by the government for so many years before the
war, Anson had to put up with some bad ships and worse men. Even poor
old pensioners were sent on board at the last minute to make up the
number required. Of course they soon died off like flies. But his
famous flagship, the _Centurion_, got through, beat everything that
stood up to her, and took vast quantities of Spanish gold and silver.
Yet this is by no means the most wonderful fact about the _Centurion_.
The most wonderful thing of all is, that, though she was only a
one-thousand-tonner (smaller than many a destroyer of the present day)
she had no fewer than eight officers who rose to high and well-won rank
in after years, and three--Anson, Saunders, and Keppel--who all became
First Lords of the Admiralty, and thus heads of the whole Navy.

[Illustration: H.M.S. _Centurion_ engaged and took the Spanish Galleon
_Nuestra Senhora de Capadongo_, from Acapulco bound to Manila, off Cape
Espiritu Santo, Philippine Islands, June 20, 1743.]

Three years after his return Anson won a victory over the French off
Cape Finisterre, while Hawke won another near the same place a few
months later. In both the French fought very well indeed; but, with
less skill in handling fleets and smaller numbers than the British,
they had no chance. One of Hawke's best captains was Saunders. Thus
twelve years before Pitt's conquest of Canada the three great admirals
most concerned with it had already been brought together.

The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which ended the war in 1748, settled
nothing and satisfied nobody. It was, in fact, only a truce to let the
tired opponents get their breath and prepare for the world-wide
struggle which was to settle the question of oversea empire.

The British in America were very angry with the Mother Country for
giving back Louisbourg. But they were much too narrow in their views;
for their own fate in America depended entirely on the strength of the
Royal Navy, which itself depended on having a safe base in the Mother
Country. Now, France had conquered those parts of the once Spanish but
then Austrian Netherlands which included the present coast of Belgium;
and Britain could no more allow the French to threaten her naval base
from the coast of Belgium then than she could allow the Spaniards
before or the Germans in our own time. Therefore both she and her
colonists won many points in the game, when playing for safety, by
giving up Louisbourg, from