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Updated: May 17, 2025
“Don’t be uneasy, captain,” replied the lieutenant. “Indeed, since you want four men at the oars you had better take them from among the new ones. That will leave four less troublesome fellows on board.” This was a good idea, for, under the deplorable influence of Hearne, the discontent of his shipmates from the Falklands was on the increase.
Lord Fisher had succeeded Prince Louis of Battenberg at the Admiralty on 30 October, and one of his first acts was to dispatch on 5 November a squadron under Admiral Sturdee, comprising the Invincible and Inflexible, and four lighter cruisers, the Carnarvon, Kent, Cornwall, and Bristol; the Glasgow was picked up in the South Atlantic, while the Canopus was at Port Stanley in the Falklands.
After touching at the Falklands, the ships started on the 27th November on a vain search for the Aurora Islands, after which they made for the Sandwich group, doubling its most southerly cape on the 1st January, 1831. In 59 degrees S. lat. masses of ice were encountered, compelling the explorers to give up the south-western route, in which direction they had noted signs of the existence of land.
Full sixty miles were gone over from the time those snowy peaks were first seen till we reached Valparaiso, far away down at their base. We must have been a hundred and twenty miles off them at sunrise. Coming so suddenly from the wild regions of Tierra del Fuego and the unattractive Falklands, Valparaiso appeared to us a very beautiful place.
During the process of housing and storing, I observed nothing to arouse suspicion in the bearing of Hearne and the Falklands men. Nevertheless, the half-breed was kept on guard at the boat, which might easily have been seized upon the beach. Hurliguerly, who observed his comrades closely, appeared less anxious.
Yes, indeed, the recruits from the Falklands demanding that we should turn back, although Hearne was not there to fan the flame of insubordination, and I must acknowledge that the greater part of the old tars seemed to agree with them. West awaited his chief’s orders, not daring to impose silence.
It was with a keen realization of this dilemma that Admiral Cradock in the British armored cruiser Good Hope left the Falklands on October 22 to join the Monmouth, Glasgow, and auxiliary cruiser Otranto in a sweep along the west coast. The old battleship Canopus, with 12-inch guns, but only 12 knots cruising speed, was properly judged too slow to keep with the squadron.
"Peace!" the elder declared hotly; "you and the Democrats may call it that, but it's a damned swindle, with the British to windward of you and hardly a sail now drawing in your ropes. What did Edmund Burke tell Parliament in 'seventy-five about our whalers, hey! Why, that from Davis Strait to the Antipodes, from the Falklands to Africa, we outdrove Holland, France and England.
Even now, had he moved directly upon the Falklands, he would have encountered only the Canopus, but he again delayed several days to take coal from a prize. On December 7 the British battle cruisers and other ships picked up in passage arrived at the island base and at once began to coal. Their coming was not a moment too soon.
A last dip of land behind; and on Monday, October 1, 1787, the ships' prows were cleaving the waters of their fate. The course lay from Boston to Cape Verde Islands, from Verde Islands to the Falklands north of Cape Horn, round Cape Horn, up the west coast of South America, touching at Masafuera and Juan Fernandez, and thence, without pause, to the west coast of North America.
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