December beginnings: "far into the golden sea"

 "  'Good-bye',  they were all crying. 'Good-bye, Peter. Good-bye, good-bye.'  And he meant to call out 'Good-bye' again to all of them,  but the lump in his throat choked the cry to no more than a squeak.
'Good-bye, Peter,' they were calling still; and clearly came after him the voice of old Turlough, 'Peter, come home soon with your pockets full of the Spanish gold.'  "

The Golden Ocean    Patrick O'Brian, 1956.

HMS Centurion in action, (based on Lt. Piercy Brett's drawing c. 1747),     Samuel Scott  © National Maritime Museum Greenwich

Like so many great maritime adventures  - Moby Dick, Treasure Island, Two Years before the Mast, Sailing Alone around the World, and O'Brian's Master and Commander series - most of these narratives  begin ashore, and it is some time before the hero actually sets sets sail.  Even before the real adventure begins, young  Peter Palafox has to sail from Cork up the English Channel to Spithead:

"The steady northeaster sang in the brig's taut rigging,; the sun came out low under the clouds, lighting the green of the land with an extraordinary radiance…..the wind was blowing across and somewhat against the tide and a little away out from the land was a line of rough water, chopped up on the invisible swell from the Atlantic: when they crossed cross haven, now a sprinkling of while on the loom of the land, the Mary Rose entered this zone of cross forces and began to grow lively.  In an inquisitive manner she pointed her bowsprit up to the sky , then brought it down to explore the green depths below, and her round bows went thump on the sea."  (The Golden Ocean, chapter III).

 Here Peter joins HMS Centurion, a 60-gun ship of the line, as a new midshipman, to sail under Commodore Anson on a gruelling journey around the world, from 1740-1744,  and O'Brian tells this story from the midshipmen's point of view.
      

Commodore George Anson, later Lord Anson  c. 1744-5,   unknown artist  © NMM

Sealord Sir John Norris remembered Anson as a midshipman, or "snotty" (perhaps too outspoken?) and refused many of his requests for crew and supplies.

Anson's secret orders, finally delivered in June 1740, were to sail into the South Pacific and harry the Spanish ports and shipping there, leading a squadron of five men-of-war and one store ship.  But the "secret" expedition was by now known to all,  and sailing was delayed yet more months before setting out ill manned (untrained marines and frail and ailing Chelsea Pensioners were embarked instead of an regiment of infantry), and Anson was constantly balked in his efforts to equip the ships properly.

The squadron left St. Helen's on 18 September 1740, but their voyage starting so late in the year was beset by problems: shipwreck, contrary winds blowing them off course, unprecedented storms and lightning, frostbite rounding Cape Horn in the winter,  tropical fevers and the dreadful affliction of scurvy leaving the crews too weak to rig the sails, or raise the anchor, and the ships were frequently separated with few navigational aids in uncharted seas.  Some ships were lost at sea, the Wager was shipwrecked off Patagonia and only a handful returned to England, the Tryal fell to pieces and the Gloucester had to be burnt as it was sinking with seven feet of water in it.

Captain, (later Admiral) Keppel, here portrayed by Reynolds as an Apollo, while a midshipman on the Centurion lost his hair and teeth from scurvy, but huge numbers died from it.  

Joshua Reynolds, c.1760  © Maritime Museums Greenwich

Missing the prize Spanish bullion ship off Acapulco, Anson desperately sailed west to Canton and safety.  Yet by seamanship and force of character, with only the Centurion and a depleted crew, Anson finally managed to capture the great Spanish galleon, Nuestra Señora de Covadonga off Manila, returning to England via Cape of Good Hope, with a prize of 1,313,843 pieces of eight plus silver and plate ( 30 wagon loads were delivered to the Tower of London for safekeeping in July 1744).

Engraving of the capture in ship's chaplain Richard Walter's account, 1748; the smaller Centurion is on the right.  © British Library

It is also notable that several future Admirals served under Anson during this voyage. Captain Saumarez  later died young in action off Finisterre, but produced the design for regulation naval officers' uniform.  Charles Saunders, Anson's  lieutenant in command of the sloop, Tryal, as Vice-Admiral in 1759, supported General Wolfe's daring night-time assault on the cliffs at Quebec, bringing a fleet of troopships silently up the dark waters of the St. Lawrence river; (one of his navigators was a certain James Cook.)

                     Commodore Charles Saunders,  Richard Brompton © Royal Naval College Greenwich

And a midshipman on the ill-starred Wager, was one John Byron, later Admiral, who discovered the Gilbert & Ellis Islands and was known as 'foul weather Jack'.  Shipwrecked on the coast of Patagonia, he was one of the few to survive starvation and mutiny and imprisonment, reaching England  several years later in 1746.  His account of his travels inspired his  famous grandson,  Lord George Byron, in his poem Don Juan.

Anson was always happiest at sea, rather than behind an Admiralty desk, but as well as training up fine seaman on his ships, he brought in many naval reforms after the experiences of his men during their epic round the world voyage, which had lastedthree years and nine months.
…"though prudence, intrepidity, and perseverance united are not exempted from the blows of adverse fortune, yet in a long series of transactions they usually rise superior to its power, and in the end rarely fail of proving successful."  So Richard Walter the chaplain concludes his account of Anson's voyage, published in 1748.

See  The Unknown Shore  P. O'Brian 1955
The Prize of All the Oceans  Glyn Williams, 1999
Lord Anson's Voyage Round the World  Richard Walter 1748, abridged ed. S.W.C.Pack 1947

July beginnings: "Dancing to Time's tune"

"Through the Looking Glass, and what Alice found there" ,   illus. John Tenniel 1871

"When, at the start of the whole business, I bought an Army greatcoat, it was at one of those places in the neighbourhood of Shaftesbury Avenue, where, as well as officers' kit and outfits for sport, they hire or sell theatrical costumes.  The atmosphere within, heavy with menace like an oriental bazaar, hinted at clandestine bargains, furtive even if not unlawful commerce, heightening the tension of an already novel undertaking.  The deal was negotiated in an upper room, dark and mysterious, draped with skiing gear and riding-breeches, in the background of which, behind the glass windows of a high display case, two headless trunks stood rigidly at attention.  One of these effigies wore Harlequin's diagonally spangled tights; the other, scarlet full-dress uniform of some infantry regiment, allegorical figures, so it seemed, symbolising dualisms of the antithetical stock-in trade surrounding them . . . Civil and Military  . . . Work and Play . . . Detachment and Involvement . . . Tragedy and Comedy . . . War and Peace . . . Life and Death . . ."

British Army WWII officers' greatcoat, recreated from Crombie archive  © Crombie Ltd

"An assistant, bent, elderly, bearded, with the congruous demeanour of the Levantine trader, bore the greatcoat out of a secret recess in the shadows and reverently invested me within its double-breasted, brass-buttoned, stiffly pleated khaki folds.
… In a three-sided full-length looking-glass nearby I, too, critically examined the back view of the coat's shot-at-dawn cut, aware at the same time that soon, like Alice, I was to pass, as it were by virtue of these habiliments, through its panes into a world no less magic."

The Soldier's Art, Vol. 8,  A Dance to the Music of Time  Anthony Powell 1966  (© the author)

A Dance to the Music of Time,  Nicolas Poussin c 1634-36  ©Wallace Collection London

Anthony Powell's revered twelve-volume series presents a tapestry* of British society and events over some fifty years, as seen through the eyes of Nicholas Jenkins, its narrator. The first volume,  A Question of Upbringing, introduces Nick and his friends at public school in 1921, and subsequent volumes chart the passing years with a vast cast of recurring characters, from the Spring to the Winter of their lives;  just as Nick muses on the dancers in Poussin's painting:

 " The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outwards like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure, stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take a recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance." (Vol. 1)

Each volume has a leitmotif, set out in its title and opening paragraphs. Some introduce a major character, others propel the reader along with Nick (our observer and narrator), into a whole new environment; in volume six the opening - a childhood memory recounting a servant problem in an English country house - might serve as a short story in itself.   As well as the many recurring characters and overlapping events in their lives, themes are carried throughout in frequent references to books and paintings.  This quotation from Byron's Childe Roland comes in the last pages of volume 8.:

"I asked one draught of earlier happier sights

 Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.

Think first, fight afterwards -- the soldier's art;

One taste of the old time sets all to rights."

(and see the Anthony Powell Society, anthonypowell.org)

*  I am reminded of Grayson Perry's tapestry sequences.

A sigh for Lord Byron

"By  & by the group collected into about a hundred or more when the train of a funeral suddenly appeared on which a young girl that stood beside me gave a deep sigh & uttered 'Poor Lord Byron' I looked up at the young girls' face it was dark & beautiful & I could almost feel in love with her for the sigh she had uttered for the poet it was worth all the newspaper puffs & magazine mourning that ever were paraded after the death of a poet."

Autobiography   John Clare

Greek 'Fire'

Patras, July 30th:

"The heat is at present intense.  In England, if it reaches 98 (degrees) you are all on fire: the other day in travelling between Athens and Megara, the thermometer was at 125.!!!

....I shall continue to write briefly, but frequently, and am glad to hear from you; but you fill your letters with things from the papers, as if English newspapers were not found all over the world.  I have at this moment a dozen before me.  Pray take care of my books, and believe me, my dear mother,

Yours very faithfully,

Byron."

Lord Byron, Letter to his mother, 1810