Lately I've been reading accounts of the great circumnavigators such as Captain James Cook and Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, his dynamic French rival in South Pacific exploration. One of Cook's books is particularly wonderful, though it would fall under the modern rubric of creative non-fiction by a ghostwriter. Cook was a tremendous sailor and explorer, but was regarded as a dull personality who, given half a chance, would write like the mathematician and astronomer that he was-as indeed his published Journals prove. Accordingly, the assignment to produce a ripping narrative was doled out to one of the literary johnnies who are forever to be found on the fringes of court, obscured by the draperies. Dr. John Hawkesworth had a lively style but suffered savage handicaps of his own. In fact, he had never been to sea, and didn't seem to know what all the different ropes were for.

Such reading brought me to George Anson, Cook's much less well remembered predecessor. Anson died in 1767, when young Cook was charting the Lower St. Lawrence and the Newfoundland coast but Bougainville (once Montcalm's aide-de-camp at Quebec) was midway through his own voyage round the world. Anson had travelled a generation earlier, in an expedition to harass the Spanish in the Pacific. Upon his return, he was created a baron, and he served twice as First Lord of the Admiralty. I've recently had the extreme pleasure of reading a contemporary quarto copy, beautifully printed, bound, and illustrated, of his account, A Voyage round the World in the Years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV, which was something of a bestseller in its time. Anson lacked Hawkesworth's literary flair, but he spun a clear and honest prose, mainly in the form of journals and reports, which he then turned over to Richard Walter, the chaplain of his flagship Centurion, for seamless editing.

As John Fowles points out in one of the pieces of his new book, Wormholes: Essays & Occasional Writings (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, $35): "Fortunately, if tragically, we know very well what it was like to be shipwrecked in the 18th and 19th centuries. Perhaps no form of human misery is so extensively recorded, in every detail. No Royal Navy ship went down without a subsequent court-martial of the senior survivor," while the owners of commercial vessels sought redress in the admiralty courts. "There was also the public fascination-shipwreck stories were once as popular as thrillers and sci-fi novels are today-to say nothing of the need of the survivors, and of ghostwriters with an eye for easy money, to relate their adventures."

Such fame as Anson's book enjoys now rests on two pillars. Anson spent considerable time exploring the Juan Fernandez Islands, where Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, had been marooned. Anson also included-as how could he not?-an account of the loss of his supply ship, HMS Wager: among the best documented and most debated shipwrecks in all the vast literature of the subject. He was under pressure to explain away the embarrassing mishap, as one member of the ship's company had already published his own self-serving account and two others were on the way. In time, a fourth, by John Byron, would also appear.

Wager was a 123-foot East Indiaman being used as a victualler. When the little flotilla got near the southern tip of South America, it put into deserted anchorage for repairs, before attempting the always fearsome challenge of Cape Horn. For six weeks, storms prevented the passage. When the moment finally arrived, Wager became separated from the others. Ignoring standing orders to rendezvous at Juan Fernandez in such a situation, the Wager's master, Lieutenant David Cheap, remained sailing back and forth in the area. Another storm sent the ship onto a reef "not above a musket shot from shore" and broke its back. The eighteen survivors reached land but fell to squabbling among themselves. There was in fact a mutiny of sorts.

Some wanted to sail south in order to return home via the Strait of Magellan. Others wished to go north in the hope of finding a Spanish vessel they could capture. For five weeks they stayed, quarrelling, on what's still shown on maps of the Chilean coast as Wager Island, while the ship's carpenter greatly enlarged the ship's longboat and rigged it as a schooner. John Buckeley, a gunner, set sail south with part of the crew; he eventually reached Rio Grande in Brazil on the other side of South America. From there some of the men eventually made their way back to England. Meanwhile, Cheap, Byron, and a second party crept northward along the Pacific coast. There they were captured by the Spanish and held prisoner for two years. Cheap and Byron were the only ones of this group ever to return to England, and their story is one of the age's most gripping tales of hardship.

Much was written about the Wager tragedy, what with the public controversy about the loss of the ship and subsequent mutiny. John Buckeley and John Cummins were first in print with A Voyage to the South Seas by HMS Wager in 1743. Alexander Campbell, the ingenious ship's carpenter, followed in 1747 with The Sequel to Buckeley and Cummins's Voyage to the South Seas. In 1750, another crew member published A Narrative of the Dangers and Distresses Which Befel Isaac Morris, and Seven More of the Crew Belonging to the Wager Store-ship, Which Attended Captain Anson in His Voyage to the South Sea.

As mentioned, Anson, the person in ultimate authority, came out of this mess with his career actually enhanced. But no one profited more than Midshipman John Byron. He was promoted captain on his return and was given his own round-the-world expedition, in 1764-69, commanding the flagship HMS Dolphin. He wrote a book that appeared, to a warm reception, during his absence. To give the title in its full eighteenth-century splendour, it was called The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron Containing an Account of the Great Distresses Suffered by Himself and His Companions on the Coast of Patagonia from the Year 1740, till Their Arrival in England 1746. This, which was of course his and Cheap's version of the tale, came twenty years after the events, when emotions had subsided and Byron's career was at its zenith.

Does this have anything to do with Canada? Yes. As his reward for circumnavigating the globe and returning in one piece with no loss of life or vessels, Byron was appointed Governor of Newfoundland. His grandson, the poet Lord Byron, wrote of him, "He had no peace at sea, nor I on land.