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George Anson; Richard Walter : A Voyage Round the World In the Years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV. By George Anson, Esq; Now Lord Anson, Commander in Chief of a Squadron of His Majesty’s Ships, sent upon an Expedition to the South Seas. Compiled from his Papers and Materials, By Richard Walter, M.A. Chaplain of His Majesty’s Ship the Centurion, in that Expedition. Illustrated with Forty-Two Copper-Plates. The Ninth Edition

D. Browne, J. Osborne, J. Shipton, J. Hodges, et al., London, c. 1756

Recent full brown speckled calf with gilt lines, spine in six gilt-lined compartments of raised bands, red morocco label on two, board edges gilt, edges speckled red. , Two upper margin corners cut (pp. 317-320), inscription to title leaf, otherwise a nearly fine copy., Large 4to., P. (2), frontis map, title, blank, dedication (3), contents (4), introduction (11), 1-417, blank, directions to binder (2), (2)., Complete with 43 copper-engraved plates and charts (including 31 folding plates and 9 double-page plates), and the frontispiece folding map of Anson’s route not counted in the ‘directions to binder’.

George Anson was a British admiral and a wealthy aristocrat, noted for his circumnavigation of the globe. In 1737 he gained the command of the sixty-gun vessel Centurion. In 1740, on the eve of War of Austrian Succession (1740 - 1748), he became commander (with the rank of commodore) of the squadron sent to attack Spanish possessions in South America.
The expedition failed to carry out its original ambitious scheme: Anson’s ill-equipped squadron sailed later than intended; two of his vessels, the Pearl and the Severn, failed to round the Horn and returned home; another vessel, the Wager, suffered shipwreck off the coast of Chile. By the time Anson reached the island of Juan Fernandez in June 1741, only three of his six ships remained, while the strength of his crews had fallen from 961 to 335. In the absence of any effective Spanish force on the coast, he was able to harass the enemy and to sack the small port city of Paita in Peru (13 - 15 November 1741). The steady decrease of his crew by sickness, and the worn-out state of his remaining consorts, compelled him to collect all the remaining survivors in the Centurion. He rested at the island of Tinian, and then made his way to Macao in November 1742. After considerable difficulties with the Chinese, he sailed again with his one remaining vessel to cruise in search of one of the richly laden galleons that conducted the trade between Mexico and the Philippines. The indomitable perseverance he had shown during one of the most arduous voyages in the history of sea adventure gained the reward of the capture of an immensely rich prize, the Nuestra Señora de Covadonga, which he encountered off Cape Espiritu Santo on June 20, 1743. Anson took his prize back to Macao, sold her cargo to the Chinese, and sailed for England, which he reached via the Cape of Good Hope on 15 June 1744. The prize money earned by the capture of the galleon had made him a rich man for life.
, Graesse I:141

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