pensioners consist of soldiers, who, from
their age, wounds, or other infirmities, are incapable of service in
marching regiments, Mr. Anson was greatly chagrined at having such a
decrepit detachment allotted to him; for he was fully persuaded that the
greatest part of them would perish long before they arrived at the scene
of action, since the delays he had already encountered necessarily
confined his passage round Cape Horn to the most vigorous season of the
year.** They were ordered on board the squadron on the 5th of August; but
instead of 500 there came on board no more than 259; for all those who
had limbs and strength to walk out of Portsmouth deserted, leaving behind
them only such as were literally invalids, most of them being sixty years
of age, and some of them upwards of seventy.

(*Note. A local name for Chelsea Hospital, a home for old and disabled
soldiers. It was founded by Charles II and the buildings were designed by
Wren.)

(**Note. The squadron did not reach the neighbourhood of Cape Horn until
March when the autumn of the Southern Hemisphere had begun and with it
the stormy season.)

To supply the place of the 240 invalids which had deserted there were
ordered on board 210 marines detached from different regiments. These
were raw and undisciplined men, for they were just raised, and had
scarcely anything more of the soldier than their regimentals, none of
them having been so far trained as to be permitted to fire. The last
detachment of these marines came on board the 8th of August, and on the
10th the squadron sailed from Spithead to St. Helens, there to wait for a
wind to proceed on the expedition.

But the diminishing the strength of the squadron was not the greatest
inconvenience which attended these alterations, for the contests,
representations, and difficulties which they continually produced
occasioned a delay and waste of time which in its consequences was the
source of all the disasters to which this enterprise was afterwards
exposed. For by this means we were obliged to make our passage round Cape
Horn in the most tempestuous season of the year, whence proceeded the
separation of our squadron, the loss of numbers of our men, and the
imminent hazard of our total destruction. And by this delay, too, the
enemy had been so well informed of our designs that a person who had been
employed in the South Sea Company's* service, and arrived from Panama
three or four days before we left Portsmou