CHAPTER X.

ANSON'S CHARACTER ILLUSTRATED.

Professional character-Conduct in the civil department of the Navy -Improvements in the matériel of the Navy-Moral characterresembled that of Lord Howe - Peculiar habits-Character illustrated by his correspondents - Captains Bennet, Piercy Brett, Cheap, Denis, Philip Saumarez; Mr. Legge, M. Hardenberg, Lord Sandwich, Lord Chatham-The late King's mark of attention to Lord Anson's memory.

A NAVAL historian of very considerable merit, in recording the death of Lord Anson, says, "Now that the rage and malevolence of party spirit has had time to subside, this great man appears in very shining colours; and although born of an ancient family, yet it was his merit alone that raised him to the high honours which he attained. The fame which he acquired in his voyage round the world, in which he showed an equanimity of mind equal to the numberless perils and dangers which he encountered, will, while the English language lasts, never cease to be remembered; and on this voyage, the prudence, perseverance, good conduct, humanity, and courage, which he displayed, would alone have been sufficient to have made his fortune, and raised him to a great degree of eminence in the naval annals of Great

Britain, if no other circumstance had come to his aid." *

This is certainly just; and in the case supposed, the name of Anson would have ranked high among those early navigators, Magelhaens, Drake, Cavendish, Dampier, and other celebrated men previous to his time; but much more than this is due to his memory. То say that Anson was a perfect seaman would be no great compliment to an officer who, like him, had spent the first thirty years at least, after leaving home, in the various duties of the profession; and few men had more painful experience of the dangers, the difficulties, and the melancholy disasters, to which a seaman's life is exposed, than he had in those which fell to his lot to encounter in his enterprising voyage round the world. In that voyage he gave ample proof that he was a truly brave man-morally and physically brave-a man of firm nerves, and of great resources in time of need-for the exercise of which, occasions were neither slight nor few. To say he was so is no special praise. All the world knows that a naval officer is and must be brave; it is a virtue common to the whole profession; they are instructed from their earliest youth to be so, and it is a plant that grows with their growth; but like other qualities it has its degrees, and requires occasions to bring it forth.

* Naval and Military Memoirs of Great Britain; by Robert Beatson, Esq., L.L.D.

It did not happen to fall to the lot of Anson to distinguish himself particularly in action with the enemy. His engagement with the great Acapulco ship, with his reduced and feeble crew, just one-half in number to the enemy, was highly creditable to him, his officers, and ship's company; and perhaps still more so, after all their sufferings, cheerfully to go forth with the true undaunted spirit of British seamen to seek and meet the enemy. Nor was it a less strong feature in the character of Anson, that, soon after taking his seat at the Board of Admiralty, at a time when the public were dissatisfied at nothing having been done for the first two years of the war, he volunteered to hoist his flag, and assume the command of a fleet for the purpose of intercepting two combined squadrons of the enemy, of which he had received certain information; a step that could only have been taken on public grounds, united with a desire to do something that might distinguish him, and render him worthy of the situation he held in the public service.

But Anson's character is to be looked at more closely in the civil department of the navy, in which it has been seen he acquitted himself with great ability, diligence, and impartiality. Under his administration, many years before and during the Seven-Years' war, the British navy attained a pitch of power and pre-eminence to which it had never before arrived while the fleets of France and Spain were

completely humbled, and almost annihilated; the remaining portion of them being mostly shut up in their ports during the last three years of the war.

Nothing can speak more strongly in favour of Anson's character than the confidence placed in him by the Duke of Bedford and Lord Sandwich, both of whom, before he had been two years as a junior member of the Board, entrusted him with the management of the affairs of the Admiralty, and urgently desired him to take into his hands the whole direction of the naval department; assured him they should consider his acts as their own, and were ready and willing to take upon themselves the responsibility of them all which is so clearly and so distinctly stated in their correspondence, when absent from the Board, which was of frequent occurrence, and is so strongly expressed by Lord Sandwich, after he became the head of the Board, and was confined to his post at Aix-la-Chapelle, as to leave no doubt on the subject, that Anson was, while a junior member, in all respects but in name, First Lord of the Admiralty. . Anson's attention was not merely confined to the ordinary routine of the civil and military duty; he had seen and sufficiently experienced the miserable kind of ships ours were, as compared with those of other nations, not to take advantage of his situation for their improvement. He knew that the old system of building ships, on the plan established by order in council of the year 1719, was deplorably

bad, and that the ships built after it had not one good quality; yet it would have been little short of treason to break through it. Anson, however, had not been two years in the Board when, in 1746, he prevailed on the Duke of Bedford and Lord Sandwich to obtain a revision of the faulty system, and if possible to establish a better. The mode adopted to bring this about has been shown in the Memoir; and the whole proceeding proves the business-like manner in which it was accomplished. The defects of ships of the line at this time were stated to be, that they were narrow for their length, lean in the bows, and so deficient in bearing, forward, that their pitching, rolling, and labouring, in a heavy sea, always endangered the loss of their masts. In short, they were inferior in sailing, and in every other good quality, to those of the French.

The fifty and sixty gun ships formed a very principal part of the line when Anson came into the Admiralty; but, in the course of the Seven-Years' war, when he was at the head of the Board, he caused great number of seventy-fours to be laid down, to take the place of the sixties; and at the time of his death, just before the conclusion of the war, he had built and launched not fewer than four or five first and second rates, and other ships of the line, of which not fewer than twenty-nine were seventyfours, together with ten sixty-fours and sixties. These