If you follow the Julian Calendar 12th October (or 23rd October under the Gregorian Calendar) marks the anniversary of a resounding victory by the Anglo-Dutch fleet over the forces of France and Spain. The English, with their Dutch allies, had originally sailed to try and establish a beach-head at Cadiz, from which they hoped to control troop movements into and out of the Mediterranean during the Spanish War of Succession. It was intended to be a stepping-off point for Allied attacks on the French, particularly on their naval base at Toulon. The landing attempt was a failure, but on his way back to England Admiral Rooke, in charge of the English fleet, got news of a large convoy of Spanish treasure ships, escorted by the French navy, and which had just landed at the port of Vigo on the Galician coast.

The French had originally planned to escort the merchantmen under their control  into Cadiz, where the bullion was normally unloaded and where there existed the support  needed for the job - customs officials, tally clerks, secure transportation, etc. News of the mission aimed at Cadiz by the Anglo-Dutch navies had persuaded the French to head instead for Vigo. Unloading was delayed because the infrastructure was not in place.

 Admiral Rooke, 1650 - 1709, painted by Michael Dahl

Rooke cornered the Franco-Spanish fleet in the harbour. The French admiral Château-Renault had moored two of his largest men-of-war the Bourbon, and the Esperance at either end of a boom stretched across the mouth of the harbour. Within the boom he had moored five other large men-of-war with their broadsides bearing upon the entrance. Rooke decided to allow Vice Admiral Thomas Hopsonn, in The Torbay,  to try and breach the boom. He succeeded, allowing the remaining 24 ships (14 English and ten Dutch) to follow through into the harbour. Meanwhile a landing party of 2000 men, led by Ormonde, managed to silence the shore battery leaving the 56 ships (22 of them Spanish, the rest French) at the mercy of the attackers. Not a single French or Spanish ship escaped - all were either captured or destroyed. The Spanish merchant fleet was wiped out, and thereafter they would be totally dependent upon the French for all communications with the Americas. The French suffered a humiliating defeat - Bourbon was captured by the Dutch and the 70-gun Esperance was driven ashore and scuttled. Château-Renault had the ignominy of watching his vessel the 76-gun Fort completely destroyed by fire. In all, the French lost 15 ships of the line, 2 frigates and one fire-ship.

In the aftermath of battle the English managed to capture whatever silver had not already been unloaded. Reports vary as to the amount of silver brought back to England. Sir Isaac Newton was Master of the Royal Mint at the time and he recorded having received roughly 4,500 pounds in weight  of silver ingots and a miniscule amount of gold. It was transported to the Tower, where the Mint was based, with great pageantry. The government seized upon it as a great propaganda victory and coins were struck with the word 'VIGO' beneath the head of the monarch (Queen Anne) to show where metal came from, in order to 'Continue to Posterity the Remembrance of that Glorious Action'.

The rare, beautiful, and extremely valuable five guinea coin dated 1703 with the word VIGO. There are only 15 known examples in private collections.Value? Well,about the same as my house! This image appears courtesy of http://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk/

More commonly the inscription appeared on silver coins of 1702 and 1703, particularly the shilling.

And so today let us raise a glass to Admiral Rooke: well done Sir! And to Vice-Admiral Hopsonn who, with a favourable wind and a huge amount of good fortune, broke through the boom and enabled the turkey shoot to take place.

Two hundred and thirty years ago this month a heavily laden ship edged its way out of harbour on the west African coast and headed for the Caribbean. The ship, originally known as Zorg but re-named the Zong after it was captured from the Dutch, was under the command of one Captain Luke Collingwood. The vessel belonged to a group of merchants from Liverpool headed by Messrs Gregson and Chase (both of them former mayors of that city). Over-laden and under-provisioned The Zong sailed for two months. Conditions on board were not helped by the fact that Captain Collingwood managed to get himself and his vessel lost, so the journey was longer than planned. Sickness broke out and seven of the crew died of disease.

But that is just half the picture, because 'the merchandise' on board consisted of 442 slaves, manacled and wedged into appalling conditions. 60 of them had died, and of the remainder many were sick, malnourished and liable to die before they could be sold. In any case, they were in such a poor condition that they would not fetch a good price. So on 29 November 1781 the Captain called his crew together and explained that if they did nothing, and allowed ‘the merchandise’ to die on board, the owners would lose money. But if they simply jettisoned the sick they could claim compensation from the insurers at a rate of thirty pounds a head. The justification which the ship’s owners would give to the Insurers was that there was insufficient water and provisions on board to keep the slaves alive.

And so it was that the crew seized 55 of the sick and callously threw them overboard. The next day a further 42 were drowned. At which point the ship encountered rainy weather, which topped up the reserves of water, but that did not stop the Captain ordering a further 26 sick slaves to be thrown overboard on the first day of December. Another ten slaves broke free and deliberately jumped over the side of the Zong, preferring to take their own lives in an act of defiance rather than allow the crew to make that decision for them. In all 133 people were left to drown (in fact one managed to get back on board) in the name of commercial profit. It was indeed a shameful, horrendous episode, and one which scars our reputation for justice and the Rule of Law.

Because, in the eyes of the law, it was not murder, nor even wrong-doing. The Captain was never even tried for it – the court case which followed the massacre was based upon the claim made by the owners against the insurers, who argued that as the slaves had been killed deliberately, they should not have to pay up. The insurers lost and then appealed, pointing out that far from running out of water the Zong still had 420 gallons of water on board when she finally docked in Jamaica just before Christmas.

Unbelievably, when the case went before the Court of Exchequer Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice said 'The matter left to the jury was whether it was necessary that the slaves were thrown into the sea, for they had no doubt that the case of slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard.”

The words of the Solicitor General are chilling: “What is this claim that human people have been thrown overboard? This is a case of chattels or goods. Blacks are goods and property; it is madness to accuse these well-serving honourable men of murder. They acted out of necessity and in the most appropriate manner for the cause. The late Captain Collingwood acted in the interest of his ship to protect the safety of his crew. To question the judgement of an experienced well-travelled captain held in the highest regard is one of folly, especially when talking of slaves. The case is the same as if wood had been thrown overboard.”

I have read and re-read those words, of one of the country's most prominent lawyers of the day, and still find them astonishing. Not just because the slaves were denied all humanity, but because the man who sent them to their death could be held 'in the highest regard', not deserving censure of any kind. But then, it is not the first time that the Law appears to have been written to protect those with property, rather than to safeguard the rights of those who do not! 

The case provoked an outrage, the starting point of a backlash against the slave trade which resulted, 24 years later, in Parliament banning the trade. It was known not as the’ Zong Massacre’, but as the ‘Zong Affair’, because the law simply did not see the killing as unlawful, merely the right of a captain to decide what he did with his cargo.

JMW Turner Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhoon coming on (The difference of course is that with the Zong there never was a typhoon coming on...)

I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t familiar with the Eddystone lighthouse. Look out to sea from any part of the coastline in the South Hams area of South Devon and on a clear day you can see its silhouette against the horizon. It was however only a few years ago that I got the chance to see it close-to, from on board a Plymouth-bound car ferry. You pass the Eddystone rocks about an hour before your ferry ties up in the harbour. The lighthouse stands on one jagged lump of rock rearing its head above the Channel, and alongside it there is a second rock with the ‘stump’ of another structure atop.

So, what is its history? Lighthouses go back many centuries – the Greeks, the Romans, the Ancient Egyptians and the Chinese all had them. But for some reason the English, despite being surrounded by water and with a long maritime tradition, didn’t get round to building lighthouses until 1609. The first one built was constructed under the auspices of Trinity House  (or to give it its full name, the Corporation of Trinity House of Deptford Strond).

Your starter for ten: who is the present Master of Trinity House? Answer: the Princess Royal. And the first Master? The not so lucky Thomas Spert, who in his spare time was captain of Henry VIII’s flagship Mary Rose, which sank ignominiously in front of His Majesty in 1545 just off Portsmouth harbour.

Trinity House was given responsibility for the safety of British ships and shipping – a responsibility which it has kept to this day. In 1696 it gave permission for the first lighthouse to be built to guard the Eddystone rocks, 14 miles off the Devon coast. The rocks had long been a menace to navigation in the English Channel and reportedly one of the ships to have struck the rocks in the last part of the Seventeenth Century belonged to one Henry Winstanley. He vowed to do something to prevent any further accidents occurring and he set to work building a wooden structure with a candle-powered lamp. This was lit for the first time on 14 November 1698, but not before Winstanley (who was supervising construction personally) was captured by a French privateer and taken off to France. Louis XIV, a perfect gentleman as ever, ordered him to be released on the grounds that "France is at war with England, not with humanity".

                                    The Winstanley lighthouse

Although the lighthouse made it through its first winter it clearly was not robust enough and it was therefore changed to a twelve sided structure, clad in stone around a timber frame. The redoubtable Winstanley wanted to demonstrate his faith in the new structure, and confidently sailed out to the lighthouse just before the approach of a winter storm. Bad move: the storm which struck the lonely rocks the following day turned out to be the most ferocious ever recorded. It became known as the Great Storm of 27 November 1703 and virtually every single trace of the lighthouse were consigned to the bottom of the ocean – along with the unfortunate Mr Winstanley.

His lighthouse  had lasted five years. Its successor was to make it to half a century before it too was destroyed. A Captain Lovell had been granted a 99 year lease of the rock by Parliament and in return for protecting shipping by the construction of Eddystone Mark II he was granted the right to levy a toll of one penny per ton from passing ships. Quite how this was to be collected is not clear! (“Wait there a second by this rock while I come round a weigh your vessel. Cash please – no credit cards accepted and if you don’t pay I will blow my candle out”).

Lovett commissioned John Rudyerd to design the new lighthouse, built as a conical wooden structure around a core of brick and concrete. Construction work was completed in 1709.  

On the night of 2 December 1755, a fire broke out (probably caused by a spark from one of the candles) and despite the valiant efforts of the three men manning the lighthouse, who endeavoured to throw buckets of water up at the blazing stack, they failed to extinguish the flames and had to be rescued by boat. Unfortunately one  of the keepers died shortly afterwards from the effects of inhaling molten lead showering down. The lead which he ingested is still held as an exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland. So a memo to anyone fighting a fire in a chimney lined with lead: keep your mouth and nose closed at all times….

The disaster paved the way for a completely new lighthouse – one whose design was to have a profound influence on the history of the modern lighthouse and prove astonishingly effective and long-lasting. The designer was John Smeaton and he introduced the idea of dove-tailing granite blocks so that they formed an inter-locking structure. He also pioneered the use of what he termed hydraulic lime (concrete which would set hard under water). 

He also used an early version of a theodolite to map the surface of the rock so accurately that instead of 'planing' the rock stack to make a level base from which to erect the lighthouse he was able to have the granite blocks shaped so that they fitted the rocks precisely. Remarkably the lighthouse was finished without a single fatality during the construction - not that it was entirely painless, given that  Mr Smeaton broke his thumb!

      Smeaton's lighthouse, like a mighty oak...                ....  now transplanted  to The Hoe at Plymouth

The tower was designed to resemble an oak tree, with the widest part of the trunk at the bottom, tapering as it reached the top. It was to give the lighthouse a stability which enabled it to survive whatever the forces of nature hurled at it for 120 years. Its two dozen candles were lit for the first time on 16^th October 1759 and the light remained until 1877 when a decision was made to dismantle the structure - not because the tower was weak but because the underlying rocks had eroded. The tower (well, most of it) was put up on Plymouth Hoe where it remains to this day as a memorial and tourist attraction. The stump proved too difficult to budge so it was left where it was, and is still in evidence today.

Smeaton had a remarkable career. He has been called the father of civil engineering and his achievements were amazing (see my earlier blog).

 
The present lighthouse, topped by a heli-pad. with the stump of Smeaton's structure on the right.(All pictures courtesy of Wikipedia)

Post script: I dedicate this post to Tony Rendell, who sadly died today. He was a keen yachtsman who had sailed across the Atlantic on several occasions, and to him, seeing the Eddystone Lighthouse 'for real' it must have been a beacon of hope as well as light. We were very different -  if I was 'Georgian Gentleman' he was perhaps 'Old Tar' or even 'Captain Birdseye'! I wish you bon voyage, Brother dear, and here's to calm seas and a breeze that's true.

The diary entry of my ancestor Richard Hall.

The destruction by fire of the British warship HMS Queen Charlotte on 17 March 1800 was one of the most disastrous naval accidents of the era. The flagship of Admiral Lord Keith was anchored off the Italian port of Livorno (otherwise known as Leghorn) in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It had been intended that the ship would sail to capture the island of  Cabrona from the French; but the Admiral and a number of the ship’s officers had gone ashore for the night. At about six in the morning a match, which had been kept alight to fire a signal gun, accidentally set ablaze some hay left on the half-deck. There were some 900 men on board and for five hours they struggled to get the blaze under control. In vain they flooded water into the lower decks to stop the fire spreading. Equally in vain they tried to hurl buckets of water up into the blazing sails and rigging.

At about 11 in the morning the fire reached the massive gunpowder store and blew the ship to smithereens.  673 of the officers and crew on board perished, with only 165 survivors being picked up. The British Register ‘State of Public Affairs' for April 1800 recounts  the story:

 We have the painful duty to state the loss of his majesty's ship Queen Charlotte, of 100 guns, captain Todd, which was burnt off Leghorn on the 17th of March, when the commander and nearly 800 of the crew perished by the explosion. Vice admiral Lord Keith, whose flag was flying on board of her, was, at the time, with some of the officers, providentially on shore. Twenty commissioned and warrant officers, two servants, and 141 seamen, were the whole of the persons who escaped destruction. The particulars are detailed by Mr John Braid, carpenter of the Queen Charlotte: as he was dressing himself about six o'clock, he heard throughout the ship a general cry of " Fire." He then states the particulars until half past ten o'clock, when, finding all efforts to extinguish the flames impossible, lie jumped from the jib boom, and swam to an American boat approaching the ship, by which he was picked up and put into a Tartan, then in the charge of lieutenant Stewart, who had come off to the assistance of the ship. On the morning of the accident. Lord Keith being, as above stated, on shore at Leghorn, had the mortification of discovering the Queen Charlotte on fire four or five leagues at sea. This sight rendered Lord Keith almost frantic - he immediately gave orders for all the vessels and boats to put off, and every assistance to be given; and in this service he was zealously seconded by the Austrian General, and all ranks in Leghorn. They came to an anchor, as the wind blew strongly off the land, but the flames were so rapid that very little hopes could be entertained of saving her. Between eight and nine o'clock the masts and rigging caught fire, and made a most awful blaze; the crew, however, cut the masts by the board ; and, going over the ship, they no longer threatened mischief; but the fire had taken strong hold of the body of the vessel, and continued to rage. The guns began to go off, and the people in the boats and other vessels, who had gone from Leghorn, were much alarmed for fear of the shot, that they would not approach the ship.

It was an ignominious end to a ship named after the wife of George III, and built in 1790 only ten years earlier. In 1796 she had been Admiral Howe's victorious flagship at the Battle of the Glorious Ist of June, and it is shown here guns blazing away at two French ships of the line. Six were captured and one was sunk.

The Glorious First of June was the first major fleet battle of the French Revolutionary War, 1793-1801. Fast forward to 1800 and it must have been a most appalling experience for Admiral Keith to have to watch as his pride and joy went to its watery grave in a ball of flame.

 

A carving of Queen Charlotte in full regalia in miniature. It was probably made before the full-size carving for the figurehead was commissioned, and would have been used to obtain Royal approval to the design.     © The Historic Dockyard Chatham

In his diary for October 1800 Richard Hall wrote out an extract from the London Chronicle of October 11th

 "We have been given the health of Lord Nelson. We have taken the notice which was due to the most gallant action which was ever recorded in the history of our naval power - to an exploit so brave as must give satisfaction to every British man..."

  

 Detail from The Destruction of 'L'Orient' at the Battle of the Nile by George Arnald and painted in 1827. Courtesy of the National Maritime Museum

It was a resounding victory which changed the course of the war with Napoleon. His army were stuck on Egyptian soil unable to advance on their destination - India - and remained bottled up away from the action on the continent. The Royal Navy were the dominant force in the Mediterranean.

Who's a pretty boy then? Rear Admiral Nelson painted later that same year by Francis Abbott, and shown courtesy of the National Maritime Museum.

And because no self respecting blog is complete without a Gillray drawing here is one entitled "The Gallant Nelson bringing home two uncommon fierce French crocodiles from the Nile as a present to the King" (the two crocs represented Sheridan and Fox, who were regarded as being  republicans).

After the first HMS Ramillies was wrecked in 1760 it was only a short time before a new vessel was given the same name. In 1763 Chatham shipyard saw the launch of the 74 gun, third rate Ship of the Line, HMS Ramillies. She was to last less than 20 years. In 1782 she was part of a fleet under Admiral Thomas Graves being brought back from the Caribbean. Ramillies was badly damaged in a violent storm off the Newfoundland coast and was finally abandoned and burned on 21 September 1782.

It was a sad end to a splendid naval victory over the French at the Battle of the Saintes. This had taken  place on 12 April 1782 between a French fleet commanded by the Comte de Grasse and a British fleet under Admiral Rodney in the waters off the Iles des Saintes in the Caribbean. The Ramillies played its part in a comprehensive British victory; the prizes included de Grasse’s mighty 110-gun flagship Ville de Paris and a number of other significant ships.

Portrait of Admiral Thomas Graves by Francesco Bartolozzi 

Four months after the battle Admiral Graves sailed from Jamaica using HMS Ramillies as his flagship, escorting the French prizes and a hundred or so merchant ships. The other British warships were HMS Canada (under the command of Captain William Cornwallis), and HMS Centaur (Captain John Nicholson Inglefield), both 74 guns, plus the 36-gun 5th Rate HMS Pallas. The Pallas sprang a leak and its captain Christopher Parker was forced to return  to Jamaica a fortnight into the voyage. He was the lucky one: on 16th September a huge storm sprang up which wreaked havoc with the warships and its convoy of merchant ships. It resulted in the loss of HMS Ramillies and HMS Centaur, along with every single one of the French warships as well as many of the merchantmen. Only HMS Canada reached England.

You have to feel sorry for the captain of The Ramillies – one Captain Sylvarius Moriarty – because Admiral Graves was on board his ship and would have been monitoring his every action. Inevitably there was a Court Martial  at which the conduct of Captain Moriarty was examined, but it appears to have been a formality and the verdict of the court was that the captain had behaved impeccably. His own letter to the Court gives some idea of the ferocity of the storm.

“The evening of Monday 16^th of September gave every indication of a gale of wind. In consequence every preparation was made on board the Ramillies both for the safety of the ship and that the convoy may follow the example. We brought to early the mainsail on the starboard tack, the wind increased and blew strongly from the SE with a very heavy sea. Between 3 and 4 of the morning of the 17th flew about to the NNW and without a lull took us by the lee, blowing a most violent hurricane. The main mast went by the board, the mizzen mast halfway up, the foremast over the starboard bow, the foreyard broke in the slings, the rudder almost tore off from the sternpost, the tiller snapped in two. …The exertions were great and were effected expeditiously. The morning…presents, O God, a most awfull and affecting view, every species of sea distress surrounded us.”

His letter continues with an explanation of the steps taken to try and keep the ship afloat, firstly by trying to attach sails to the mast stumps so as to afford a measure of control against the worsening storm. This did not work and it proved necessary to chop down and discard the masts and sails. The letter continues: 

“The officers came to me in a body and said there was an absolute necessity to relieve the ship by throwing the guns overboard. The admiral, observing that the Ramillies was the only protection that remained to the convoy, with reluctance consented to have the forecastle and aftermost quarterdeck guns thrown overboard. We soon got clear of them and of a great quantity of shot and other articles of little consequence. In the course of the night of the 17^th, or 18^th by the log, all hands were employed bailing and pumping , seven foot water in the hold and blowing very hard from the westward. The officers informed me that the ballast getting into the pump-well rendered the whole of their pumps useless, in this exigency there was nothing left than bailing.  The ship opening very much, we nailed tarred canvas and hides all fore and aft from under the cells of the ports on the main deck to the fifth plank from the waterways. …I begged the Admiral to go on board one of the vessels in company and save his life that was valuable to the country, but he obstinately refused it, saying that living a few years longer was of very little consequence and that leaving the ship in the situation she was in would discourage the people”

Eventually the decision was made to abandon ship, but not before the gunpowder store had been moved above the water line. By now there was fourteen feet of water in the hold.  All but one of those on board were transferred to one of the merchant ships nearby. This left behind one Mr Young, all on his own, with the unenviable task of  remaining on board until the last moment, so as to light the fuse which was to blow the ship to smithereens.

 

                        

 

This painting by Robert Dodds records the final scene – it is one of a series of five showing the Ramillies in the hours leading up to its final destruction. For the English navy it marked a frustrating and humiliating end to something which had promised so much - glory, fame, and money - but which ultimately led to the embarrassment of the Admiral being brought home in one of the merchant ships he was supposed to have been protecting.....

An estimated 3,500 sailors died in the hurricane. That's more than double the number who were to perish on the Titanic when it sank off  a similar part of the Newfoundland coast some 130 years later.

Richard Hall noted in his diary the loss of the Ramillies

In 1760 HMS Ramillies was not a new vessel – in fact she had been commissioned by the Royal Navy nearly one hundred years previously. Originally built at the dockyard at Woolwich she had been called HMS Royal Katherine but had been re-named in 1706 in honour of Churchill’s famous victory against the French at the Battle of Ramillies.

A Gibraltar stamp showing the vessel under her original name

She had seen valiant service against the Dutch in the latter years of the previous century but more recently had been the flagship of Admiral Byng in the Seven Years War. The Admiral had made a cock-up of relieving Port Mahon in Minorca, under siege at the time, and he had been court-martialled and executed for his failures.

But the Ramillies sailed on into the second half of the century and in February 1760 took part in a blockade against the French navy. She had sailed from Plymouth intending to join Admiral Boscowan´s Channel fleet, heading for the Brittany coast. The vessel had sprung a leak as a sou´westerly gale erupted and she turned back, intending to re-enter Plymouth harbour for repairs. But in the storm the ships master made a terrible and fateful mistake; he wrongly calculated his position and drove the ship not into the safety of Plymouth harbour but onto the rocks of Bigbury Bay some twenty miles to the east. She struck the rocks with such force that it brought down both masts. Frantically the crew had chopped down the sails and cast them overboard, and for a while the ship floated more easily as the storm erupted around her. A dire situation appeared to have been brought under control as the ship managed to get out both its anchors, intending to sit out the storm. It was not to be – both anchors snapped and the stricken vessel was driven onto the vicious rocks off Hope Cove at Bolt Tail.

An artists impression of the foundering Ramillies.

On board were perhaps eight hundred men – Richard has it as 734. Just over 20 survived, the rest of them drowned or crushed on the rocks. Ironically it happened within shouting distance of Hope Cove – the villagers would have heard the cries of the dying men but would have been unable to assist, so strong were the seas and so steep the cliffs, and it is recorded that over the next few days the beaches were awash with shattered timbers and the corpses of hundreds of sailors. It was a traumatic and ghastly accident, and one which was seared into the public imagination, much as with the Titanic 150 years later. Small wonder that Richard noted it in his diary.

Two centuries later I used to walk along the beach at Hope Cove after a storm, looking for coins. They are still washed up occasionally, and the actual site of the wreck is littered with corroded iron, cannon balls etc. A piece of the hull lies in thirty feet of water, and a well-worn cannon is still jammed in the entrance to a cave, marking the spot where the Ramillies  became a grave on 15^th February 1760.

Curiously it was not the only HMS Ramillies to have been lost at sea during Richard´s lifetime, and much the same entry could have appeared in his diary for September 1782. But that will be the subject of a separate blog…

When Admiral Anson returned from his magnificent voyage of circumnavigation in 1744 it was already known that he had sacked a small town in Peru. What was not so apparent until his heavily laden ship entered port was that after his Peruvian escapade he had  headed off towards the Philippines in search of a much bigger prize – which he found  in 1743 when he encountered the Nuestra Señora de Covadonga off Cape Espiritu Santo. The ship had been bound for Spain and the Admiral gleefully relieved it of over one million pieces of eight – 1,313,843 to be precise.

The admiral returned to a hero’s welcome – and the Royal Mint issued coins bearing the word ‘LIMA’ under the king’s head to commemorate the voyage. The silver coins marked in this way were half crowns, shillings and sixpences. A large number of gold coins were also minted. 'LIMA' was a bit of a misnomer – perhaps the government wished to play down the blatant act of piracy by making out that the bullion originated in the Peruvian city. Certainly it had been a tradition for some time to show the provenance of the silver used in coins by having a different design feature – plumes between the royal shields on the reverse of the coin signified silver from Wales, roses from mines in the West of England, and so on.

The word LIMA can be seen below the portrait

'Lima' coins are often collected - Richard had a 'Lima shilling' in his possession when he died, and I still have it to this day in his leather purse.

Anson was a hugely wealthy man as a result of the voyage, and went on to a highly successful naval career and to introduce important reforms to the British Navy. He died in 1762.