Here also may be put what remains to be said of Vernon. It is to the honour of a man of whom little good can be told, that if he was insolent to colleagues and harsh to his officers, he showed an intelligent humanity to his crews. He reduced the excessive allowance of rum given to men in the West Indies, and introduced the custom of diluting it with water. The mixture is said by tradition to have got its name of “grog” from his nickname of “Old Grog,” given him for his practice of wearing a grogram boat-cloak. This is the only kindly trait (for we cannot praise him for not behaving like a buccaneer at Porto Bello) in an unamiable character. Vernon had offered to resign after the failure at Carthagena, but was flattered into remaining by ministers who were unwilling to see him among them till his tar-barrel popularity had waned, as they no doubt began to see it would soon do. He did return at the close of 1742. In 1744 his name was passed over in a promotion of admirals, and he resented the slight in a letter of incredible insolence to the Board. Yet in April 1745 he was promoted Admiral of the White, and appointed to a home command during the Jacobite rising. On service he began a course of violent wrangling with the Admiralty, and finally threw up his post in a pet. Then he appealed to the public in anonymous pamphlets with clap-trap titles, consisting largely of official letters which he had clearly no right to publish. When called to account for what was at the best a gross irregularity, he refused to acknowledge his responsibility, and was, by the king’s orders, struck off the list of admirals. He died on his estate at Nacton, in Suffolk, on the 30th October 1757, forgotten and obscure—an example of the worthlessness of mob popularity. It is indeed a pleasure to turn from this story of loud talk and little performance to Anson’s immortal voyage. Not that it was without dark shades and disasters, not only because it ended in triumph, but because there was at the head of it a hero, and round him a band fit to follow a hero. Of Anson himself it may be said that in him English manhood gave itself a witness amid the vulgar crowd of Vernons, Knowleses, Mitchells, Mathews, and Lestocks. Stern but just, asking for no affection, but deserving it, and commanding absolute confidence, he was indeed “the flower and pattern of all bold mariners ... unchangeable of purpose, crafty of counsel, and swift of execution; in triumph most sober, in failure ... of endurance beyond mortal man.” It had at first been intended to send two expeditions to the South Seas, one under Anson to Manila, and another under Captain Cornwall round the Horn. But the Government changed its mind. Anson alone sailed, and was directed not on Manila but on Panama. There was delay, as always at that time, and the squadron did not leave England till the 18th September 1740. It consisted of six ships:—