Byron's Narrative of the Loss of the Wager

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1

Captain Inglefield's account of the loss of the Centaur, (in September, 1782), furnished Byron with many of those trivial incidents, which, as the poet well knew, render a story, to use Gibbon's words, "circumstancial and animated," instead of "vague and languid;" the "eternal difference between fiction and truth." The behaviour of the sailors before the sinking of the ship; some lashing themselves in their hammocks, some putting on their best clothes; the sail made of blankets; the ragged piece of sheet with which they caught the rain-water; the words used by the man who first saw the land, &c. &c., are all faithfully copied or slightly altered from Inglefield.

2

Byron's ship in this expedition was the Dolphin: she was the second ship ever coppered in the British navy.

3

Captain Cheap has been suspected of a design of going on the Spanish coast without the Commodore; but no part of his conduct seems to authorise, in the least, such a suspicion. The author who brings this heavy charge against him, is equally mistaken in imagining that Captain Cheap had not instructions to sail to this island, and that the Commodore did neither go nor send thither, to inform himself if any of the squadron were there. This appears from the orders delivered to the captains of the squadron, the day before they sailed from St. Catherine's (L. Anson's Voyage, B.I.C. 6.); from the orders of the council of war held on board the Centurion, in the bay of St. Julian, (C. 7.); and from the conduct of the Commodore (C. 10.) who cruized (with the utmost hazard) more than a fortnight off the isle of Socoro, and along the coast in its neighbourhood. It was the second rendezvous at Baldivia, and not that at Socoro, that the Commodore was forced by necessity to neglect.