Pizarro had with him six ships of war, and a very large force of men, two of the vessels having seven hundred each on board. But in spite of his superior strength, he avoided any engagement at this time, and seems to have been extremely desirous of rounding Cape Horn before Anson, for he left before his provision ships arrived. Notwithstanding this haste the two squadrons were once or twice very close together on the passage to Cape Horn, and the _Pearl_, being separated from the fleet, and mistaking the Spanish squadron for it, narrowly escaped falling into their hands. In a terrible gale off the Horn the Spanish vessels became separated, and Pizarro turned his own ship’s head, the _Asia_, for the Plata once more. One of his squadron, the _Hermiona_, of fifty-four guns and 500 men, is believed to have foundered at sea, for she was never heard of more. Another, the _Guipuscoa_, a still larger ship, with 700 souls on board, was run ashore and sunk on the coast of Brazil. Famine and mutiny were added to the horrors of these voyages. On the latter-named ship 250 died from hunger and fatigue, for those who were still strong enough to work at the pumps received only an ounce and a half of biscuit _per diem_, while the incapable were allowed an ounce of wheat! Men fell down dead at the pumps, and out of an original crew of 700, not more than eighty or a hundred were capable of duty. The captain had conceived some hopes of saving his ship by taking her into St. Catherine’s. When the crew learned his intention, they left off pumping, and “being enraged at the hardships they had suffered, and the numbers they had lost (there being at that time no less than thirty dead bodies lying on the deck) they all, with one voice, cried out, ‘On shore! on shore!’ and obliged the captain to run the ship in directly for the land, where the fifth day after she sunk with her stores and all her furniture on board her.” Four hundred of the crew got, however, safely to shore. On another of the Spanish ships they became so reduced “that rats, when they could be caught, were sold for four dollars apiece; and a sailor who died on board had his death concealed for some days by his brother, who during that time lay in the same hammock with the corpse, only to receive the dead man’s allowance of provisions.” The _Asia_ arrived at Monte Video with only half her crew; the _Esperanza_, a fifty-gun ship, had only fifty-eight remaining out of 450 men, and the _St. Estevan_ had lost about half her hands. The latter vessel was condemned, and broken up in the Plata.