In 1740, Admiral of the British Fleet, George Anson, undertook a brazen mission to circumnavigate the world.

This attempt was made not for knowledge or prestige, but to disrupt or capture Spain's Pacific territories,

which at the time were quite numerous and valuable, and Great Britain was at war with Spain,

at that particular moment, as part of a nearly

decade-long conflict called the War of Jenkins' Ear, a moniker that referred to the captain

of a British merchant ship, who apparently had his ear cut off by Spanish sailors during peacetime.

The British South Sea Company thought it would be in their financial

best interest to get the British public fired up and outraged at the Spanish to the point of physical

conflict. So they flogged that story into a conflagration, which culminated in 1739 with a declaration

of war. The resulting conflict only ending in 1748 with the Treaty of Ila

Champel, though it was arguably absorbed into a larger conflict in 1742, with the emergence of the

war of the Austrian succession, which claimed the attention of pretty much all of Europe for a good

long while. So in 1740, about a year

after this war of Jenkins' ear kicked off, Admiral Anson decided to take eight ships and to head

down along the western coast of Africa to strike Spanish territory in South America, then down

around Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America, and up along

the continent's coast to Mexico, then across the Pacific, over to Guam and Tenean, then to

Macau, down through the Strait of Sunda, and Indonesia, and across the Indian Ocean, around

to the southern coast of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, then back up around to England.

This, today, would be an ambitious, long-duration bit of travel, but back in the 18th century,

it was substantially more so. The expedition was plagued by problems from day one,

with two of the eight ships failing before rounding Cape Horn and being forced to return

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