This vessel, the _Anna_ pink, was, as I have observed, the last that joined the commodore at Juan Fernandes. The remaining ships of the squadron were the _Severn_, the _Pearl_, and the _Wager_ store-ship. The _Severn_ and _Pearl_ parted company with the squadron off Cape Noir, and, as we afterwards learnt, put back to the Brazils, so that of all the ships which came into the South Seas, the _Wager_, Captain Cheap, was the only one that was missing. This ship had on board a few field-pieces mounted for land-service, together with some cohorn mortars, and several kinds of artillery stores and pioneers' tools intended for the operations on shore. Therefore, as the enterprise on Baldivia had been resolved on for the first undertaking of the squadron, Captain Cheap was extremely solicitous that these materials, which were in his custody, might be ready before Baldivia; that if the squadron should possibly rendezvous there (as he knew not the condition they were then reduced to), no delay nor disappointment might be imputed to him. But whilst the _Wager_, with these views, was making the best of her way to her first rendezvous off the island of Socoro, whence (as there was little probability of meeting {139} any of the squadron there) she proposed to steer directly for Baldivia, she made the land on the 14th of May, about the latitude of 47° south; and the captain exerting himself on this occasion, in order to get clear of it, he had the misfortune to fall down the after-ladder, and dislocated his shoulder, which rendered him incapable of acting. This accident, together with the crazy condition of the ship, which was little better than a wreck, prevented her from getting off to sea, and entangled her more and more with the land, insomuch that the next morning, at daybreak, she struck on a sunken rock, and soon after bilged and grounded between two small islands at about a musket-shot from the shore.