George Anson, First Baron Anson

English admiral and administrator

• Born: April 23, 1697
• Birthplace: Shugborough, Staffordshire, England
• Died: June 6, 1762
• Place of death: Moor Park, Hertfordshire, England

Through his great achievements during active service at sea and at the Admiralty ashore, Anson was instrumental in making British naval predominance one of the major legacies of the wars of the mid-eighteenth century.

Early Life

Lord Anson was born George Anson in his family’s country house, the second son of a gentry family with strong legal connections. Little is known of his boyhood or early education. In 1712, at the age of fifteen, he entered the Royal Navy as a volunteer in time to see action in the closing stages of the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1716, after further service as a midshipman, he was commissioned a lieutenant. Thereafter, Anson’s advancement was rapid. In 1722, he was given his first command, the sloop Weasel. Two years later, after only twelve years of service, he was promoted to captain and took command of HMS Scarborough, a frigate. Anson spent much time during the next fifteen years in American waters, patrolling the southern coast and the Bahamas for pirates, smugglers, and Spanish cruisers. He also took advantage of his time ashore to make a number of successful real estate investments in South Carolina.

Anson’s rapid progress as a young naval officer was a result of a combination of family ties and ability. It was certainly to his advantage that an uncle (Thomas Lord Parker, later earl of Macclesfield) was an eminent judge who eventually became lord chancellor. Aristocratic patronage was by itself not enough to propel one to the top in the eighteenth century navy, and Anson impressed his superiors from the beginning with his ability to master the intricacies of seamanship and with the potential he displayed for leadership. Contemporary accounts of his personality stress his intelligence and his devotion to his profession, as well as a certain reserve or shyness that was especially evident in social situations. (Anson did not marry until he was fifty-one.) Taller than average, with a round, open face, Anson had penetrating eyes, his most striking physical feature.

Life’s Work

When war with Spain broke out in 1739 (the War of Jenkins’s Ear), which subsequently was absorbed into the larger War of the Austrian Succession), Lord Anson was captain of the sixty-gun Centurion. Recalled from the West Indies to England, he was promoted to commodore and given command of a small squadron of six ships intended to harass Spanish colonies on the western coast of South America and interrupt Spanish shipping in the Pacific. This set the stage for the most famous episode in Anson’s career.

Anson’s Pacific command turned into a four-year voyage around the world that is justly regarded as one of the greatest feats of eighteenth century seamanship. Delays in fitting out his squadron prevented Anson’s departure until the fall of 1740, with the result that weather conditions were at their worst when the expedition reached Cape Horn. The squadron experienced tremendous hardships in rounding the cape. When he was finally able to regroup in the Pacific, Anson found that almost two-thirds of his nine hundred men had died and that most of the rest (including himself) had scurvy. The squadron was also down to three ships. After recuperating for three months on the island of Juan Fernandez, Anson began to prey with some success on Spanish shipping, and he captured the port of Paita, Peru.

He barely missed, however, a greater prize, the fabled “Manila Galleon” (which annually carried rich cargoes from Manila to Acapulco and back). In May, 1742, Anson turned westward to cross the Pacific. Once again, hardships multiplied, and the men were devastated by scurvy. By the time another place for recuperation was found (the island of Tinian), Anson was down to his flagship, the Centurion, and about two hundred of his original force. Some new recruits were found at Macao, and Anson then began to cruise off the Philippines. In June, 1743, he found his object, the treasure galleon Nuestra Señora de Cabadonga, inbound from Acapulco. Though greatly outnumbered, the crew of the Centurion was better drilled and within hours forced the Spanish to surrender. The prize was one of the richest ever taken by the Royal Navy, worth between œ400,000 and œ500,000. Anson then deposited his prisoners at Canton and headed home, this time by way of the Indian Ocean and Africa. The rest of the voyage was relatively uneventful, and in June, 1744, after almost four years, Centurion returned to England.

Anson was only the seventh Englishman to circumnavigate the globe and quickly became the newest hero in a war that had not produced many. Though the expedition had suffered horrendous difficulties and great loss of life, there was general agreement that Anson’s leadership had made the difference between triumph and disaster. The officers who survived the ordeal certainly appear to have learned their craft: Eight of them subsequently became admirals.

Anson’s voyage brought him wealth, glory, and a much larger role in naval affairs. In short order, he was promoted to rear admiral, elected to Parliament and—at the very end of 1744—made a lord of the Admiralty, the board that administered the navy’s affairs. By this time, France had joined Spain as an enemy. In 1746, Anson was promoted to vice admiral and given command of the Channel fleet. In May, 1747, he led it into a major battle off Cape Finisterre against a French fleet escorting a convoy bound for Canada. Anson’s fleet sank or captured all the French ships-of-the-line, while taking more than œ300,000 in prize money. As a further reward for his victory in what became known as the First Battle of Finisterre, George II granted Anson a peerage: In June, 1747, he was created Baron Anson of Soperton.

After the victory off Finisterre, Lord Anson spent relatively little time at sea. Peace returned in 1748. The remainder of Anson’s career was dominated by service at the Admiralty. A member of the board since 1744, in 1751 Anson became first lord of the Admiralty, a position he retained with but one brief interruption (from November, 1756, to July, 1757) until his death. The appointment owed something to the powerful political connections Anson had acquired, especially through his marriage in 1748 to Lady Elizabeth Yorke. Lady Anson was the daughter of the earl of Hardwicke, lord chancellor and close associate of the duke of Newcastle. The first lord of the Admiralty was usually considered to be one of the cabinet, so Anson now found himself to be at the center of British politics, in addition to carrying the primary responsibility for the Royal Navy’s well-being. Though never comfortable in politics (and inclined to resist the tendency of politicians to meddle in naval affairs), Anson proved a diligent and cooperative colleague to his fellow ministers.

During his years at the Admiralty (including those preceding his appointment as first lord), Anson won a justified reputation as an energetic and extremely effective naval administrator and reformer. Improvements taking place during Anson’s tenure included the organization of the Royal Marines on a permanent footing, annual inspections of dockyards, maintenance of a large reserve of out-of-service ships that could be mobilized in the event of war, the drafting of a new set of the Articles of War (the legal code under which the navy operated), standardization of officers’ uniforms into the blue and white familiar in eighteenth century paintings, a more rational system of classifying (by rate) the navy’s ships, and a building program to prepare the fleet for the likely resumption of warfare with France.

Though the navy was chronically underfunded during the early 1750’s, it was largely because of Anson’s management that it was in sound shape when the Seven Years’ War broke out in 1756. The war, however, began badly for Great Britain, and the navy was especially embarrassed by the fall of Minorca in May, 1756. Anson had dispatched an expedition under Admiral John Byng to relieve the British garrison of the beleaguered island, but it failed to achieve its mission. (Byng was subsequently executed for dereliction of duty.) Though Anson cannot be held wholly responsible for the disaster, he did appoint Byng to command the expedition, and he later refused it additional reinforcement (for fear of weakening the home fleet, which was Great Britain’s main line of defense). The episode was one of the few failures with which he was ever associated. The loss of Minorca also contributed to the political confusion that led to the fall of the duke of Newcastle’s ministry, to which Anson belonged.

By July, 1757, a new ministry (a coalition formed by William Pitt the Elder and the duke of Newcastle) had taken office, and Anson was back at the Admiralty. As first lord, Anson played a major role in turning the direction of the war around. His contributions were many. One was a stepped-up building program that steadily increased the size of the fleet until in 1760, for the first time in British history, there were more than three hundred ships in commission. As part of this, Anson introduced a number of seventy-four-gun ships-of-the-line, smaller but more maneuverable than older models. He also increased substantially the number of frigates. Anson also appointed the men who put this force to effective use, displaying considerable skill in selecting commanders. Some of those he chose were protégés, such as Sir Charles Saunders, Richard Lord Howe, and Augustus Keppel, all of whom had been with Anson on his famous voyage. Others, such as Sir Edward Hawke, Edward Boscawen, and George Brydges Romney, gained prominence on their own before catching Anson’s eye.

At one point in 1758, Anson himself returned to sea, settling a squabble among his admirals by assuming command of the fleet blockading the French coast. He eventually returned the fleet to Hawke’s command and with it the task of preventing assistance being sent to French forces overseas. The necessity of periodic returns to England to refit and resupply had weakened past efforts at blockading. Anson solved the problem, at least for 1759, by organizing a system of resupply by sea that enabled Hawke’s fleet to remain on station for almost a year. It was in no small measure because of this that Hawke was able to engage and shatter a French fleet at the Battle of Quiberon Bay in November, 1759.

After Quiberon Bay, the naval war was well in hand, and the Admiralty’s operations continued to bear the stamp of Anson’s professionalism. In 1761, Anson’s achievements were further recognized when he was given the honor of transporting George III’s new bride, Charlotte of Mecklenburg, the future Queen Charlotte, to England. It was, in fact, while escorting the new queen’s brother on a tour of the naval base at Portsmouth that Anson caught a cold that developed into pneumonia. He died on June 6, 1762, at Moor Park, Hertfordshire, a large country house north of London that Anson had bought with some of his Spanish prize money.

Significance

More than any other single person, it was Lord Anson who made Great Britain the world’s dominant naval power in the mid-eighteenth century. His celebrated voyage around the world demonstrated the superiority of British seamanship and greatly increased British knowledge of and interest in the Pacific. Furthermore, Anson was the first British naval officer to deal with the Chinese government. His victory at Finisterre helped to secure British dominance in European waters and contributed to changes in the navy’s fighting instructions that would be employed by a succession of eighteenth century admirals.

As important as Anson’s service at sea was, however, his greatest service to his country was given at the Admiralty. There, Anson proved to be the greatest naval administrator of his era. By keeping the fleet up to strength, making a host of wise appointments, and supporting the ships at sea to an unprecedented extent, Anson played a central role in making the Seven Years’ War the decisive conflict in the long-standing colonial and maritime rivalry between Great Britain and France. British predominance at sea and overseas was no small legacy.

Bibliography

Anson, George. A Voyage Round the World in the Years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV. Compiled by Richard Walter. 1748. Rev. ed. Edited by Glyndwr Williams. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. A firsthand account of the famous voyage from notes made by Anson. The collection is traditionally attributed to Richard Walter, Anson’s chaplain, under whose name it was first published in 1748.

Barrow, Sir John. The Life of George, Lord Anson. London: J. Murray, 1839. The first full biography of Anson. It is still useful though it is marred by some inaccuracies. Valuable for the range of its coverage and for its inclusion of primary sources.

Corbett, Sir Julian. England in the Seven Years’ War: A Study in Combined Strategy. 2 vols. London: Longmans, 1907. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1973. The standard account of the Seven Years’ War from the British perspective. Particularly strong in its treatment of naval affairs.

Marcus, Geoffrey J. Heard of Oak: A Survey of British Seapower in the Georgian Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. Overall survey of the eighteenth century navy by a prominent naval historian. Useful for putting Anson’s career into context.

Middleton, Richard. The Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years’ War, 1757-1762. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. By far the best account of the British government at war during this crucial conflict. Downplays the traditional view of Pitt as the architect of victory. Anson emerges as an important contributor to what was, in effect, a highly successful team effort.

Pack, S. W. C. Admiral Lord Anson. London: Cassell, 1960. Still the best modern biography of Anson. Written by a naval officer, it devotes more attention to Anson’s achievements at sea than to his work at the Admiralty.

Richmond, Sir Herbert. The Navy in the War of 1739-48. 3 vols. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1920. A standard account of the Royal Navy in the Wars of Jenkins’s Ear and the Austrian Succession. Useful for putting Anson’s circumnavigation and victory at Finisterre into context.

Stokes, G. P. “Defying Storm, Scurvy, and Spain.” Military History 20, no. 2 (June, 2003). Recounts Anson’s expedition aimed at intercepting the Spanish treasure galleon, as well as describing the battle between Anson’s ship, the Centurion, and the Spanish treasure ship Nuestra Señora de Cabadonga.

Williams, Glyndwr. The Prize of All the Oceans: The Dramatic True Story of Commodore Anson’s Voyage Round the World and How He Seized the Spanish Treasure Galleon. New York: Viking Press, 2000. A detailed account of Anson’s four-year voyage by a retired professor who specializes in the history of exploration.