels of the ship Byron couldn’t discern whether it was day or night. As a midshipman on the Wager—he was only sixteen—he was given a spot below the quarterdeck, below the upper deck, and even below the lower deck, where the ordinary sailors slept in hammocks, their bodies dangling from the beams. Byron was stuck down in the aft part of the orlop deck—a damp, airless hole devoid of natural light. The only place beneath it was the ship’s hold, where dirty bilge water pooled, its foul scent harassing Byron, who slept just above it.

  The Wager and the rest of the squadron had been at sea for barely two weeks, and Byron was still acclimating to his environs. The height of the orlop deck was under five feet, and if he didn’t duck while standing he would smack his head. He shared this oaken vault with the other young midshipmen. They were each allowed a space no wider than twenty-one inches in which to sling their hammocks, and at times their elbows and knees jostled with the sleepers beside them; this was still a glorious seven inches more room than was allotted to ordinary seamen—though less than what officers had in their private berths, especially the captain, whose great cabin off the quarterdeck included a sleeping chamber, dining area, and a balcony overlooking the sea. As on land, there was a premium on real estate, and where you lay your head marked your place in the pecking order.

  The oaken vault contained the few items that Byron and his companions had been able to cram into their sea chests, wooden trunks that held all their possessions for the voyage. Onboard, these boxes doubled as chairs, card tables, and desks. A novelist depicted one eighteenth-century midshipman’s berth as being cluttered with heaps of soiled clothing and “plates, glasses, books, cocked hats, dirty stockings, tooth-combs, a litter of white mice and a caged parrot.” The totem of any midshipman’s quarters, though, was a wooden table long enough for a body to lie on. This was for amputating limbs. The berth served double duty as the surgeon’s operating room, and the table was a reminder of the dangers that lay ahead: once the Wager was in battle, Byron’s home would be filled with bone saws and blood.

  The boatswain and his mates, the town criers, continued bellowing and blowing their whistles. They moved through the decks, holding lanterns and leaning over slumbering seamen, shouting, “Out or down! Out or down!” Anyone who didn’t rise would have his hammock cut free from the rope suspending it, sending his body crashing onto the deck. The Wager’s boatswain, a burly figure named John King, would not likely touch a midshipman. But Byron knew to stay clear of him. Boatswains, who were responsible for herding crews and administering punishments—including lashing the unruly with a bamboo cane—were notorious bruisers. Yet there was something especially unnerving about King. A crew member noted that King suffered from “so perverse and turbulent a temper,” and was “so abusive in speech, that we could not bear with him.”

  Byron needed to rise quickly. There was no time to bathe, which was rarely done anyway, because of the limited supply of water; and he began to dress, overcoming whatever discomfort he felt baring himself before strangers and living amid such squalor. He came from one of the oldest lines in England—his ancestry could be traced to the Norman Conquest—and he had been born into nobility on both sides of his family. His father, now deceased, had been the fourth Lord Byron, and his mother was the daughter of a baron. His older brother, the fifth Lord Byron, was a peer in the House of Lords. And John, being the younger son of a nobleman, was, in the parlance of the day, an “honorable” gentleman.

  How far the Wager seemed from Newstead Abbey, the Byron family estate, with its breathtaking castle, part of which had been built as a monastery in the twelfth century. The property, totaling three thousand acres, was surrounded by Sherwood Forest, the fabled haunt of Robin Hood. Byron’s mother had etched his name and birthdate—November 8, 1723—on a window in the monastery. The Wager’s young midshipman was destined to become the grandfather of the poet Lord Byron, who frequently evoked Newstead Abbey in his Romantic verses. “The mansion’s self was vast and venerable,” he wrote, adding that it “left a grand impression on the mind, / At least of those whose eyes are in their hearts.”

  Two years before Anson launched his expedition, John Byron, then fourteen, had left the elite Westminster School and volunteered for the Navy. This was partly because his older brother, William, had inherited the family estate, along with the mania that infected so many Byrons—one that eventually caused him to squander the family fortune, reducing Newstead Abbey to ruins. (“The hall of my fathers, art gone to decay,” the poet wrote.) William, who staged fake naval battles on a lake, and fatally stabbed a cousin in a sword duel, was nicknamed the Wicked Lord.

  John Byron had been left with few means to earn a respectable living. He could enter the Church, as one of his younger brothers later did, but that was far too dull for his sensibilities. He could serve in the Army, which many gentlemen preferred, because they could frequently sit idly on a horse looking debonair. Then there was the Navy, in which you actually had to work and get your hands dirty.

  Samuel Pepys had tried to encourage young noblemen and gentlemen to think of going to sea as “honourable service.” In 1676, he established a new policy to make this path more attractive to privileged youths: if they apprenticed on a warship for at least six years, and passed an oral examination, they would be commissioned as an officer in His Majesty’s Royal Navy. These volunteers, who often began as either a captain’s servant or what was known as a King’s Letter boy, were eventually rated as midshipmen, which gave them an ambiguous status on a man-of-war. Forced to toil like ordinary seamen so they could “learn the ropes,” they were also recognized as officers-in-training, future lieutenants and captains, possibly even admirals, and were allowed to walk the quarterdeck. Despite these enticements, a naval career was considered somewhat unseemly for a person of Byron’s pedigree—a “perversion,” as Samuel Johnson, who knew Byron’s family, called it. Yet Byron was enraptured by the mystique of the sea. He was fascinated by books about sailors, like Sir Francis Drake, so much so that he brought them onboard the Wager—the stories of maritime exploits stashed in his sea chest.

  Yet, even for young nobles drawn to a life at sea, their sudden change in circumstances could be shocking. “Ye gods, what a difference!” one such midshipman recalled. “I had anticipated a kind of elegant house with guns in the windows; an orderly set of men; in short, I expected to find a species of Grosvenor Place, floating around like Noah’s ark.” Instead, he noted, the deck was “dirty, slippery and wet; the smells abominable; the whole sight disgusting; and when I remarked the slovenly attire of the midshipmen, dressed in shabby round jackets, glazed hats, no gloves, and some without shoes, I forgot all the glory…and, for nearly the first time in my life, and I wish I could say it was the last, took the handkerchief from my pocket, covered my face, and cried like the child I was.”

  Though poor and pressed sailors were given a basic set of clothing, known as “slops,” to avoid what was deemed “unwholesome ill smells” and “nasty beastliness,” the Navy had yet to institute official uniforms. Although most men of Byron’s station could afford a flourish of lace and silk, their outfits generally had to conform to the demands of shipboard life: a hat, to shield them from the sun; a jacket (usually blue), to stay warm; a neckerchief, to mop the brow; and trousers—that curious fashion started by sailors. These pants, like his jacket, were cut short to keep them from getting caught in the ropes, and during foul weather they were coated with protective sticky tar. Even in these humble garments, Byron cut a striking figure, with pale, luminous skin; large, curious brown eyes; and ringlets of hair. One observer later described him as irresistibly handsome—“the champion of his form.”

  He took down his hammock and rolled it up for the day, along with his bedding. Then he hurriedly climbed a series of ladders between decks, making sure not to get lost in the interior wilderness of the ship. At last, he emerged, like a blackened miner, through a hatch onto the quarterdeck, sucking in the fresh air.

  Most of the ship’s company, including Byron, had been divided into two alternating watch parties—about a hundred people in each—and while he and his group worked topside, those previously on duty were resting, wearily, below. In the darkness, Byron heard scampering footsteps and a babel of accents. There were men from all strata of society, from dandies to city paupers, who had to have their wages garnished to pay the purser, Thomas Harvey, for their slops and eating utensils. In addition to the professional naval craftsmen—the carpenters and the coopers and the sailmakers—there were people from a dizzying array of vocations.

  At least one member of the crew, John Duck, was a free Black seaman from London. The British Navy protected the slave trade, but captains in need of skilled sailors often enlisted free Black men. Although the society on a ship was not always as rigidly segregated as its counterpart on land, there was widespread discrimination. And Duck, who didn’t leave behind any written records, faced a threat that no white seaman did: if captured overseas, he might be sold into slavery.

  Onboard were also dozens of boys—some, perhaps, as young as six—training to become ordinary seamen or officers. And there were wizened old men: the cook, Thomas Maclean, was in his eighties. Several crew members were married with children; Thomas Clark, the ship’s master and chief navigator, had even brought his young son with him on the voyage. As one seaman observed, “A man-of-war may justly be styled an epitome of the world, in which there is a sample of every character, some good men as well as bad.” Among the latter, he noted, were “highwaymen, burglars, pickpockets, debauchees, adulterers, gamesters, lampooners, bastard-getters, imposters, panders, parasites, ruffians, hypocrites, threadworn beaux jack-a-dandies.”