"I should have told you that that ship mounted sixty guns. Having cruised till our water was almost all expended, and having an enemy's coast whereon to replenish, we were obliged to depart, but left a boat behind to watch her motions. After many searches, we found a convenient bay for watering called Chequetan, where Sir Francis Drake had refitted. We sunk and burnt all our prizes, in order to cross the great Southern Ocean, and, with the Gloucester in company, go to the East Indies. We learned afterwards that this rich ship was detained, having had information from the coast of Peru of our being on the coast. We left Acapulco on the 6th of May 1742; and here begins another series of misfortunes and mortality surpassing the first. We had a passage of three months and a half to the Ladrone Islands, which is generally made in two; yet it was a vulgar opinion amongst our people that we had sailed so far as to pass by all the land in the world! Length of time and badness of the weather rendered both our ships leaky; this, joined to our mortality, the scurvy raging amongst us as much as ever, obliged us to destroy the Gloucester, which ship was ready to founder, and receive the men on board, who were all sick and dying. It is impossible to represent the melancholy circumstances wherein we were involved previous to our arrival at these islands. We anchored at one called Tinian, uninhabited, but abounding with wild cattle, hogs, fowls, and fruits: we could not have fallen in with a better place. I am convinced, had we stayed out ten days longer at sea, we should have been obliged to take to our boats, our leak increasing so fast, and our people being all infirm and disabled. We immediately sent all our sick on shore, and began to hope for better times, feeding plentifully on roast beef, when an accident fell out, on the 22nd September 1742, which nearly ruined us all.